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Comment by jdillaaa | Hacker News Reader

As a few others have pointed out I'm not sure I buy the privacy argument here (although there is very little to go on on the linked page..)

Having your phone radio on at all (even without a SIM, e.g. E911 calls) is inherently privacy violating. If you must have connectivity on the go, any prepaid SIM + always on VPN will do the trick. Use Twilio if you want multiple numbers.

$99/mo is ludicrous, even if this actually works, which I have doubts about given the history of purism.

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I asked them to elaborate on the privacy angle, and they answered (https://forums.puri.sm/t/announcing-librem-awesim-a-privacy-...) that a key point is that the SIM is registered in Purism name instead of the end user one. That would shield you from some id based tracking.

Yeah I mean a prepaid SIM + top up with cash is < $30 USD.

It just feels like they're taking advantage of people.

Although now that I think about it I wonder how they do E911? Sounds like a liability

I worked at best buy many years ago and we had to scan IDs when selling prepaid cards.

It wouldn't be hard for someone to resell SIMs (even pre-activated SIMs for a premium) to have less data on you recorded at time of said secondary transaction?

But the reseller still has to have their ID on file so they will constantly get deposed in cases where a sim card they sold was used and now the police are trying to identify the buyer. It would be a huge pain for them and I don't see it actually protecting the buyer much.

The location data alone is enough to personally identify people.

It could still be improved upon, e.g. by swapping sim cards every N days.

Perhaps a writable (auto-updating?) sim card could make this process easier and faster.

I'm not a US citizen so I'm not familiar with mobile plan prices there but T-Mobile Germany (our AT&T) has an unlimited data plan for 83€/month. So that's actually pretty close to the 99$. And seeing as they have the overhead as a relatively small company it seems okay to me.

Also they have their Librem One offering that includes a VPN. So it very much fits that use case. It's just not included.

Just so you have a reference for US prices, I'm with T-Mobile here in the US and pay ~$120 a month for 3 phones iwth unlimited data plans (although my speeds are throttled if I use my phone as a hotspot). Purism is definitely charging a premium for (potential?) privacy. Other MVNOs usually charge around $40-50 per month if you get a single line

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