Is using Mobile hotspot for whonix safe?

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Hey guys, I am a noob as I have just started using whonix.
I don’t even know what categroy should I write this post on, sorry for that.

I was exploring all anonymity projects online and also tried tails, in it’s installation it was written

Tails cannot hide the information that identifies your phone on the local network. If you connect your phone to:

  • A Wi-Fi network, then the network will know the MAC address of your phone. This has security implications that are discussed in our [documentation on MAC address anonymization]. Some phones have a feature to hide the real MAC address of the phone.

  • A mobile data network, then the network will be able to know the identifier of your SIM card (IMSI) and also the serial number of your phone (IMEI).

Now I didn’t quite get this second point, does it mean that it’s not secure to use tor on my mobile hotspot and therefore Whonix too cause eventually I will be using my hotspot for it.
I don’t know much about it but I am thinking that it kind of means that our cell carrier knows about us maybe, now id this is the case then even if we use a wired connection like broadband, won’t they also know our identity?
Probably I am missing something can anyone help with this.
Thanks a lot.

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Thanks for sharing this post, although I really can’t seem to understand it.
I just wanna know that if using mobile hotspot isn’t safe then what to use, even if we use a broadband, they also know their costumers thru identification numbers or something.
What does it mean then we can’t use anything except some public network?

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That actually helped a lot, thanks, but still no one has answered in simple words that what’s the main issue here.
I guess that probably most of the tor users use their mobile hotspot for accessing internet on their pc using a wifi adapter and eventually on whonix too, so what can be the main drawbacks, if someone could explain in plain words, that would be much appreciated.

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That’s just stating the obvious. Your internet service provider knows who they sold service to. Doesn’t mean they can look behind Tor. No OS is stupid enough to claim to hide that.

No OS makes your internet bill disappear.

Documentation doesn’t even need to mention that.

Just look wikipedia etc on imei and imsi. There’s nothing special to know.

For extra security, anonymously buy a phone, mobile modem and simcard. Use them in a far away location. Then throw them away and don’t reuse as imei and imsi are logged together. Not practical for long-term use.

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Good explanation, I actually know that the provider will probably know that I am using tor and I will get billed for it through identification. Same goes for broadband/wifi too.
What I was asking was that for a average user that shouldn’t be a problem right?
I mean even if I download files from tor and spend maybe a gb of data, it shouldn’t be a problem cause isp just knows that I am using tor.
So I was just confused in the terminology, that even if the isp know IMSI & IMEI, it shouldn’t be an issue for a normal tor user.

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Not a problem for average user.

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