Just in a movie, he takes out the SIM card, chucks the phone so he cannot be traced.
But... I thought it was through the SIM card you could be traced???
Anyone?

no, your normal SMART phone does have a GPS tracker installed...

Your SIM card hasn't, but that doesn't mean that you cannot be traced via this card when you use it on another phone via the unique Identifier it has the phone send out...

That's one way through the SIM, tower pinging, etc. The phone can still be traced without the SIM.

Thank you, Tom and Boots!
I didn't know that exact info :)

Somebody's planning on something nefarious... I smell it

The SIM itself cannot be traced. The phone without the SIM cannot either. The two together, on, and with proper settings enable can.

Once that phone hit the water, SIM card or not, it's done. Dead, kaput, over.

No tracing.

http://myphonelocater.com/2019/08/02/how-to-track-phone-without-a-sim-card-5-simple-ways/

Phone without SIM card can be traced. It doesn't even have to be switched on. Meaning what you see them do in movies -ruining or throwing away the phone- is the right thing to do if you don't want to be traceable.

Smartphones can still be tracked even if location services and GPS are turned off, according to Princeton University researchers. ... The technique, called PinMe, shows it is possible to track a location even if the location services, GPS, and Wi-Fi are turned off.

Thanks! All quite interesting :)

The SIM card contains your account info and permissions. Basically, the cell tower has a bouncer and your SIM is your ID to get in and tells them what you can and can't do. Because of this, it's able to track you and your activity.

Your phone can be traced via the GPS and wifi as well.

If the phone is dead, it's not traceable. Powered off, not traceable. Without sending out a signal, it's not traceable. Take the battery out and it won't be traced.

or just drop it in a pot of acid

Or seal it up in aluminum foil to make a faraday cage.

Phones can be pretty water resistant nowadays. I was walking in a swap one time, with my phone in my chest pocket. At some point it fell out somehow; I had been reaching for it frequently to take pictures and putting it back in my pocket, and reached for it one time and it was not there. So I searched with my hands in the bottom of the two foot deep swamp until I grabbed some kind of frog-like reptile which scared both me and him. So I left the swamp and went to the hardware store to buy some gauntlet length heavy gloves. After more than an hour of searching I eventually found it. It worked fine.

There is a GPS in a smart phone.

Unrelated but possibly significant to privacy invasion.

My sister was telling me she thinks someone is listening to her conversations at home. She has a smart TV and a fire-stick. plus cell phones and a laptop.

She was telling me she and her husband were talking about buying him a couple trail cams. She said over the next few days she was bombarded with advertisements for trail cams.

Then they were discussing buying a gaming system for their grandson. Lo & behold they were bombarded with ads for PlayStation and X-Box.

They think their smart TV has a microphone in it.
I laughed and told her they were being paranoid.

Then I got a new computer with Windoze 10.
While tweaking it, I found Cortana turned on by default.
Cortana is voice recognition software and windoze 10 is set up to communicate online with Microsoft.
I also found remote sharing turned on by default.
I don't have a smart TV but with what I found in my windoze 10 system, I can believe anything with a mic could now be transmitting.

Cell phones have microphones and connect-ability. Its not a stretch to think someone might be listening.

Interesting. I checked, and indeed have Cortana. But don't know where I can see whether it's switched on or not? I don't like W10 in that sense, never know where to find such things like I could in the past.

I don't have a mic on my PC. Never need that and if I do I plug in my webcam (not built in) and always unplug it afterwards.

Samsung as well as some others have lawsuits against them for that. Yes, your devices do listen even when you have those features turned off.

I also find that, if I'm having a conversation with my 'phone lying around, I get adverts related to what I was talking about.

I live in Virginia, where recording any person in a room without informed consent is a violation of state law. Plus, I hardly communicate to anyone besides typing nowadays. Although I guess that is even easier to spy on.

Simply wrap it in foil as ice said and nothing goes out or in. They even sell aluminum cases for your phone if you want something nicer looking. But in the movie the director thought it looked way cool to take out the card and toss the phone. Hollywood is the worst place to get information about anything.

Keep it in its case and no amount of trickery will find you. Take it out when yo want to check messages or call or surf the net, etc. Its not that we are going to rob a bank, we just don't want the a$$holes to know where we go, what we buy and so on.

If you want your searches online to be anon, use duckduckgo.com