How safe are pre-paid cell phones?

[Drone 55]

You don't have to register in some countries, including mine. Can you pay in cash for your minutes/plan, or do you need to use a bank account? Is there any way prepaid phones can be traced via the store you bought it from, if they get hold of your number? Thanks.

[Nemesix]

You don't have to register in some countries, including mine. Can you pay in cash for your minutes/plan, or do you need to use a bank account? Is there any way prepaid phones can be traced via the store you bought it from, if they get hold of your number? Thanks.

Prepaid cell phones are a lot safer compared to other cell phones. But yes, they probably can be traced as to what call was made when/where, and there are most likely copies of txt messages stored somewhere. When you buy the cell phone though, you can pay cash, and you dont need a bank account. When you register the phone they ask for your regular phone number, address, ect, (on the website) but i think you can make up all of them. A lot of times stores like best buy ask for your name, address and phone number when you buy just about any item, but if you want to have no chance of them tracing the phone to you, i would register a fake address with them, or just ask them if you can skip that part because you are in a little bit of a hurry.

Tips
1. Always Delete ALL of your txt messages, notes, ect
2. Nearly all phones have a "lock" mode so that only the person who knows the password can get into them
3. Dont keep pictures on it

Text Messages can be used against you as evidence if it is incriminating you of dealing ect

Get a new prepaid phone every month or two. I think Net 10 is a 30 dollar phone but comes with 30$ worth of free minutes. (always 10 cents a minute for calls or txts, cheap and basic). Every time you run out of minutes you can just get a new phone for the same price as buying more minutes. Not sure if they still sell these packages though.

[.VX]

They're very safe.

[Th0r]

Whilst they don't require any bank account I would wear some kind of disguise whilst purchasing since cell phone stores generally have a lot of CCTV cameras.

[torcher]

i have owned several pre-paid cell's before. never bought one from a store. just go to a friend you know that is in the ghetto(which im sure most people have) and ask them to keep a look out for one. once they find one for you all you have to do is go buy the card from a gas station and enter the code that puts the minutes on the phone. if it is ever traced in will be traced back to the original purchaser.

[Micro]

There are no prepaid phones available here but every kiosk and drugstore sells prepaid sim's I have two prepaid sims, one in use as my backup phone and one as a plan "C".

[Th0r]

I think that's what people mean when we say pre-paid cell phones, although I could be wrong.

[torcher]

yeah. around here you can buy the phone+simcard or just the simcard.

[Micro]

Ok. I thought that people talked about complete sim+phone combo.

The thing is that the phone has a unique IMEI indentifier code.
So even if you change the sim you can be tracked.

[Th0r]

Ok. I thought that people talked about complete sim+phone combo.

The thing is that the phone has a unique IMEI indentifier code.
So even if you change the sim you can be tracked.

Most Police forces and Govt. bodies in the UK currently do not trace and identify phones via this 'IMEI' concept, I'm lead to believe. However they do use 'IMEI' for blacklisting phones.

[nobody2000]

Prepaid phones are incredibly safe.

1.) Wear a disguise and buy with CASH ONLY. This almost goes without saying.
2.) Visit www.howardforums.com and check out how to hack your particular phone (you're gonna wanna shut off GPS if it's enabled). This is entirely possible.
3.) Make sure when buying minutes you can do so on a prepaid card that you buy with cash. It would suck to buy the phone and not be able to activate it without some sort of credit card.

That being said, you can always get an www.epassporte.com virtual visa, or other similar card (simon, etc).

4.) Be prepared to throw away the phone after a serious crime/crime related conversation. Even though you have GPS disabled, the company can be subpoenaed, and can do old school tower triangulation to find your location.

5.) Texts are relatively safe. Verizon admitted that they don't keep texts longer than a few hours up to a day or 2. To be sure, talk in code. Don't be stupid.

6.) Try to get all your associates to have prepaid phones too. If you call a landline associate and he gets caught and talks, you're screwed. Only call landlines if you're not going to be caught (i.e. only call targets, and other places that don't need your name).

7.) Lock your phone, delete all your call logs, delete texts, and shut off your phone as much as possible. Imagine being a dumbass and losing your phone and everything can be traced back to you. Or even if the phone is kept as evidence when you're caught 2 years down the road...that would suck.

[thief]

Any pic or text can be retrieved from the sim card even after its been deleted with some software and a reader for less than 50 bucks.

[Micro]

All modern cellphones are semi connected to the tower even when powered off.
So removing the battery is a must.
And if the police is on your trail, they will just make a nice call to the operator and your call logs and txt's will be theirs.
If discarding a sim, cut it to pieces.

And a word on triangulation, it is old news. Int the 80-ties and early 90-ties there ware so little phones on the market that the operators held logs of ALL phonecalls made in a log file, but now it gets tricky, they also listed the tower what the phone was connected to. They stopped the practice when the money going to the database became a too large burden.
Today you can be tracked by the accuracy of a few tens of meters in a city and few hundred meters in the areas outside the city.
Around here the police routinely use it to trackdown missing persons.
You can also buy software to your cell phone that uses the triangulation instead of the gps to show your location. Nokia Maps could have it, I'm not sure.