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> Yes, they do.

I don't think my operator even knows what kind of phone I have, let alone any access to any software on it. How could they be controlling it? Is it something actually in the SIM?

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Baseband cpu. Your phone has 2 separate cpus, and you dont have any access to the 2nd one. Your provider does.

How do they get code onto that processor? From the SIM?

Over the network these days. Have you ever gotten a message on your phone similar to “carrier settings updated” especially after switching a device from one network to another? That’s what it means.

That's one of the reasons why the makers of the Librem 5 phone decided to use an internal USB bus which isolates the baseband from the SoC:

> To isolate the cellular modem from the SoC, we will be placing the modem on the (remarkably fast) USB bus and have the phone interact with the cellular modem through USB instead of on the main RAM bus. This will separate the cellular modem on its own bus without seeing any other data.

(https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-2018-09-hardware-report/)

These processors don't use a shared memory bus. It's just marketing dribble.

The operator knows your phone's IMEI which allows to determine the brand/model.

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