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This seems incorrect. I've traveled around in EU and haven't seen a single ID check for SIMs yet. Where is this happening? In my home country of Estonia we even have SIMs being given away for free on the streets as advertisement.



Germany (O2) had an obnoxious check. The dude bitched at me because I had a copy of my passport "saved in the cloud" (it was in 1Password local on my phone; given that the US, RU, CN, JP, UA, MY etc governments all have copies of my passport already, it's a whole lot less sensitive than anything else I have in a local-only encrypted database on my phone. It took about 30m to go through the process.


In Portugal the ID is needed for the large operators (e.g. Vodafone). Not sure but likely not needed for Lyca and such.

In Germany you can buy SIM cards on the local supermarket, no ID requested.


In Spain you need to provide your ID for a prepaid SIM.

They even requested your ID for SIMs you already owned and eventually disconnected all the unidentified.




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