Recently, the FCC has proposed a policy that would create a broad “know your customer” rule for phone service providers, requiring telecoms to collect and retain identifying information from new and renewing customers before allowing them to use phone services. The full proposal can be read in this Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FNPRM). At minimum, under this policy, in order to buy a phone plan, customers would need to give phone providers their name, physical address, government-issued identification number, and alternate phone number. For high-volume customers, the FCC is also considering requiring details like the intended use of the service and the IP address used to place calls. This means that without an ID, individuals would not be able to buy phone plans, and therefore not be able to call, text or have mobile data on their phone.
The FCC frames the proposal as an anti-robocall and anti-scam measure, arguing that stronger identity verification would deter illegal callers and make enforcement easier. However, I and many others would argue that this policy is very harmful and a violation of everyone’s privacy. This rule is a potential end to anonymous “burner phones,” because it would make it much harder to get phone service without linking it to a legal identity, raising privacy and safety concerns for groups like abuse survivors, journalists, activists, and people who rely on anonymous communications. The group that would potentially be the most harshly impacted by this new regulation would be minors currently living in abusive homes, as they lack access to ID, and usually are restricted from acquiring phones by their parents, and therefore usually forced to rely on “burner phones” in order to record their abuse, make life-saving calls, and connect with support systems.
Table of Contents
- How The FCC’s Regulation on Phone Plans Would Disproportionally Harm Youth
- How Burner Phones can Help in Cases of Child Abuse and Domestic Abuse
- How Burner Phones can Help in Cases of Emotional Abuse
- Personal Stories of the Benefits of Burner Phones for Youth
How The FCC’s Regulation on Phone Plans Would Disproportionally Harm Youth
While the proposed regulations do not include age limits or age verification, it will undoubtedly disproportionately affect youth. This is because most minors do not have access to identification, and minors have increased difficulty in acquiring their own identification. First of all, most minors do not even have driver’s licenses until they are at least 16 years of age. Most companies, when performing ID checks, usually only have systems set up to verify driver’s licenses and state issued identification, not other types of documents. This means that most young people under 16 would already have no way of verifying their identity in order to buy a phone plan for a burner phone.
Along with this, older teenagers and even young adults in vulnerable situations can also be affected. In our society, parents are given a default monopoly on the identifying documents of their children—including birth certificates, Social Security cards, etc. In order for a young person to get any other types of identification, including a passport or driver’s license, they need to use one of the other default documents. This isn’t a problem for some individuals, as their parents keep up with their documents, and are supportive of them getting their own forms of identification. But if parents are irresponsible or abusive, they may intentionally withhold documents, or lose them.
I recently interviewed NYRA volunteer Kelsey, who told her personal story of the issues she experienced around identification. Kelsey, personally, didn’t even have a driver’s license until she was 18 and a half years old, because of personal difficulty in acquiring one. When she turned 18 years old, she learned that parents had lost her other methods of identification—her birth certificate and Social Security card—making it impossible for her to get a driver’s license until those were eventually replaced. This circumstance was completely out of her control, and yet, she was a legal adult without access to identification. She also described the administrative cycles necessary to retrieve identifying documents, when you are already missing most of them.
She described that in order to replace your Social Security card online, you need to use login.gov. However, this only works if you have supplementary documentation to prove that your Social security number belongs to you—which usually requires a driver’s license or birth certificate. If a young person doesn’t have these other pieces of ID, they need to show up, in person, to a Social Security office. This is difficult for young people lacking all forms of documentation, since they are unable to drive there without a driver’s license, and unable to pay for transportation easily without online money from a bank account (which you need identifying documents to open).
In even worse situations, oppressive parents will attempt to force their children to be reliant on them, by withholding access to their identification, and not allowing them to get their own documents, such as a driver’s license. Children living in situations with these types of parents are especially vulnerable, because parents that withhold access to identification, or try to prevent their children from acquiring it, are likely to be abusive in other ways. The Coalition for Responsible Home Education specifically says that some abusive homeschool parents use control over a child’s identifying documents, including birth certificates and Social Security numbers, to control them. The page collects multiple first-person accounts from homeschool graduates. One person said her parents deprived her of a Social Security number and birth certificate because they believed government documents gave the government “ownership” of her; she said she could not attend school, drive, get a job, or pass a background check. Another person said that when she left home at 17, she had no Social Security number or state ID, and that lacking those documents made her dependent on a boyfriend. These instances show how youth and young adults in abusive homes will have their identification withheld from them as a method of abuse.
This issue matters because replacing documents can require other documents, creating a trap for someone leaving abuse. Social Security’s own materials explain that applicants may need multiple documents proving citizenship, age, and identity, such as a birth certificate, passport, or other accepted records. That means a parent who withholds the child’s birth certificate, Social Security card, passport, school records, or medical records is not just withholding paper; they may be blocking the young person from proving identity in the first place.
How Burner Phones can Help in Cases of Child Abuse and Domestic Abuse
All of these stories show it is clear that young people—specifically children with abusive parents—will experience some of the most direct negative harms of the FCC’s proposed requirement to tie ID with burner phone plans. Children living in these abusive homes need access to burner phones for many reasons. First of all, one of the other main ways that abusive parents exercise their control over their children is by seizing their property—specifically their phones. Since taking a child’s phone from them is usually just seen as “discipline”, and isn’t a controversial aspect of parenting, this empowers them to feel like they can get away with it—and usually they can. However, when these abusive parents seize their children’s phones, it is usually for 3 main reasons: to isolate them from support, to prevent them from calling for help, and to prevent them from recording the abuse.
Burner phones mitigate all of these concerns, and most importantly for the safety of the minor, burner phones allow children in abusive situations to reach out and call people to help them in the event of an emergency. Abusers are usually in a position of authority over the victims, which is especially the case for abusive parents. This means that they most likely know about the victim’s devices, and will obviously try to take the devices and any other method of communication to prevent the victim from calling for help. For example, if a child is in an abusive home, and forced to rely on the one phone that their parent had gotten them, then the parent can easily take that phone away, and continue to abuse the child without having to worry that the child could call for help. But if the child has a secondary backup phone that they bought themself, with its own phone plan, then they could still be able to call for help without the knowledge of the parent, even after the parent had seized their original phone.
Along with this, many anti abuse materials document burner phones as ways to help victims. The myPlan app, a survivor-safety tool developed with domestic violence survivors and described as research-backed, has a specific article about getting a “secret phone” for safe communication. It explains that monitoring or tracking a victim’s phone is a common tactic abusive people use to control, isolate, and prevent partners from leaving, including by tracking location, checking texts, reviewing call logs, and looking at browser histories. A hidden or separate phone is presented as one strategy survivors use when their main phone may be tracked. This is, again, an even bigger concern when it comes to children in abusive homes.
Because parental monitoring software is heavily encouraged, parents can get away with obsessively tracking their child’s location and may just come off as a “protective parent”, when in reality they are using it as a tool for abuse. In these situations, the one thing a kid could use to call for help becomes a weapon for tracking by the very abuser they are trying to escape. Burner phones allow children to have an extra device to call for help and contact support, without having to be worried about their every move being seen by their abuser.
There is also federal policy support for the underlying concern. The FCC’s Safe Connections Act guidance recognizes that survivors of domestic violence, dating violence, stalking, sexual assault, human trafficking, and similar crimes may need to separate their phone line from an abuser’s account. The fact that federal law now requires pathways for survivors to separate from shared plans reflects the same safety problem: when an abuser controls or can access the phone account, the survivor’s communications may not be private.
Since “family plans” are also more commonly used in parent-child abusive situations, than spousal abusive situations (since the parent is usually providing the phone for the child), this opens up the door for continued abuse. A Duke technology-policy analysis of the Safe Connections Act explains the danger even more directly: family phone plans can let abusers access call logs or family-tracking features, allowing them to see if a survivor contacted relatives, hotlines, crisis centers, shelters, or other support systems. That is exactly the kind of situation where a separate prepaid phone can be lifesaving, because the survivor may need to communicate with help networks without creating records visible to the abuser.
How Burner Phones can Help in Cases of Emotional Abuse
It is a well documented fact that Child Protective Services are more likely to Fail to Intervene in emotional abuse situations. USC researchers reported that in one study of children referred to protective agencies, more than 40% were emotionally abused but not identified as such, and researchers linked that underidentification to “lack of attention to, and lack of clarity about, definitions and classifications” of emotional abuse. A separate child welfare review similarly noted that reported rates of emotional maltreatment vary dramatically across states, from 0.2% to 44.9% in one national report, which strongly suggests the system is not measuring it consistently. Looking at these numbers, it is reasonable to assume that if up to 40% of emotionally abused children were not identified as such, then in the states with the numbers closer to 0.2%, there must be thousands of emotionally abused children that are not identified—and therefore not protected—by child protective services.
This is due to two reasons. First of all, child protective services operate under the policy that keeping the child in their original home, or reunifying them with their parents is always the preferred route. Along with this, CPS prioritizes using their resources for cases that they deem more severe. So a child experiencing severe emotional abuse—such as verbal harassment and isolation—is less likely to be treated with the same severity as a child being physically abused, since emotional abuse is not as often seen as a threat to the child’s safety. Despite this, emotional abuse often has the same negative impacts on a child’s life, including causing them to develop anxiety, depressive symptoms and even suicidal ideation. Because of this, children in emotionally abusive homes looking to be removed from them often need a higher burden of proof for intervention from CPS.
CPS and child-welfare systems make intervention decisions based on evidence, lack of evidence can lead to reports being unsubstantiated, and photographs/videos are specifically treated as important evidence in abuse investigations. Since emotional abuse doesn’t leave a physical mark, or present with much other physical evidence, a child often needs to record videos of the instances to provide ample evidence. A child in an emotionally abusive home being able to take pictures, videos and keep other records of their parents’ abusive behavior may make the difference between them being taken seriously, and not. This is exactly why controlling and emotionally abusive parents often either take phones from their children, prevent them from having access to phones in the first place, or put overbearing device monitoring/restricting software onto the phones in order to control and manage every aspect of it. All of these methods are ways that abusive parents prevent their victims from recording abuse, and contacting support. This keeps the children isolated, reliant on the abusive parents, and unable to prove they are experiencing the abuse.
Again, this is when burner phones come in handy to mitigate this problem. If a parent takes a child’s main phone, before engaging in emotionally abusive behavior, a child without a burner phone would have no way to discreetly record it. A child with an extra burner phone that they acquired unbeknownst to their parents, though, would be able to record the abusive behavior discreetly, in order to compile evidence. The same logic applies if parents use excessive device monitoring and restricting software on their child’s device. Device monitoring and restricting software may allow for remote locking, where parents can shut off the device completely with a click of their fingers—rendering it useless for contacting support and recording abuse. It may also include “screen time” limits, where the device automatically shuts off after a certain time of night—again making it useless to contact support, call others, or record abuse after a certain period of time. Burner phones allow children to have an unrestricted device available to them, in order to do all of these things necessary for navigating an abusive home.
Along with this, controlling parents often conduct device searches on the phones of their children, which usually involve searching the camera roll. If a child in an emotionally abusive household was caught attempting to record the abuse, they would likely be punished further. Recording abuse on a burner phone allows them to do this without fear of the device being searched, since the parents wouldn’t know about the device in the first place.
While the minor may still be able to acquire a burner phone without a phone plan, without needing their ID under the proposed FCC policy, it still threatens their ability to compile recordings of abuse. For example, a minor may need to quickly send pictures or videos of the abusive behavior to another individual, in order to prove what is happening—which they wouldn’t be able to do if their burner phone couldn’t text. They may also need to quickly upload the videos and recordings of the abuse to online archives and delete them from the burner phone, so the recordings aren’t found if the parents are able to get their hands on the backup phone. This would be very difficult if the burner phone did not have access to mobile data.
Outside of instances of recording abuse, burner phones are also useful in countering the isolation that emotionally abusive parents impose on their children. Emotionally abusive, controlling and oppressive parents may prevent a child from having friends, participating in normal activities, speaking to trusted adults, or developing any support system outside the home. The abuse may be framed as protection, discipline, or family values, but the effect is that the child becomes socially trapped and more dependent on the abusive parent. One of the most common ways they do this is by using digital restrictions to prevent them from connecting with their peers. This could occur by taking their phone away at night so they can’t call their friends, using device managing software to limit their contacts (or read their private messages), or controlling their internet usage to block access to online communities, social media and support systems.
Research has shown that social isolation and loneliness in youth are associated with higher risk of depression and anxiety, and it highlights suicidality risk tied to disconnection, relevant when parents isolate kids by restricting friendships or cutting them off socially. The Article states that “Loneliness and social isolation among children and adolescents increase the risk of depression and anxiety.” It also emphasizes suicide risk, saying “Social isolation is arguably the strongest and most reliable predictor of suicidal ideation, attempts, and lethal suicidal behavior…”
There have also been many stories of young people relying on their connection to online support systems, which help them through their struggles of a tough home life with abusive parents. Parents forcefully removing access to these online support systems using device restrictions can have devastating impacts on youth, and could even cause them to lose their lives. So when parents engage in this behavior, by using technology and forced isolation to cut children off from their peers, this puts the children at major risk. Once again, having a burner phone can help mitigate this concern, by allowing the young person to still be able to connect with their peers and online communities.
While young people may be able to still connect with their peers using a phone without a phone plan (which wouldn’t be affected by the FCC proposal), there are many instances where they would need a phone plan. For example, many oppressive parents that institute device restrictions also have wifi restrictions that can prevent devices from connecting to it. So if a young person has a phone without a mobile data plan, they still may not be able to connect with others, since their device could be restricted from accessing the house’s wifi. Burner phones help with this, by allowing the minor to text and call their friends, while using the mobile data to access online communities and support systems.
All in all, burner phones can be vital resources for children in physically abusive homes and emotionally abusive homes for many reasons. They allow young people to be able to call others without restriction, allows them to move without being tracked, allows them to record, send and compile evidence of abuse and allows them to connect with their friends and online support systems in order to counter parental-enforced isolation. However, these concerns are not just hypothetical; there are many stories in which burner phones provide meaningful benefit to minors in toxic situations.
Personal Stories of the Benefits of Burner Phones for Youth
When I was a teenager, I was going through a nasty custody battle, where my mother and father were fighting tooth and nail over my visitation schedule. My father had initiated the dispute, after he had stolen from me, verbally harassed me on multiple occasions, and made his home a toxic environment for me. Due to this, I began refusing to see him out of my own free will—but the courts did not see it this way. The courts forced me to go with my father, despite him being irrational and emotionally abusive at the time. He promised that the second I stepped foot in his house, he would take away all of my devices from me. He justified this under “punishment”, but I knew the truth, he wanted to cut me off from contacting anybody else about what was going on at his house, and he wanted to prevent me from taking videos of his volatile behavior.
This is where buying a burner phone with a phone plan was vital. When I had a burner phone on me, I didn’t need to worry about him taking my main phone, because I still had a way to contact others and record abuse. Of course, there ended up being an altercation at his house, and when I ran away, I was able to use the burner phone to call my family. If I didn’t have access to the burner phone, I would have been stranded in a hostile environment, with no way to reach out to others. Though the toxic home I was in wasn’t physically abusive, and only emotionally volatile, imagine what would happen if another young person was forced to go into an even worse situation, not out of their own free will—and had no way to reach out for help because they couldn’t acquire a burner phone.
Along with this, that wasn’t the only volatile home situation I was in. My other home outside of my father wasn’t much better when it came to toxicity. Like my father, my step dad was just as harsh, and often tried to impose his will through overbearing control. As a way to “punish” me, for “starting” the custody battle, he began to take away my devices often, and enforce overbearing online restrictions onto them. This hindered my ability to connect with my friends, who were my vital sources of support with the living situations I was struggling with—due to the hostility of my parents. This is when once again, I bought an extra burner phone with a phone plan to use without them knowing about it. Using this burner phone, I was able to stay in contact with my friends who were helping me through the situation. On top of this, when my step father had a volatile emotional outburst towards me, similar to how my father had done, and I no longer felt safe in my own home, I was able to leave and use my burner phone to contact my grandma for help. Once again, a burner phone had helped me in a time of need—where the alternative would be for me to remain in a toxic, emotionally abusive, and hostile home.
Outside of my own story, I have known others that benefitted from burner phones in their toxic living environments. My best friend, who helped me through my own personal struggles in my time of need, was also dealing with her own volatile home situation. Her mother was extremely controlling, oppressive, and violated her privacy often. Her parents instituted heavy device monitoring, managing and restricting software onto her phone, which hindered her ability to connect with me and her other friends. There was one specific story from her that I remember often. I vividly remember her calling me, in tears, sobbing that she had overheard her parents using the device managing software to read out her private messages between her and her school-friends, then talk about them negatively behind their backs. This broke my heart, and made me realize how much she needed support. So when her parents finally caught onto her connecting with others via online communities, and blocked her phone from accessing them, I did the only reasonable thing and ordered her a burner phone for her to use. With this burner phone, she was able to stay in contact with her friends, and communicate with us without fear of her private messages being read by her controlling parents.
While these aren’t horrendous stories of someone needing a burner phone to escape physical abuse or neglect, they still communicate the message that young people need access to burner phones—especially when they are in toxic living environments with emotionally abusive and oppressive parents. If this FCC regulation went into effect, most young people would have no ability to acquire a burner phone, and therefore would be more likely to be trapped in these situations without the ability to contact support, or call for help. Young people should have the same ability to access burner phones as adults do. The FCC tying the ability to purchase phone plans, with government ID will disproportionately affect youth without access to ID, and therefore disproportionately harm child abuse victims and vulnerable youth in toxic living environments.
The National Youth Rights Association
If you’re interested in Youth Rights, consider volunteering with us. We are always looking for new members and would love to have you on board. If you have a personal story to share, of how this FCC proposal would negatively impact your life, how burner phones have benefited you, or about a general youth rights violation, consider sending us an email at nyra@youthrights.org. We’d love to help get your story out to the world.
The text of The FCC Wants ID Required to Buy Phone Plans. This Threatens Child Abuse Victims © 2026 by Zane Miller is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
