Privacy Guides

if your going down this route, you really can't use stock android. grapheneos

I do get there are privacy ramifications to this, but the alternative is having to wait like 2+ minutes for a accurate gps lock every time your phone needs location.

Towers can still track you by the IMEI number.

One of the suspects in the Bali bombings was caught because while they frequently changed Sims, they didn't change devices. They were tracked by the IMEI.

That's correct. Iphones are especially vulnerable to that since they don't shut down all the way and always keep some radios enabled. Android devices will generally shut down properly.

But in any case, do you really need to worry about tracking by a carrier? Locating a phone is possible but not easy and usually only happens when it's specifically requested by the police.

If that's your threat level, you probably don't want to own a phone at all.

You can erase the eSim. You can also turn it off, but I'm not sure to what extent is it disabled.

Turn it off and put it in a Faraday-cage bag.

If a phone can track you with a deactivated eSIM then it can also track you without a SIM, by just also giving you a secret eSIM for use when your regular SIM is missing, and then simply lying to you about it.

The SIM is just an identifier. There's nothing particularly special on a SIM card, that's why the switch to eSIM has happened so seamlessly. So, you're right; it's totally POSSIBLE that an eSIM could stick around if you delete. But it's also possible that your phone could save the info on a SIM card.

For the record, I don't think that's likely. Your phone's operating system (iPhone or Android) is built by a different company than the carriers that presumably want to track you. I doubt they're secretly colluding with carriers, because Apple and Google (especially Google) have enormous business models built around tracking you, and profiting off your data.

What other info can help distinguish between regular sims and esims in terms of privacy?

Or alternatively what's missing from thecomments?

Asking, not trying to challenge you, I'm honestly trying to learn

OP disagrees

Most countries in fact, but you can get them if you want. Though I guess you never know if it's not a honeypot operation.

Cool, it's still more of an exception though. Here in most of Europe it's barely a thing.

I'm no expert in the matter, I learned it from a def con-like talk.

I'm no expert in the matter however this is what I understand from it.

Chips like the one in your debit card are fully fledged computers and do run software. When you plug it into something it receives power and interfaces with the other system. That's why it is secure, because like a pc it can use encryption etc.

Come to think of it, they must also be able to run with the low power provided by near field transmission, aka contactless payment.

Anyhoots the same kinda chip is on a simcard.

As far as I understand it they run a more limited version of Java, has full access to your hardware including being able to read all memory, and being updatable remotely.

You might also be interested to know that modern hardware commonly has such secondary computers with full access built in. Take the intel management engine for example, which is part of every modern intel cpu. However there are privacy oriented companies that disable these.

The real question is who has access to these things and what are their interests. It might not necessarily be a malevolent actor. It's one of the challenges of our time to answer questions related to these topics.

It is called Java Card https://www.oracle.com/java/java-card/

Nope, they are computers that run a Java-based OS.

If we want to talk about smartcards in general (contactless, chip-based, dongle-based) some of them only store/retrieve data, some only store a single unchangeble identifier, but others like banking cards & transit cards tend to run a small operating system that you can talk to, and even run applications on.

With a cheap USB card reader, you can actually interact with the operating system on a chip-based bank card using Linux