Now by untraceable I don’t mean being able to hide having it tracked when it’s powered on, I feel that’s kind of a no-brainer.
The signal could always be triangulated via cell towers, but this article is not meant to go into those details.
Untraceable in this sense means untraceable to a person, or anonymous use of a cell phone.
I have always been curious about prepaid, no-contract cell phones and decided the best way to learn about them was to buy one for myself.
Emergency Use
This journey started off with me wanting to get a prepaid backup cell phone on a different network than what I currently have.
In an emergency, I wanted to have a phone on a different network just in case mine went down.
When I finally got ready to make my purchase of a prepaid phone, I thought to myself, how easy is it for a criminal to gain access to a untraceable cell phone?
What if they paid in cash? Would there really be no record of who made the purchase?
All these thoughts started running through my head and causing tons of “what if” scenarios to play out.
With all the bad things that happen on a daily basis in our country, I was confident that prepaid cell phones weren’t something that could be used for the wrong reasons.
Surely there would be some kind of identification check, right?
Findings
The short answer is no. I’m going to leave out a lot of details in my findings, due to this being an open internet site.
I’m currently in the process of contacting the company to implore them to investigate what I’ve found though.
Is an untraceable cell phone possible, you bet it is. In my opinion, it’s a dangerous thing for literally anyone to have the ability to gain access to one.
However, I’m not a fan of regulation and don’t want this to turn into a political article, so lets just keep it at that.
Activation
With the particular prepaid phone I purchased, I had to buy my minutes separate from the phone, and those minutes were only good for 30 days once activated.
The phone also had to be activated from another phone (land-line or cell phone) or their Web site, before it was able to accept the minutes and allow calls to be placed.
Calling the activation number put me in touch with an operator working in a call center in India.
After I read the IMEI number from the phone I’d purchased and let the operator know my name and address, a phone number and area code was created based on the address I provided.
Essentially that was it, no other personal information was required, and I now had a working phone and 30 days to use my minutes.
If the phone account is not refilled within 30 days after the service end date, the phone number will be lost and a new one will be generated when the phone is reactivated.
I realized that to use my new prepaid phone for emergency purposes, I’d need to purchase an optional minute plan where the minutes never expired.
Having a card ready to load in an emergency wouldn’t be a good option, because I’d have to wait through the process of activating the minutes and potentially having my phone number changed.
Closing Remarks
The implications of an untraceable cell phone are fairly significant, and something that I feel should not be taken lightly.
While no real details were provided into how to make a cell phone untraceable back to the purchaser, it was fairly easy to figure out.
This is also an account of just one of the many prepaid providers out there, and is not a reflection of the majority.
What are your thoughts on the availability of phones like this? Do you consider them dangerous?