ordered a new phone so I wanted a new SIM for a clean slate. My country require KYC for SIM cards. So i ordered this https://www.ebay.com/itm/295938085941 I see now that the card is being shipped from Israel.
(I’m in another EU country)
Cloning, swapping etc , how bad idea was this on a scale from 1-10? Even if the package is unbroken , I assume someone with physical access (and resources) can do a lot of stuff?
Miss being able to go get one from the corner store. But idea was to load it up by cash bought giftcards.
Also played with the idea of getting a gl-inet portable router and skip SIM card in phone but it is quite a bit of hassle to have another device to maintain and carry…
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn’t great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don’t promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
- 0 users online
- 57 users / day
- 383 users / week
- 1.5K users / month
- 5.7K users / 6 months
- 1 subscriber
- 2.43K Posts
- 57.3K Comments
- Modlog
I like security meetups where everyone brings a SIM card and you put it in a hat, shake it up, and pass them back out again at random.
removed by mod
Stealth.net sounds promising for topping up the card. Just USD Any other options for EUR cards?
removed by mod
Yea out of stock and lack of info though
removed by mod
Thanks. yea simXL seems not like bad option , will check the esim statuson GOS nowadays. :( Seems the E- Sims have a 30 day limit…
removed by mod
Damn that do looks interesting. Ty
removed by mod
Why would you ever be buying a sim card seprate from the carrier servicing it…?
Honestly asking, that’s incredibly unusual to me. Where I live, the mobile carrier always provides the sim card. Usually free with a monthly phone plan, or as a part of a pre-paid plan. (pre-paid you can usually buy from a corner store like seven eleven. monthly you’ll actually have to visit their store/mall booth)
Here I have to go to an office show passport , green card and sign paperwork . To get any simcard.
Green card? Which country?
Don’t you mean blue card?
In the US the permanent resident card is green, and its often called the green card. Sometimes americans use the term for equivalent documents in other countries.
OP said they were in the EU. My EU residency card is called a blue card. I thought that was the name across the EU
Nope Spain has a green one
(Assuming Android) IIRC a sim is a full microcontroller. I’m not sure about the protocols and actual vulnerabilities, but I can say no phone has a trusted or completely documented kernel space or modem. The entire operating system the user sees is like an application that runs in a somewhat separate space. The kernels are all orphans with the manufacturer’s proprietary binary modules added as binaries to the kernel at the last possible minute. This is the depreciation mechanism that forces you to buy new devices despite most of the software being open source. No one can update the kernel dependencies unless they have the source code to rebuild the kernel modules needed for the hardware.
In your instance this information is relevant because the sim card is present in the hardware space outside of your user space. I’m not sure what the SELinux security context is, which is very important in Android. I imagine there are many hacks advanced hackers could do in theory, and Israel is on the bleeding edge of such capabilities. I don’t think it is likely such a thing would be targeting the individual though. As far as I am aware there is no real way to know what connections a cellular modem is making in an absolute sense because the hardware is undocumented, the same is true of the processor. I’m probably not much help, but that is just what I know about the hardware environment in the periphery.
Yea I’m looking in do network monitoring when first connecting the phone. Will need root it seems. But since I will install GOS and reset it afterwards it would probably be my best bet for verifying no bad connections . Long time since I used wireshark but should be possible.
You would need a well designed Faraday box and a lot more of a test setup to verify that all possible communications are indeed reported by the device. No interface on the device itself can be trusted.
What’s kyc?
Know Your Customer - Meaning that the user somehow needs to identify themselves to the provider and thus the provider knows who is using the SIM card
Thats wild.
Acronym for Know Your Customer, requiring some kind of identity verification before enabling service.
You should ask the seller to make sure, but I’d assume those cards will require KYC on activation? I mean, if Romania requires KYC it’s difficult to think someone can sell anonymous cards on ebay.
Actually no , Romanian cards are non KYC , one of the few countries left in Europe. I’m in another but can live with a foreign number
You could have asked me for one. I’d send you one for free. 😎
Thanks :) start selling on ebay seems to be a good business :)