Mexico Mandates Biometric SIM Registration for All Phone Numbers(reclaimthenet.org) |
Mexico Mandates Biometric SIM Registration for All Phone Numbers(reclaimthenet.org) |
Unlike the US your ID is just an ID and not a form of secret or authentication token.
A SIM in the U.S. is significantly more difficult to acquire than a SIM in Mexico/many other countries.
E.g.
- Limit on # of SIMs purchased at retailers, low ability to use cash to purchase them, generally always on camera
- SIMs locked up behind the counter at lots of major retailers in the U.S.
- Activation requirements on U.S. networks for prepaid SIMs
Granted, if you're a company you can certainly acquire a lot of SIMs. A lot of questionable activity uses straw purchases, very similar to folks using smurfs to acquire pseudoephedrine in the 2000s.
this would be laughably easy to circumvent and terribly easy to abuse
Physically acquiring the SIMs is only one part of the process as they're pretty worthless without going through the activation process.
Prior to this year in Mexico (which introduced ID-based regulations around SIM purchase/activation), you could buy a SIM at a remote gas station, a data package in cash, and activate it without giving your name/email/etc. Now, in 2026, you have to show an ID/passport to do that.
The U.S. doesn't have a federal regulation (as far as I know) for this. That level of network protection is usually at the provider level. However, activating the SIM almost always requires an email or existing phone number and not just purchase/possession of the SIM+top-up card. Purchasing the top-up card sometimes can be done in cash, other times requires a pre-paid debit which has its own limitations/regulations due to a mix of KYC/AML. But applying said top-up card usually still requires at least some form of identity verification. For some of the top national providers, and I'm not sure what model they use to gauge risk to make this decision, they even require an SSN (for prepaid!) and run some form of a check on you (I'm not entirely sure if it's a soft credit check or what).