# FCC's 'Know Your Customer' Plan Could End Anonymous Phones — Plus the Week's Biggest Breaches and Busts

> US telecom regulator FCC wants carriers to record every customer's identity, a move that would make buying a phone anonymously almost impossible. The same week also saw the ShinyHunters hacking spree, Microsoft's largest-ever Patch Tuesday, and Google suing an alleged Chinese scam network.

**Type:** article · **Category:** Security · **Published:** 2026-06-13 · **Source:** TrendKia
**Canonical:** https://trendkia.com/en/security/amerika-men-barnara-phona-para-snkata-fcc-ka-naya-kyc-prastava-gumanama-sima-ko--574 · **Language:** English
**Tags:** FCC burner phones, phone privacy, ShinyHunters hack, Oracle PeopleSoft flaw, Microsoft Patch Tuesday, Google Gemini scam lawsuit, cybersecurity, surveillance technology

For all the ways digital anonymity has eroded, one option has stayed perfectly legal in the United States: getting a phone number without handing over almost any identifying detail. Whether you bought a throwaway burner or signed up with a privacy-minded carrier, the door stayed open. Now the Federal Communications Commission wants to slam it shut.

## The FCC's plan to put a name on every SIM
Late last month the FCC published a draft rule that would bring know-your-customer obligations to cellular networks. Under it, carriers would have to "at a minimum, obtain and retain the name, physical address, government issued identification number, and an alternate telephone number of any new and renewing customer before granting access to its services."

The agency frames the idea as something like anti-money-laundering law — a way to make it harder for scammers to abuse the phone system. Privacy advocates see it differently. To them it strips away one of the last channels of anonymity left to people who want to stay out of phone surveillance: journalists, whistleblowers, activists, or ordinary people who simply don't want their communications swept into yet another mass data-collection net.

One direct casualty would be Phreeli, a newly launched carrier that lets users sign up with nothing more than a ZIP code. "We're trying to help people feel more comfortable living their normal lives, where they're not doing anything wrong, and not feel watched and exploited by giant surveillance and data mining operations," Phreeli founder Nicholas Merrill told TrendKia last year. "I think it's not controversial to say the vast majority of people want that."

The FCC is taking public comments on the proposal until June 25.

## AI cuts both ways on security
The week underlined how AI is reshaping cyber defense — and the threat at the same time. After holding back the full release of its new Mythos-class AI model over worries about what it could do to cybersecurity, Anthropic rolled out a model upgrade for partners in its limited-access group and released a "safe" public version, fitted with guardrails meant to stop the system from being turned into a weapon for cyberattacks.

On the government side, the United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency handed federal agencies a new directive in response to emerging AI threats — including a rule that the most urgent software flaws be patched in as little as three days.

## Pulling away from US tech, and fighting back against surveillance
As Europe pushes to wall itself off from US Big Tech, TrendKia built a running timeline of every way EU governments, companies, and other organizations are stepping back from American technology. Separately, a new open-source project called Encrypted Spaces could make a long list of mainstream collaboration apps far more private and surveillance-resistant by adding end-to-end encryption. Less reassuring: a new joint US Congressional report found that illegal pharmacy and scam sites hijacked Spotify's search rankings by planting fake podcasts.

## Surveillance tech takes over the World Cup
With the 2026 World Cup in full swing, TrendKia examined the surveillance gear being deployed in US, Canadian, and Mexican stadiums — everything from anti-drone systems to face recognition — and mapped every Flock license plate reader sitting near a US World Cup venue. Zooming out, Amnesty International said this week it had concluded that fans across all three host countries, both locals and visitors, face potential human rights violations tied to the FIFA tournament.

## A face-recognition lawsuit and a contested spy chief
The American Civil Liberties Union is suing two Florida police departments over their use of FACES, one of the longest-running face recognition tools in the country, after alleged misuse led to the wrongful arrest of a Fort Myers man. Meanwhile, Donald Trump put the future of a key surveillance authority at risk by picking Bill Pulte — described as "deeply unqualified" — as acting director of national intelligence, though he has since named a different nominee for the permanent post.

## ShinyHunters tears through schools via an Oracle flaw
On Thursday, Google warned that the cybercriminal crew known as ShinyHunters was rampaging through networks in the education sector, exploiting a critical bug in Oracle's HR and payroll software, PeopleSoft. By the group's own count, it had breached more than a hundred organizations and was still going. Oracle alerted customers to the vulnerability, but only after ShinyHunters had already found it and launched its spree. The group has a long record of holding victims for ransom — including last month's notorious ransomware attack on education software company Instructure, which hit thousands of schools before Instructure paid up. Having apparently grasped how much leverage it holds over schools and universities, the gang now seems intent on hunting more of the same.

## Microsoft ships its biggest Patch Tuesday ever — thanks to AI
For years, Patch Tuesday has been a fixture on every IT administrator's calendar — Microsoft's regular drop of software updates, many of them fixing serious security holes. But with AI-powered bug hunting now in the mix, the company has rolled out its largest Patch Tuesday to date, with more than 200 fixes by some tallies. (Microsoft counts distinct updates a bit differently than the security firms that track the releases.) The company noted last month that its near-record haul of patches came courtesy of AI's knack for sniffing out vulnerabilities at inhuman speed. "Advanced AI models are part of the discovery picture and help to accelerate it," Tom Gallagher of the Microsoft Security Response Center wrote, with the company's customary understatement.

## Google sues an alleged Chinese scam ring over its AI tool
On Friday, Google filed suit against an alleged Chinese scam network called Outsider Enterprises, accusing it of using the company's Gemini AI tool to defraud hundreds of thousands of Americans through fake websites impersonating everything from YouTube to New York's E-ZPass highway toll system. Google also teamed up with the FBI to fight the group's abuse of the tool, which it said had stolen millions from Americans. To illustrate the scale, Google said it had sent 2.5 million messages to Android users containing links to 9,000 spoofed websites in a single two-week stretch in May.

## Trump drops Bill Pulte, turns to Jay Clayton
President Donald Trump this week abandoned his effort to install Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, as the replacement for former director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, after the pick drew broad criticism across Capitol Hill. Pulte took heat for having no intelligence or law enforcement background, and for appearing willing to wield federal power against Trump's opponents. House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries branded him "deeply unqualified" and "deeply dangerous." In his place, Trump has now tapped Jay Clayton, a US attorney in Manhattan, for the top intelligence job.

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