I’ve gotten prepaid sims for things but obviously that’s not really a feasible method for your main life phone.

  • It might be worth looking again at pay-as-you-go. Here in the UK at least, there are some ‘bundle’ plans that are not actually that much more expensive than a contract. Topping up with a voucher once a month is a bit inconvenient but not too bad. You

    I don’t know to what extent the phone companies log and share your usage (if you’re in an English-speaking country it’s likely quite extensive) but I would imagine they could still identify you probabilistically by your patterns of use, including which towers you connect to. Using a VPN/proxy/TOR would at least limit the number of IP addresses they see you connecting to but that’s off topic a bit.