Still tracks you when you connect to wifi.
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
202 points (95.5% liked)
Memes
15045 readers
1002 users here now
Post memes here.
A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.
An Internet meme or meme, is a cultural item that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. The name is by the concept of memes proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1972. Internet memes can take various forms, such as images, videos, GIFs, and various other viral sensations.
- Wait at least 2 months before reposting
- No explicitly political content (about political figures, political events, elections and so on), !politicalmemes@lemmy.ca can be better place for that
- Use NSFW marking accordingly
Laittakaa meemejä tänne.
- Odota ainakin 2 kuukautta ennen meemin postaamista uudelleen
- Ei selkeän poliittista sisältöä (poliitikoista, poliittisista tapahtumista, vaaleista jne) parempi paikka esim. !politicalmemes@lemmy.ca
- Merkitse K18-sisältö tarpeen mukaan
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Well, if you were born in 2013 and later, there is a dude named Edward Snowden who told people about this but they called him names. This is not new. Anonymity on the internet has become a fantasy today.
Also if you existed before 2013, Ed's revelations are somehow still relevant.
🤓 that sim card would still work, the smaller sim cards are the same chip just in a smaller plastic housing, you can cut them to size and some of them (like the one in the photo) come with premade lines as guides
Thatsthejoke.trd
I am genuinely surprised at the amount of people in the comments who don’t realize this is satire
lol, they can track the IMEI. the phone component still works without the SIM, for example to make emergency calls. that means it is still able to connect to cell towers and you can still triangulate it's position to some degree.
I'm afraid, you'll have to cut the phone in half instead. can't be helped.
They can track my phone, not me. I don't need it on me at all times. I almost considered a landline but they cost a fortune so I decided against it.
US Mobile offers landlines for $10/mo (link). I can’t speak to that service but I’ve been on a cell plan with them for almost a year and my only complaint has been some weirdness on early auto-payments, but once that was sorted out everything was fine. I’ve referred several people who also seem to be happy with the service as well.
Ok, if you say so. Can I just cut the camera out, and still use that?
You can buy pre-cut cameras at the camera shop. They tend to come with a screen and modular lenses.
Nah. Rip out the antennae assembly. The phone might be a bit complain-y about it (or fail some kind of pre-boot check and not boot)? never done it to find out though.
It's been a few years since I was inside iPhones regularly but back then.. All of them had a physical antenna or two which plugged into a board on a little coax connection.
Unplug those, no reception, phone just assumes it's in a dead zone.
WiFi would still work if enabled. Which probably means they could find you via WiFi even if switched off in the current world
Cellular typically uses a separate antenna than wifi, on a smartphone i imagine they're directly on the wireless chip instead of a daughter-board? Laptops and bigger stuff usually routes the antenna wires to the back of the lid, behind the screen, im more used to that
This is deliciously evil
This PSA has the same vibes of the late great Apple Ads 4chan made back in the day.
Exhibit A:
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ipad-spoofing/
Exhibit B:
2a)
2b)
2c)
reaction)
)
https://cheezburger.com/110341/4chan-hoax-ios-7-makes-iphone-waterproof
Or old-school "Household Hacker."
People with esims are just gonna assume they aren't being tracked. 😩
Even without a SIM card you're not much less trackable. The phone still maintains a connection with the cellular towers for emergency services, sometimes even when it's fully powered off. The best way to prevent this is to remove the battery.
sometimes even when it's fully powered off
How when there is no power going to the mobile transceiver?
Because "off" is not really off in most mobile devices, more like a deep hibernate. Conveniently you can also no longer remove the batteries from any modern phone.
Because "off" is not really off in most mobile devices, more like a deep hibernate
What is your source on that because when I was working for a wireless telco we did a spectrum analysis of mobiles off and on and the phone signal drops below the noise floor when off with or without the battery connected.
iPhones have a feature where they still intermittently broadcast a Bluetooth signal after being turned off or even if they shut off because of low battery: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255809396?sortBy=rank.
Google does the same thing with the Pixel: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/9338817?hl=en-AU#zippy=%2Cstep-find-offline-devices-and-devices-without-power.
My understanding is that it's not the phone signal, but bluetooth low power mode, which is how many countries did covid exposure tracking.
So not full location triangulation, but more a hypothetical that a business or government could very easily set up bt low power beacons and identify devices that got in range like they did for covid tracking.
It's not cellular bands, I believe it's Bluetooth beacons and possibly UWB. But the fact that "Find My" works even when the phone is "off" is a pretty well documented fact. Of course if you could actually unplug the battery those would die too.
This also stops those pesky scam calls!
SIM cards? what is this, 2014?
not every phone has this "esim" black magic witchcraft in it today. i got my phone in 2024, and i've got a sim card, the way it should be. esim supporters should be burned at the stake for their heresy!
...
i'm kidding, of couse. i don't support burnings anymore!
the joke was this is a picture of what looks like an iphone 6, released in 2014
oh... i just look cringe now...
lol maybe a little, but I don't think you deserved the downvotes you're getting from people
I don't see any.
yeah, they've been canceled out by other votes.
Functionally, AFAIK there's nothing really stopping older devices from being updated to use e-sim. They work just fine for emergency service calls, the little chip doesn't matter that much to the underlying hardware
shit i just use two physical sim cards so that way i can easily swap between my european number and american number
So what do I do with the eSIM?
put your phone in the microwave on high for 30 seconds, it wipes eSIM
Bonus super fast wireless charging!!!
Drill press
Use eScissors, cut it!
I like how they’re ” already ” tracking me. I’m still trying to understand how the meaning changes with and without the quotations, but it certainly feels important or something
“You remove the SIM card and… yes?”
“Can I cook mine?”
“No, you must eat it raw.”