SIM Card and Privacy

An interesting read about living life without any SIM card inserted into their smartphone:

https://blog.thenewoil.org/life-without-a-sim-card

Nates also links in the article about two good videos worth watching also.

I do agree that’s a problem nowadays that, just by having a SIM inside your smartphone, it pings constantly to nearby towers. This can then lead to what’s called “triangulation”:

https://ssd.eff.org/module/mobile-phones-location-tracking#mobile-signal-tracking-towers

One thing that I can summarize from this, according to your own “threat model” or security plan (as the term used by the EFF), is to:

  1. Turn off Airplane mode, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth completely when not in use.
  2. Remove your SIM card from your main smartphone. In some regions, there are alternatives such as VoIP phone numbers that can be used instead with a SIP mobile client app. Some individuals like Naomi (from NBTV Media) uses Calyx Mobile Hotspot.

Avid reader of Pluralistic

I really like reading Cory Doctorow’s blog, on Pluralistic.net. It’s truly informing, and good arguments in favour against big corporations.

Here’s a few quotes of the article, but would wholeheartedly recommend to read the blog post in full.

That same enshittification is on every platform, and “freedom of speech is not freedom of reach” is just a way of saying, “Now that you’re stuck here, we’re going to enshittify your experience.”

Because while it’s hard to tell if recommendations are fair or not, it’s very easy to tell whether blocking end-to-end is unfair. When a person asks for another person to send them messages, and a third party intervenes to block those messages, that is censorship. Even if you call it “freedom of reach,” it’s still censorship.

The wholly artificial distinction between “freedom of speech” and “freedom of reach” is just more self-serving nonsense and the only reason we’re talking about it is that a billionaire dilettante would like to create chokepoints so he can extract payola from his users and meet his debt obligations to the Saudi royal family.

Billionaire dilettantes have their own stupid definitions of all kinds of important words like “freedom” and “discrimination” and “free speech.” Remember: these definitions have nothing to do with how the world’s 7,999,997,332 non-billionaires experience these concepts.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

Ah, and a convincing essay about stopping repeating claims of economists popular phrase “Even if you’re paying for the product …”

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar and,
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/22/kargo-kult-kaptialism/#dont-buy-it

About those “benevolent corporate dictators” that stays in power for half of their lifespan, having immense control over citizens lives:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/06/fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again/