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Comment by dgellow | Hacker News Reader

> Where I live you can buy a SIM card with cash, load it with credit and surf on a 3G/4G network, without having to register the SIM or attach your legal name to it in any way.

Where is that? My experience in Europe and Thailand is that I have to sign documents and show a proof of identity.

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In Europe “I’m sorry, I didn’t take my passport with me, but I remember my passport number” has had a 100% success rate for me.

So then you're committing fraud or whatever. Once again, law abiding people bear the burden while bogeyman-with-beard just gives a false number.

One of the general difficulties with the government threat actor is that law abiding people have to thread the needle of both technical protection and legal requirements.

Quoting your own true passport number is not fraud. Fraud would be supplying a fake passport number / fake passport / doctored photocopy.

I was responding to the implication that you could just give a fake number.

> So then you're committing fraud or whatever.

But how would they ever catch you?

Determine who you actually are based on the location pattern of the sim card, which they'll end up doing at automated scale since it's so easy to record a fake ID. Prosecution for just that seems unlikely, but rather selective enforcement.

I was in Croatia a few years ago and bought a SIM card at a TISAK kiosk on the beach. Similarly I’ve had my UK SIM card for three years and never had to show my ID.

Although this may have changed recently.

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