As a Russian: huh, you guys could still just buy a sim card without any kind of identification? Impressive. We had that ID requirement introduced way back in the 00s.
Even EU countries seem to require an ID now. When I traveled to France and Belgium in 2024, I bought a French tourist sim card, and the carrier kept sending me some rather insistent messages that my line would get disconnected if I don't upload my passport in 30 days.
It seems to depend a lot. It's kind of hard in Germany - they wanted my permanent address. I didn't find France as difficult. Iceland didn't care. Italy wanted my passport. Chile, you virtually needed to be a citizen, as I recall.
> Chile, you virtually needed to be a citizen, as I recall.
I heard something similar about Russia after recent changes actually, it could as well be impossible for non-residents so tourists just stick with international roaming and public wifi. IIRC there's a catch-22 situation where you need a Gosuslugi (online government services portal) account to buy a sim, but you need a Russian phone number to sign up for one. As a citizen, you just need your ID (internal passport).
But of course, the public Wifi also requires authentication. With, you guessed it, a phone number.
Yes, that's another law they have. Can't access the internet anonymously, basically. And yes, foreign phone numbers do work.
Though I've seen, plenty of times, smaller places have a "public" wifi with a password, and the password is just written on a piece of paper somewhere. That must technically violate that law. But you know, laws in Russia...
The first and last time I was in Russia was in 2019, passing by Moscow airport, and you already required a phone number to use the public WiFi, but any foreign number was OK.
Foreigners must provide their biometric data to buy a local SIM card. They better just use a tourist SIM card.
Btw you can still buy an anonymous SIM card with cash in the Netherlands in pretty much any supermarket/kiosk/whatever. And if you just need Internet, I haven't had any eSIM provider try to verify my ID so far. Although those can't easily be paid in cash.
Are there services in the EU similar to Privacy.com? They along with US arm of Revolut lets you use disposable digital cards to buy things, but I don't know if such functionality is legal in the EU.
That will likely change too if it becomes the last bastion of anonymous SIM cards.
In Japan you need to ID as a resident to get a phone number that can make calls, but anyone can get an anonymous data-only SIM
South Korea is also hard
FWIW I bought my Chilean SIM without any problems whatsoever.
Situation circa 2019 at least was that foreign tourists in Chile could purchase a SIM card, but it would be automatically disconnected after some amount of time without registering the phone in a way few foreign tourists would do.
Not quite, the requirement is that phones not bought locally need to be registered after 30 days, regardless if someone is a tourist or a Chilean citizen. It's a mix of deterring tax evasion, importing stolen phones, and regulatory homologation. The government delegates responsibility to various telecom companies to have portals to self-register the IMEI with ID, which can be a foreign passport.
I'm sure the cops can get that info, but its mostly to enforce the "only one free register per year". Anyone can buy a phone with cash and use a prepaid sim with zero ID needed.
I got mine in 2024. Maybe the shop clerk activated it for me, I don't remember.
In Bulgaria the ID requirement was introduced in recent years as it has been abused to run scam networks. It was big problem in Turkey, as Bulgarian scam networks were pulling the bride scam to such an extent that the scammers started scamming classes for wannabe scammers.
Different EU countries seem to heavily vary on this point. I’ve seen everything from requirements for id scans and addresses to esims that accept cryptocurrency as payment.
yeah I think in Italy this was introduced in the security push after 9/11, and in other EU countries I also had to provide an id to get a sim card, tho I'm not sure it's all of them.
if you've ever watched the wire (season 1 2002) you will know that burner phones were very much a thing.
In the US it gets fought hard because Wall St uses it to dodge state income taxes. Everyone thinks it's drug dealer related for us, but it's actually Finance bros driving into NYC from out of state (NJ or CT) but trying to hide it.