That's a special arrangement that I didn't know about. Google tells me that Candian burner phones do work in the USA (if you choose the correct telco). Thanks for the heads up. I wonder how long that'll last

This isn't about scammers. It is about removing the ability to be anonymous when communicating. You seem to think that just using a foreign phone solves this problem. It doesn't. Every country has its own laws around telecommunications and most of them are even stricter than the FCC because they don't have to worry about supporting freedom of speech.

Just because you have a phone from India or China or Vietnam does not mean you can roam while in the USA, it depends on which telco you bought it from and if they have a roaming agreement with a telco in the USA. International roaming isn't some free for all, it is controlled and restricted to customers that a telco wants to let roam.

Burner phones are preferably a cheap phone with a SIM card that has no reigstration details associated with it. While everyone talks about it being a burner phone, the important part of the equation is the SIM, not the phone. The real advantage in older phones is that they won't phone home to Google/Apple/Samsung the moment they're turned on.

There seems to be a lot of misconceptions around how easy global roaming is to facilitate or that it is an automatic function of every cell phone. It isn't. It is very common for telcos to deny global roaming to particular classes of service.

Global roaming happens on a per-case (APN) basis according to agreements between telcos. Verizon could (for example) refuse to allow foreigners global roaming on their network unless the person doing the roaming had a plan (ie credit card on file, personal details recorded, etc.)

What can't be accounted for is corruption in the registration process (either domestically or internationally) that would allow for (e)SIMs to be provided to people without the correct personal information being recorded.

Maybe for a few miles inside the border where you've got radio connectivity, but otherwise, probably not.

Read my comments again. They come from experience. They come from roaming not working on a burner phone bought at Frys for $20. They come from pre-paid phones from outside the USA not working in the USA but working in other 3rd party countries.

International roaming doesn't just work, there's a boat load of crap that needs to happen for it to work. International roaming is not something that is enabled for all phone numbers. You can call up and ask for it to be turnned on/off for you phone while not impacting anyone else. For burner phones, it is not enabled and cannot be enabled. Hope that answers your questions.

Starting with MacOS Golden Gate, you will need to prove your age to your computer. You can thank California's Digital Age Assurance Act for that. While CA gets a lot of things right, this is not one of them.

I've never had a burner phone from outside the USA work in the USA and I've never had a burner phone from within the USA work outside the USA. Hope that clears things up for you.

It isn't the phone that is the "burner" part of the system, it is the authentication to the network by the SIM/eSIM. It is the IMSI that authenticates you on a cell network, not an IMEI, however IMEIs can be blocked. To imagine the implementation, think of Verizon/T-Mobile having a massive database with 10s or 100s of millions of entries indicating which SIMs/eSIMs are allowed on their network. If you come along with a new phone called a KillyPhone and try to connect to a base station, unless you can authenticate against that database, you don't get any cell service - except for (maybe) 911. The way you authenticate is typically through the data in a SIM/eSIM.

Just to repeat, this isn't about phones, it is about the things that cell phones use to authenticate themselves to the cell network. It is about the login credentials that your phone uses to connect to establish a session over the radio network so that you can send data.

Think of it as burner phones having random usernames & passwords that aren't known to anyone except you/your telco, and for which there's no relationship to a person, making phone numbers anonymous. This change is to require telco's to collect data that can identify a person and store that with usernames/passwords for cell phones to ensure that there is a relationship for each phone number with a person.

This isn't a dumb move because it becomes very difficult to have anonymous phone numbers once this is put in place. If you want to compare this to something, try comparing it to getting cable Internet/FTTP at home without an agreement with an ISP to pay $ monthly. If this goes into place then a smuggled phone can now be traced back to the person that bought the (e)SIM in a store.

1. work

2. non-work

Maybe you don't understand the value of having a work phone and a personal phone, but when using a phone for work requires MDM, it is in your interests to have your own phone that isn't.

Roaming is expensive. You don't get 1000s of free minutes or MB of data or text messages when you use a SIM card from another country in the USA.

Plus, since the most likely scenario is that a foreign phone is owner by a foreigner, spying on the owners of such cards is not by default against the law. eg the NSA would consider any foreign SIM operating in the USA to be fair game, even if in the possession of a citizen.

Burner phones are also great if you want to do drugs, the secretary, etc, when you've got something to lose (eg marriage.) If this does get up and gets enforced, look for the loop holes. eg phone numbers that currently aren't registered, will they eventually be "stopped" or live on forever as anonymous numbers?

There are lots of reasons pepople want phone numbers that aren't associated with them. What they're doing doesn't have to be illegal, it just has to have value in not being associated with a person's name.

But yes, just imagine the collective screams from the halls of Congress about this when everyone in the house & senate realises they won't be able to get a new (anonymous) phone to order a hooker/drugs to their hotel room.

People who use headphones are not subscribing to the modern thrend of throwaway goods. With a USB-C adapter, i still have a lightning headset for Apple fhat I've been using for 10 years. How many blueteeth headsets would I have thrown away in that time? If you are concerned for the environment and financial benefit to you, cablrs FTW.

In Australia, there has been an ongoing court case by the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) has been investigating local supermarkets (American equivalent of Safeway, etc) and court found them guilty. ACCC contended that changing the price up for 4 weeks to them drop it down to a price higher than it was before the rise was not something consumers found find genuine.

https://www.accc.gov.au/media-...

If Amazon tried tactics used in this story on Australians, pretty sure they'd end up getting found against too. Plantiff in this case now has a finding from an English speaking nation to use in their pursuit of a remedy from Amazon - even if it is a different nation

These don't work with 5G because the comms with interesting information is encrypted between the handset and the network core (not just the cell.) That includes the IMSI. These IMSI catching devices work up through to 4G. 5G and beyond, no. If you want to be paranoid, get worried every time your cell phone shows "4G" on the screen rather than "5G"