This isn’t exactly privacy related but I figured people here might help. Please tell me if this is not appropriate.
Next week I’m flying to Boston for a month and was wondering what is the best way to get mobile data. From what I have read prepaid sim cards in the USA are not easy to find and quite expensive. Is that right? It looks like the easier and cheaper option is a prepaid eSIM.
Do you know of reliable and cheap prepaid eSIM providers for the USA? I think I need about 5-10GB.
The cheapest one I found was from Instabridge (10GB for 14$) but I haven’t found much info about them and as far as I understood you need to download their app to install the eSIM. Two other options I found that seem more reliable are Airalo and Nomad.
The best and only way is to get mobile data for your cell phone provider is to get Mint Mobile and i know they got acquired by T-mobile. But they still are in control and now they can keep providing cheap mobile data to everyone. This is good for privacy because, If you make a account you only need your “First Name”, “Last Name”, And “Email Address”. Which you can AnonAddy, SimpleLogin, iCloud Hide My Email, or any other service. Then just use, Real Name Address Generator
Prepaid SIMs are widely available. I keep a Mint Mobile SIM in a contact lens case, Just in Case.
I use Mint Mobile eSIM in a Pixel 6 Pro and a Verizon SIM, dual SIM dual stand by.
I used a prepaid Visa card to purchase the eSIM, installed the app on an old phone to aid in setting up the eSIM and account creation.
The Mint Mobile SIM cards can be purchase at Target and other locations. The SIM are for 3 months with tax about $50. You might be able to get an eSIM monthly, not sure.
Idk if this is possible for u…
In my area I just bought Boost Mobile last week. 1$ sim. 12.50$/ montg unllimited data. I picked up the SIM card physically for cash. I put it in a phone that I paid cash for (pixel4 a)
…and I set the whole thing up online using excellent opsec. I had to deal with them on the phone quite extensively because I used a changed MEI, ( using an IMEI generator found online) …
I understand advocates for mint mobile… butimho, they are getting quite scammy… . And privacy invasive and that they will not send the SIM card necessarily to an unverified address … though you can go ahead and spend $50 a month on rent from a place like Regis office or something like that … but you still have to fill out paperwork about registration for the Post Office and technically you can use a pseudonym legally but still it’s dicey water if it comes off as suspicious by one of the staff members they’re wondering why you’re coming in to get your mail …
when it comes to this form of opsec, what I found to do is keep an eye on Dollar General and keep an eye on street level stores that offer SIM cards for cash, and their carrier plans…
Again we’re all facing the decision between convenience and privacy…
hmmm. I dont recall me having that access issue on boost. I used Brave browser. And I said everything up with my usual opsec of aliases. Which by the way I found a very unfortunate situation with simple login I need to actually probably make a blog post about here… but nonetheless I was able to set everything up and then I had to do three phone calls to Boost Mobile and fortunately I met a guy over the phone who was in Customer Service in Cairo Egypt it was also a very very big privacy buff and he actually broke down how he was able to let me know I can use a different IMEI number than the one I tell them and they’ll still activate the SIM card and I can put that SIM card in any phone so I never had to give up an IMEI device number… but nonetheless I had to do a lot of different phone workarounds with their customer service…
But I am the type of guy that will be willing to do a lot of phone work and call back to get the right type of customer service rep to help me change my account accordingly to get the SIM card to activate and then I can move it around to any phone… but I can say also I learned a lot in the process that guy that I spoke with in Cairo Egypt and customer service actually told me about the IMEI random generator link that’s on the internet and it will generate functional imei’s for any purpose one requires mainly for me it’s just to not have my device exposed to that particular identifier
However regarding simple login I actually did use a simple login to create a PayPal account… and what was very bizarre and interesting is it one of my more established Gmail accounts came back with an email 3 days later that said thank you for being a customer? And I did not do anything through the device ID through the device that I used through any of the key loggers that could possibly have translated any Telemetry that I would be the guy setting up that PayPal account…
That may not make sense I put that together but it is actually to me quite a unique sort of either coincidence or the fact that somehow based on predictive behavioral algorithms that triangulation has been successful on behalf of paypals algorithms? And this is a behavioral modification issue around operational security that I am actually looking at carefully because the triangulation from predictive behavioral algorithms is the new thing I believe AI is doing but again it’s not like you’re going to read about it and Bruce Schneirer’s blog , though "they " our new Founding Father Mark Zuckerberg and Sergey Brin and Larry Page) have what appears in my estimations some form of predictive behavioral algorithm the triangulates based off historical telemetry or close to it
Thanks for the suggestion of Mint Mobile. I checked their website and it looks like there are no 1 month plans, the shortest is 3 months for 45$ which is more expensive for me than Airalo or Nomad.
I wonder if 4 free trials back to back would work.
Been a Mint Mobile user and this was news to me. I was just about to purchase a $45 plan to replace my emergency Mint SIM card I carry. The free trial SIM might just cover my needs.
Currently I pay for one MySudo which is $.99 a month and I do not use it every week or more than 250 min and 250 messages.
I am going to order a free trial just to check it out.
