Some time last year, I found a site reselling Oskar SIMs for some vast price, to people who might be paranoid about being tracked and staying anonymous. Maybe I suggested it was for pretend terrorists.

I've just discovered another site exploiting gullible paranoids. Does anyone know of a higher price anywhere than $300?

http://www.ptshamrock.com/auto/simchips.htm

Indeed and this is the best piece of BS I've read about SIM cards so far from a site like that:

"Be warned, US and European purchased mobile phones have built in tracking devices. The tri-band models we offer DON'T. That's a huge security bonus for you!"

Any cell phone can obviously be tracked through the triangulation process or via GPS as the case with almost all CDMA handsets is nowadays.

"The Internet's cheapest international roaming sim cards... guaranteed!"

Great! :beer:

I must admit, I hadn't studied that site enough. The phones are even more ludicrously overpriced

?949 - Tri-Ban mobile PLUS both the Thai and Philippines sim cards PLUS four top up cards FREE

But there are some other interesting products there - university degrees for example. I remember years ago a friend of mine had a T-shirt with Neasden University (a suburb of London) written on; the emblem was a plate of fish and chips (french fries in another language). On some occasion a little old lady remarked that she'd never heard of it - not many people know about it, he replied straight-faced, but a boyish grin when he told us about it.

The funniest thing there though are the so-called camouflage passports, based on country names that haven't existed for years. Surely it would be a lot cheaper to get one from one that never existed at all, or would Scott Adams sue for copyright infringement?

give me 1000?, i will give you an international sim card + triband phone + 25? topup FREE :P

No one is more expensive than me :D

There are a few people who've got in trouble trying to use those at borders.

The main "use" for them was to use as "id" for opening bank accounts, but they've just been laughed at by banks for the past ten years or so.

One of the best products of this type was a "Sark Drivers License". :D

(for those that don't know, Sark is an island in the (British) Channel Islands with no cars).

Another product that seemed to sell despite being useless was a registration (with plates) for your car in somewhere like Vanuatu. With this you were supposed to be able to drive your car all over Europe without worrying about import taxes etc (since you're just a visitor). The Vanuatu plates could be issued without them seeing your car - you buy the car as a tax-free export somewhere, then put these plates on.

They never explained how you're supposed to insure the car. Also, driving around Europe with Vanuatu plates is hardly low-profile! Imagine explaining to a traffic policeman or at a border why you're driving around in a Vanuatu car, with Sark drivers license, British Honduras passport, Thai mobile phone number etc...

I know someone from Guernsey whose daughter, who lived in London, was stopped driving his car with Guernsey plates on. They were forced to pay the tax to import it.

Are the Channel Islands and IoM considered as "abroad" from "the UK point of view"?
AFAIK officially they are so-called "crown dependencies" and not parts of UK and EU (not sure about NATO).
But I wonder how do "the average British people" :) feel/think about those territories - as "abroad" or "homeland"?
The tax example you mentioned above shows IMHO that the goverment wants to make people think that it's abroad :)

For tax (eg no VAT, and interest is not taxed at source) and separate government reasons they are abroad, but some people would feel that they are part of either the United Kingdom, Great Britain, or the British Isles, but still vaguely separate, without being very specific in their minds about how. Sports people from there could represent any of the UK countries; two footballers from Jersey and Guernsey have represented England in the last few years.


But I'm not going to get a Guernsey SIM card, as they have rather high roaming rates, and I assume the EU Commissioner has no influence on this.

They are "abroad" in legal terms (some of the time!) but most people in the UK are not really aware of that (or probably don't even think about them, like I expect most Germans never think of the special status of Heligoland!).

Jersey and Guernsey are outside the EU for almost all purposes including customs, but the Isle of Man (although not a member) IS inside the EU for customs. So there is no customs boundary between the IOM and UK/Ireland, and VAT is charged on the IOM (at a rate that matches the UK rate, with some local exceptions).

All the islands are closely linked to the UK (e.g. get UK TV, even pay the UK TV license fee) but not being part of the UK it's a constant confusion that some things apply and some things don't - some UK credit cards/mortgages can't be applied for in the IOM but some can, courier costs from the UK are extra but postage is not, the IOM football team has just won a cup to represent England in the Regions Cup but the IOM sends their own team to the Commonwealth Games, etc.

Defense/foreign affairs are handled by the UK, for an annual fee. In other words, the IOM pays the UK protection money... (it'd be good to put that out to competative tendering, would be nice to have any country - or even private security company - doing the job if they were cheapest/best).

You're allowed to drive a foreign-plated car in most countries for 6 months from when you arrive as a visitor. So, unless she had become a resident (with a job/home that's quite likely), she could have solved that by driving over to France and back for the weekend (and kept proof), to start a fresh 6 months.

she is resident here; if her father had been driving his car it would have been fine

The camaflouge passports are mostly a joke. Many of these countries have been overturned in well publicized insurrections, etc. Moreover, many of these countries changed their names in the 1960s or 1970s, e.g. Zanzibar, South Vietnam, etc.

Gee, I wonder what they charge for a "camaflouge passport" from the Confederate States of America, the British Mandate of Transjordan and Palestine, the Ottoman Empire, the British Overseas Territory of Newfoundland and Labrador, or the Trucial States. H---, if they offered an inexpensive holographic passport from the Holy Roman Empire, I might just buy it. While some banker's might be naive, I think you are playing with fire presuming that these individuals don't have a clue what countries exist or not.

I am not going to give the name of the site, but there is a Russian site currently offer "camaflouge passports" from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Nothern Ireland. The passport lacks the EU endorsement on top, but is maroon in color, has the same seal as modern UK passports, is machine readable, and is consistent in style with a British overseas passport issued in Hong Kong prior to 1997. I knew that the British Empire was compacting and I suspect that the "sun might now set" on it, but defunct?

I get a kick out of the notion of fooling terrorists with these fake passports. Of all the people in the world, who do you think would be the most tuned into the details of fake passports.

By the way, I have a stealth Nokia 6310 triband that I wouldn't mind offing. It has the special feature of not having the GPS stuff built into it. That was a popular "feature" in 2002. I wonder what I can get for it.


A Qatari national just paid US$1 million dollars for the mobile number 666-666. I guess he was not a Baptist.


Stu

aha - I just thought of adding the mention of the expensive number, but see it is already here

When I read about this purchase on a Polish GSM portal, the info was provided with comment that unlike Christian, muslims and Jews consider 666 to be a "holy" number.
And the Chinese like 8's. According to the portal, the previous record of the fee for a single number (8888 8888) was 270000 GBP paid by Sichuan Airlines.

BTW, Citibank Poland uses a shared cost line 0 801 666 666 as an info line for their credit cards :):
http://www.citibank.pl/poland/homepage/english/3024.htm

aha, now I've found the world's most expensive contract

but it seems to be getting more and more discounted all the time, down from $1500 sign-up and $500 a month

http://news.techdirt.com/news/wireless/?_d...%253Fdir%253Dup


some nice other stories there, like Boston Airport being told off by the FCC for telling Continental Airlines it can't offer free wifi at the airport ["security issue"!]

security issue, the new joke of 2000 :help:

yeah, anyone can set up a forged wifi access point and try to steal credit card details, but I doubt if the airline would do it

oh, not that kind of security issue ??