I see it happen in spy thrillers or crime shows, but basically a person on the run calls someone (usually a cop or government agent), says something to them, then after the call takes the sim card out of their phone and breaks it (usually stepping on it).
Now before you respond I already know that at all times even when not being used a SIM card can be used to track your phone and thus track your whereabouts. I already know that. I’m wondering specifically why do they DESTROY the SIM card after? They can’t track the SIM card without the phone can they? And the SIM card wouldn’t actually have any useful info on it if the entire point of the person on the run of taking it out is that they’re never using that SIM card again. So why do they destroy it?
The real reason is probably just because the writer thinks it’s more cinematicly impressive rather than just tossing the card in the trash, but there are a couple of real-life reasons that someone might want to do this. First, a SIM card has storage on it that can be used to store contacts. The person on the run might want to ensure that anyone finding the card can’t read any of his contacts that might be on the SIM. Second, if some random person does find the card and puts it in their own phone for some reason (“cool, free SIM”), the trackers can at least find out where the card was discarded.
Also, presumably, the broken SIM makes it much harder to read, so the CIA cannot tell if it is the SIM they’ve been tracking, as opposed to the thousands of other broken SIMs littering the entire city. Which explains why it is also necessary to break and leave nearby the cellphone itself, whose serial number can be read visually.
Assuming the SIM truly has no contacts, call history, etc., on it, then ISTM the ideal outcome for somebody wanting to disappear (the “target”) from real pursuers is for the SIM to be picked up and used by some random passerby.
The pursuers will be thrown off the scent and spend X amount of effort & Y amount of time chasing the wrong person with the SIM (the “decoy”). Meanwhile the trail of the target only gets colder & harder to follow, and the target gets farther and farther in distance and time from where the phone & SIM parted company.
It’s an ideal decoy because unlike an accomplice there is no possible information the decoy can provide the capturing pursuers that’s of any use in finding the target. The pursuers already know the only thing the decoy also knows: where the SIM departed the target’s phone.
As to dramatic use, IMO it’s just visual shorthand. A trope that quickly signals a) I’m skilled at throwing off the scent, b) I’m doing it now which signals a dramatic turning point, and c) my enemies are sophisticated enough for me to worry about them getting the SIM and the data it might contain.
The whole SIM thing is futile anyway, as any call is placed and logged with the phone’s EMEI, which is unique to the phone. Doesn’t matter how many SIM cards are cycled through the phone. Every call is tagged with the phone’s ID.
Different SIMS may register with different telcos, so this presents a speed bump to LEOs but is hardly insurmountable.
This. The SIM is the phone number, essentially. EMEI is the physical phone. You really don’t want either to be tracked by the hi-tech hitmen on your trail. Mix-and-match between SIMs and phones simply tells them (or the authorities) the extent of your phone paraphenalia collection, all the better for cross-referencing with past activity.
Which is (was?) a pretty big assumption. You absolutely, positively want that sucker destroyed. Do you want to waste time checking to see what’s on the card? What erased data on the card can be recovered? Just bust the thing up and be done with it. You’ve got better uses of your time.
Same thing with the phone. It’s memory contains too much info. Really destroy the phone. Fire is good.
Note that with eSIMs you only have to do step 2.
Dumping the phone somewhere intact just increases the odds of LO tracking it down and examining it.
While the EMEI tags a lot of your activity, that only helps if they have the EMEI in the first place. Absolutely destroying the phone makes it much harder to track down the EMEI.
Remember, if the phone is hopelessly gone, how will LO prove that that was your phone? This alone helps somewhat to a lot at a trial.
As a Computer Scientist I am regularly surprised at how little people understand that seemingly minor security measures are not just quite useful but in some cases a must-do.
I wonder if doing a factory reset erases the phone memory suffciently. It’s recommended to do this when sellling a phone. (Of course, also remove the SIM card.)
I recently bought a new iPhone, a 14 Pro Max. Fortunately in Canada they still use a SIM in them, apparently not in the ones for sale in the USA - only eSIM. (I gave up waiting for the return of fingerprint tech, just disabled face recognition)
Erasing non-volatile memory devices is a really tricky business. If you had a SSD, for example, and you filled it with zeroes it wouldn’t actually erase the whole thing! SSDs have more memory than they report. So a chunk of unused memory is periodically swapped with an in-use chunk in order to level the wear and tear on the gates. Hopefully, when a chunk is swapped out it is zeroed so there is no tricky way to recover that data. But I would not be surprised if some idjit at the maker decided to skip that to save some time.
The phone’s non-volatile storage could have similar issues. To be sure that a reset completely clears everthing you would need to know the tech involved, the maker’s reset method, etc. in some detail.
For true security, just burn the thing. That’s why they are called “burners”.
Ha ha, they are actually “burners” because in the good old days someone would burn a replacement ROM or EPROM and replace the one in the phone. This allowed cloning phones of unsuspecting vixtims, or creating phones whose serial number (EMEI) was fictitious and hence could not be traced to the buyer or sales point. Not that simple nowadays. Just burn after use.
The memory thing would likely be similar to the discussion about “how to dispose of old floppy disks”. Presumably the NSA has resources not available to your average private eye or British Tabloid stalker. The serious question is whether it truly erases memory, or like “FORMAT E:” simply writes the root directory as empty, mark all areas as “free” and relies on eventual use to overwrite the contents. If this is the case, then with the right tools the Daily Mail can telll what was on the phone.
