ALright, with cops being able to get any phone records they want, we need to be able to maintain a bit of privacy.

Get a prepaid calling card from a convenience store- then go to a phonebox and call it from their.

They will be lost in a sea of tonnes of calls, and the phonebox will stop any subpoenas linking back to you.

Ditch the card after.

Where do you live... I've never seen any way to use a card on a payphone.

You just dial the number on the back....

easier: buy a prepaid cell phone sell after 7 days.

Better: Call phonecard WITH prepaid phone :D

Launder money through PayPal. (Or if you're lasy, just put moeny into your own PayPal account).

Buy Skype credit.

It's cheaper and more versatile than a regular phone.

Pre-Paid cell phones are the best idea since pay phones are slowly being phased out across america. Not to mention they are throw away phones.

I've often thought about how anonymous these prepaid phones really are.

Every cell phone (even prepaid) has either an identifying sim card or ESN number.

I worked at radioshack, we scan all sim cards and record them when the phone is sold. This is common practice. We also keep records of the time/date of all purchases as well as all store cameras.

If you committed something serious enough like calling in a bomb threat to a police station it would not be hard to trace at all.

First the police would get the phone record. They would see the fake name / address that you gave. They would then get the identifying SIM number of the phone from the cell company. The phone manufacturing company keeps records of which phones are given to which franchises to be sold. Lets say you bought it at radioshack.

From when the police called the phone company it would only take them like 10min on the computer to find out what store (walmart, radioshack, best buy, ect) you bought the phone from and what district and a rough date. Radioshack maintains online records of all sales for something like 3 years after it was made. The police could contact the radioshack district office and they would access the online sales data. From when the police gave them the SIM number it would only take about 3min to find out the store it was sold at as well as the exact date and time (I have personally done this before). Now that they know the date, time, and location the phone was sold they can get a security camera tape of you buying the phone. We also had cameras on the roof of the parking lot.

So the police now have a picture of you as well as a picture of you car / license plate (assuming you parked outside). This would probably only take about 30min of actually work, not counting the time it would take to track people down. But considering they've most likely done this before, I doubt it would take much time at all.

The only way to make a prepaid phone secure is to pay cash, walk to the store, go to a store you've never been to before, go to a store away from where you live, go when the store is busy, and wear a disguise.
This of course would also have to be done every time you went to buy more minutes.

At the very least pay cash, wear a disguise, and don't park outside. Those are very simple steps and could change everything.

Personally, I think the easiest thing to do would be to steal someones phone. People leave their phones laying around all the time. You'd have at least 2 days for them to look for it from when you take it to when they cancel it.

Another thing to remember, phone companies always maintain records of the cell tower that a call was made from, and in some instances the GPS coordinates. So don't call your bomb threat in from your living room. Phones can also be traced to their GPS coordinated very easily. In fact, its a law in the US that all cell phones have this capability. So make sure to remove the battery or destroy the phone when you're done with it.

If you were just going to call a police station, you don't need an activated phone. You could buy bulk used prepaids off Ebay, as long as they power up. Or shoplift them, in case it gets traced back to the Ebay seller. Even deactivated prepaid phones will still let you dial 911.

Why not place coins in a pay phone?

The differences GoPhone or Tracphones are contract free but also identity proof as of now. Buy one in Wal-Mart with $20 worth of minutes with no ID check and then activate with the number and thats it.

The differences GoPhone or Tracphones are contract free but also identity proof as of now. Buy one in Wal-Mart with $20 worth of minutes with no ID check and then activate with the number and thats it.

GoPhones are by At&T

They still use SIM cards. They can still be traced. I never said they could get your ID on file I said they could get a picture of you from the security camera