I've gotten prepaid sims for things but obviously that's not really a feasible method for your main life phone.
where i live, you can buy a sim card that you can then charge by buying codes on kiosks. no identity needed, all cash
They have your identity the moment you put the sim in the phone. The phone have unique identifiers that are recorded when sold.
It might be worth looking again at pay-as-you-go. Here in the UK at least, there are some 'bundle' plans that are not actually that much more expensive than a contract. Topping up with a voucher once a month is a bit inconvenient but not too bad. You
I don't know to what extent the phone companies log and share your usage (if you're in an English-speaking country it's likely quite extensive) but I would imagine they could still identify you probabilistically by your patterns of use, including which towers you connect to. Using a VPN/proxy/TOR would at least limit the number of IP addresses they see you connecting to but that's off topic a bit.
Thanks, that sounds like a good idea. I'll look into what the pay-as-you-go plans are like near me
i've been using prepaid sims for over a decade and a half now and it works okay for me since i only use a voip number that forwards to my phones.
every major carrier i've used in the united states have required some sort of identifying information like a state issued id or credit card; maybe the smaller/re-sale carriers will let you use cash.
