Almost all countries require official authentication to activate a SIM card. This seems to me as a huge privacy problem, if the country can track sim cards across cell towers and connect them to a person. It seems like a dystopian system, that we litterely can not hide from our governments without turning off our smartphones. It seems incredibly unnecessary to me and just sets up the system to be abused.
Or do I understand something wrong?
What can we do against this? There are some sim cards that can be bought second hand, but they will not be a long term solution.
That’s basically it.
However SIM cards that aren’t tied to people usually ends up scenarios like the US have where SIM swap attacks are common and you’ve a LOT of identity fraud. Note that we’ve an increasing number of services sending information and validation codes via SMS like banking apps and whatnot and you don’t secure the SIMs anyone will be able to get a replacement SIM because “I got my phone stolen” and you’ll have zero security.
I don’t like it, but I get the point.
I think it’s actually the other way around. BECAUSE phone numbers are linked to our accounts and identities, it makes us vulnerable to SIM swapping. They should only be used for calling and texting people, nothing more. But nowadays we need to link our personal details to them, our accounts, which introduces this vulnerability because then it creates this incentive for an attack
Honestly, it would just be nice if someone made a mobile computing device that wasn’t phone-capable at all. It is outdated functionality to have just one or two services use a totally separate protocol from everything else.
A tablet ?
The ones I had which allow mobile data connections also allow use as a phone. Not to mention that most tablets are the wrong size to carry them around all the time.
If you live in a country where carriers are required to identify phone numbers and do identity checks for SIM swaps they’ll never, ever, allow someone to get a SIM with your number without providing valid govt ID. That’s why it solves the issue and its safe. Just look at the numbers / stats and you’ll find that the SIM swapping attacks happen on countries where no identification is required.
I recently heard the episode of darknet diaries about it. I would think a simple PIN-Code that is mandatory would solve this issue? Or a letter send to the owner of the SIM?
Both solutions would make it safer, but not impossible to get around. Someone can get the PIN Code in some more analog (getting the paper with the PIN) or digital way (interception with physical access to a phone) and getting into the persons mailbox.
Even if those attacks wouldn’t happen there’s always the chance of something more complex like calling the carrier support and saying you’ve change your address and then a week later ask for a new SIM. It can go wrong very quickly, asking for a govt ID is the easy way to solve it all.
To be fair we can have a better solution, we simply force the fucktards that run banks and other places who send SMS codes to use a simple 2FA method without bullshit apps, just provide a QR code and live with it.