Do PAYG Mobiles need to be 'Registered'?

DUTR

stankovalski wrote: »

I've heard there are some EU plans that will make registering PAYG sim cards compulsory - but no laws have been passed yet. Fortunately you can still have some privacy.

You already get privacy.

mchale

DUTR wrote: »

they wholeheartedly know whow the sim belongs to (or who is using it) by a whole host of 'measures'

Incorrect, it is possible to have a working sim & authorities don't know who it belongs to.

DUTR

mchale wrote: »

Incorrect, it is possible to have a working sim & authorities don't know who it belongs to.

You tell some of the low lives that, as they have been caught out from their payg sim card use, even without having certainnetwork access, the top ups are going to be purchased at certain stores which they can narrow down, the handset will have an imei (hence some history) the folk are going to have a calling pattern so they can see where the calls were made to, they know which cell the calls were made from, ontop of that the many modern handsets tell the network where the handset is and has been, there have been reported terror cases and murder where the accused were largely caught due to their activities with their 'annonymous' payg mobile phone.

mchale

DUTR wrote: »

You tell some of the low lives that, as they have been caught out from their payg sim card use, even without having certainnetwork access, the top ups are going to be purchased at certain stores which they can narrow down, the handset will have an imei (hence some history) the folk are going to have a calling pattern so they can see where the calls were made to, they know which cell the calls were made from, ontop of that the many modern handsets tell the network where the handset is and has been, there have been reported terror cases and murder where the accused were largely caught due to their activities with their 'annonymous' payg mobile phone.

Agree with the above, but you will find the ones caught are not the brightest in the world. It is possible to have a payg phone untraceable.

DUTR

mchale wrote: »

Agree with the above, but you will find the ones caught are not the brightest in the world. It is possible to have a payg phone untraceable.

We will have to agree to disagree, if the user is all above board then there is no need for them to be on the radar of detection, however if the user is already under observation, their usage will not be as annoymous as their comfort level may lead them.

stankovalski

To my mind, to have an untraceable PAYG sim card you would have to buy it for cash, use it once on a brand new phone and dump both of them afterwards. Otherwise, either IMEI stays in the database or the phone number - and you can be tracked by either of them. If we will have to register SIM cards it won't help the police much (just make their job easier), it will be more advantageous for advertising and marketing agencies. They will more easily dump all kind of personalized spam texts.