No Stupid Questions

Police have successfully identified burner phones by looking at what other phones they're geographically close to. What I mean is, some crime boss carried his burner and regular phone around together all the time, so the phone records showed that the anonymous burner phone used to make shady deals was always near Joey Mobster's phone. Hence, Joey is the likely owner of the anonymous burner.

If you do get a burner, never turn it on near your house, near your work, or near your regular phone. Keep it off and wrapped in aluminum foil until you're in a location that you can't easily be connected to.

Currently you can, but there was news last month the FCC is planning to force carriers to verify ID before allowing them on their networks.

There’s options out there, yes, but you have to go look for it. The way I got my burner was buying a google pixel (for graphene os,) with cash and then putting it on a pay as you on a cash-funded visa got card

Verizon happily hooked me up.

(I use the phone for going to protests and such things.)

They probably looked at who users burner phones and quickly realized it's mostly people cheating on their spouses or people of the criminal variety. None of these groups are going to start a political movement. And cheaters gonna cheat and one more obstacle for the criminal folks isn't a bad thing. Tourists are a rounding error.

Sure, in the past we had phone booths and boxes. The majority of landlines were registered to a name, a business, or an institution. There isn't really a long established right to have a burner number. People used to voluntarily list their names and numbers in a book. And no cheating farmer Bob had a secret line put in the barn so he could talk to his side piece.

I'm going to guess the Aussie rules apply to most of the countries we group under the label western. And there is a danger that they harvest your data but it is more likely a government requirement to register ID. Like with private car ownership in the US as well if I'm not mistaken. It's not wildly outlandish as a concept.

Don't look into what they make you do if you want to own a firearm.

The trick with burner phones in Australia is buying the sim as a business. Not like I have done that....

Plus eSIM and you're golden?

no. they'll know the phone number, who you are and have video of you buying the phone and they'll have video of you walking and driving

you can see this when you watch police investigations on YouTube

Why would you burn the phone anyway? Isn't it enough to burn the SIM card?

As far as I last checked, yes, still possible in the US.

Stores like Walmart sell the phones and phone cards for prepaid service and all that can be paid with cash which doesn’t require ID.

If nothing else, you can buy a second hand phone from online places for meeting people or wherever and get a phone card for cash and neither doesn’t trace back to you either.

Of course this is likely because everywhere we go is covered by cameras so you’re never truly anonymous if someone is determined enough.

If you saw the show Better Call Saul, this is what Saul was doing when he sold phones to people from the shop he worked at.