Everyone Knows Where You Are

I do not know how to remove a SIM card, nor whether its removal and reinstallation will be easy after you have learned how. (And whether it takes tools.)
But I do know how to remove and reinstall a battery. Can't one evade being tracked if the phone you may carry lacks a battery?
I have a cell phone only for emergencies and for things like meeting someone at an airport, or otherwise while traveling.
It's a flip phone. Cost me $12. All I need.
Somebody told me that only people who need a cerebral assist use a smart phone.
I heard you can tell if they need one by whether they jump up and down when they hear sentiments like the preceding.
Is it true?

Freedom? Privacy? Bah, humbug. We (worldwide) have been sold out by government because they make more money from corporations than individuals. Any "improvements" or "gains" in either freedom or privacy will be fake, short term, and designed to placate the masses so they will swallow the next sound bite and vote for more corruption.

Once you connect to the internet, you're for the ride of your life. Again, there is no security on the internet that will keep you safe from prying eyes. Everybody is selling to everybody else; and then you have disgruntled employees passing out their company's password (s) to friends and the like; and folks abroad and down below selling all sorts of cracking tools for "US dollars"; and so it goes

Google, Facebook, Microsoft, are all doing the same

The second an individual turned on his first phone he choose to give up his privacy for convenience.. The solution of course is to not carry a cell phone. Somehow I survived the first fifty years of my life without one, and I can't honestly say the last 20 years have been better in ways and things that really matter because I have one.

John, the point is that your paranoia of G, F & M is irrelevant. At least they are somewhat transparent, unlike ever so many mom and pop sites who do far worse with far less security.

You're very right, Bob: we have lost our privacy. I suspect, though, it wasn't in the computer era but by the '50s. It's a big problem. Unfortunately, despite justifiable hand wringing, I doubt we will ever get it back. We will get more hypocrisy, though, from the people at the top.

You're very right, Bob: we have lost our privacy. I suspect, though, it wasn't in the computer era but by the '50s. It's a big problem. Unfortunately, despite justifiable hand wringing, I doubt we will ever get it back. We will get more hypocrisy, though, from the people at the top.

Does not surprise me. The government, police and politicians see us as a bunch of jerks. By the way, this is a great site EXCEPT for the stupid ads.

it's finally 1984, but it's not the government (well OK it is the government too) it's Google and Facebook that own you; and it's just as scary as it sounds.

I guess all that is left is to remain irrelevant ie, be a person whom authorities aren't interested in so they will focus on someone else.

Any idea that we have privacy, despite the many privacy laws, is probably a pipe dream.

In one of life's ironies, the ads that show up for me on web pages - including this one - are those offering to tell me the location of any cellphone whose number I'd type in. I wonder whether it's mere coincidence that my cellular provider is not one that sells my location (I'm not in the US) and many people would respond to that offer by checking their own number.
Needless to say, I'm not tempted to try it!

So, not only is Big Brother watching, now his shifty-eyed cousin is, too. This is available, but yet we can't locate missing people? Seems like that would be the only good thing about this technology.

Does "airplane mode" prevent your phone from reporting your location?

Simply turn Location Services to OFF.
(It will keep prompting you to turn it back on. Ignore it.)

Some phone manufacturer should come up with a SIM card disabling feature that would not require physically removing the SIM card. That would preclude location access without passing any laws or depending on mobile carriers to protect your privacy. A simple switch on the phone would solve the problem, at least when the SIM is turned off. Cell phone manufacturers, come to the rescue!

I am horrified even though I dont live in the usaI only bought a mobile phone for conveniance I think that now I will stop carrying it
Does this also apply to Australia

I have long suspected this. Bob, I suggest you take this on as a campaign. Get in front of representatives and act as our spokesperson. You would surely become a national figure. If nothing else, the experience would give you fodder for many new articles.
Thanks for your insight.

Correction:

"...caught by leaking the real-time locations of nearly every cellphone user in the world. Anyone on the Internet could track any phone served by AT&T, Verizon, T-mobile, or Sprint..."

The U.S. is NOT the WORLD!

The clients of AT&T, Verizon, T-mobile, and Sprint constitute only a few percents of the world's cellphone users.

I love the oft-used canned statement by people who say "I don't do anything illegal, so I don't care about my privacy!" Many of these people are the same types who are willing to give up their privacy for the sake of convenience! Then, there are those writers who work under the "Do as I say, not as I do" M.O.
Even if US was to construct a GDPR-type 'digital bill of rights'; our lack of privacy would not change one 'bit'.