Last Notes
The thing degoogled users report after their first sandboxed eSIM: it's boring.
No Play Services prompt, no account, no proprietary blob demanding attention. Toggle on, data works.
Privacy tooling is winning when it stops being interesting.
Not every phone that says eSIM actually supports eSIM. Regional variants differ, carrier-locked models differ, and some flagships shipped both ways in the same year.
Worth thirty seconds before you buy any travel data.
New eSIM installed, shows connected, no data moving.
Before assuming it is faulty: force the line to 4G/LTE. Roaming partners often cannot hold a session on 5G NSA, and the fallback does not always happen on its own.
Whether buying a SIM requires your passport depends entirely on which border you just crossed.
Some countries take biometrics at the counter. Some ask nothing. Most travelers find out in the queue.
The rules, by country:
https://pikasim.com/sim-registration-laws-by-country
Airport wifi is less dangerous than it was in 2015. TLS covers most of what used to leak.
What still leaks: which domains you reach, via DNS and SNI. The portal wants an email, and the network logs your MAC.
Cellular skips the ritual entirely.
Kauai Hawaii on @ricoh_gr_photography with local Nene #ricohgr #ricohmonochrome @ricoh_gr_us
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Swapping SIMs does less than people think.
Your IMEI identifies the handset itself and gets reported to the network no matter which SIM is in it. Change the number, keep the device, and the two are trivially linkable.
Separate identities need separate hardware.
Our warrant canary updated again this month, and it still says nothing happened.
That is the entire point. A canary is only useful if it is boring for years and then suddenly isn't.
If it ever stops updating, read the silence.
25 years after the Patriot Act, mass surveillance is the default, not the exception. Your phone number is still the easiest way to find you.
You can harden an Android phone until almost nothing leaves it. Your carrier's view barely changes.
What the OS can fix, what it can't, and what to do about the rest. 1/4
You degoogled the phone. Custom ROM, no Play Services, F-Droid only, DNS locked down.
Then you put in a SIM registered to your passport.
The OS stopped phoning home. The modem never did, and the account behind it still has your name on it.
https://pikasim.com/guides/technical/degoogled-android-esim-guide
We run a Tor relay. Not as marketing, as rent.
A privacy company that uses Tor and contributes no bandwidth back is freeloading on volunteers. The relay is our share.
Fingerprint and live stats are public, so you can verify it rather than take our word.
https://pikasim.com/tor-relay
Still the most common question from degoogled users: can you run an eSIM with no Google services at all?
Yes. GrapheneOS sandboxes the eSIM component. One toggle, no Play Services.
The SIM is the last Google-shaped hole in most hardened phones.
https://pikasim.com/guides/technical/grapheneos-esim-guide
Signal is building zero knowledge proofs so you never need to hand over a phone number to sign up. Good. Phone numbers were never meant to be identity documents, they just became one by accident.
The US military just admitted phone ad trackers are a location-leak risk worth disabling fleet-wide. Same ad IDs sit on everyone's phone, not just soldiers'. Your carrier and apps already know where you sleep.
The EU wants backdoors into encrypted messaging again, ProtectEU strategy revived. Doesn't matter if it's framed for law enforcement, a backdoor works for anyone who finds it. This is why relays and open protocols matter.
rumors say that these monk seals are using PikaSim to communicate with each other. once they’re awake
more platforms using zcash are implementing PikaSim and are reselling our esims.
most recent one is
The full de-Googled stack for anonymous data:
GrapheneOS + PikaSim sideloaded (no Play Services) + an eSIM paid in Monero + no account, no email.
A phone that connects anywhere and correlates to nobody. That's the whole idea.
https://pikasim.com/app
https://pikasim.com also runs as a Tor onion service. Browse, pay, and install without ever leaving Tor.
The address sits in the footer of every page and is attested on our canary page.
No account either way. Same store, less trust required.
https://pikasim.com/privacy-infrastructure
Banking codes sometimes stop arriving the day you go abroad, and it's rarely your phone's fault.
Short-code SMS senders often skip roaming lines entirely. Person-to-person texts still arrive. App-based codes always do.
Move your 2FA into an app before the trip, not after.
We sign every APK with our own key and publish the fingerprint.
Verify before you install:
apksigner verify --print-certs pikasim-latest.apk
Don't take our word for it, check the cert. Only ever install from pikasim.com.
https://pikasim.com/app#verify
Your phone spends all day calling out for wifi networks it remembers, and retail analytics boxes listen to count repeat visitors.
MAC randomization blunted it. The quieter fix is better: wifi off when you leave the house. One toggle.
A week of roaming on your home carrier can cost more than a nice dinner.
A week of local eSIM data costs about as much as an airport sandwich.
We sell the sandwich-priced one.
https://pikasim.com
The travel setup that dodges both roaming bills and missed bank texts:
Home SIM stays in with data roaming off, so texts still arrive. A travel eSIM rides alongside and carries all the data.
Two lines, one phone, each doing the job it's good at.
https://pikasim.com
There's a page on our site we hope stays boring forever: the warrant canary.
It states we have not received secret data requests, and it gets updated on a schedule. If it ever goes quiet, the silence is the message.
https://pikasim.com/canary
Your phone is two computers. The one with your apps, and the baseband: its own processor, its own closed OS, talking to towers on its own schedule.
No custom ROM replaces it. Every phone, hardened or not, shares this layer with the network.
Landed with 3 GB, gone by dinner. It wasn't your maps.
Cloud photo backup, app updates, and autoplay video ate it quietly in the background.
Set backups and updates to wifi-only before you fly, then watch the same plan last the whole trip.
Sideload PikaSim and keep it current without an app store.
Add it in Obtainium (Direct APK Link):
https://pikasim.com/downloads/pikasim-latest.apk
Every release, straight from the source. No Google account. This is how app updates should work.
https://pikasim.com/app
Censorship-resistant social only works if people actually run relays. So we run one.
wss://relay.pikasim.com is live, free, and open for anyone to read. Customers get write access included.
Add it to your client, or verify it on first.
https://pikasim.com/nostr
Our support inbox cannot look you up by name, email, or address.
Not a policy. An architecture: there are no accounts, so there is nothing to search.
A record that never existed can't leak.
https://pikasim.com
We take crypto, so here's the honest bit: an on-chain bitcoin payment sits on a public ledger forever.
If privacy is the goal, Lightning or Monero fits better, and we accept both.
Pick the checkout that learns the least about you.
Flash GrapheneOS and the data leaving your phone drops to a trickle.
Here's the part the OS cannot touch: what your carrier still sees, piece by piece, and what to do about each one. 1/4
GrapheneOS users: the PikaSim app runs fully without Google Play Services.
Browse, buy, install, top up, and manage eSIMs, plus SMS numbers and the wallet, zero Google dependency. Only push alerts need Play Services.
Grab the verified APK:
https://pikasim.com/app
Flora and fauna of Oahu
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Nostriches who travel: what's the one country where you had the worst time getting online?
Blocked SIMs, ID walls at the kiosk, dead roaming, captive-portal hell. Tell me the worst one.
A cop allegedly used Flock's license-plate camera network to track and follow an ex-partner. Surveillance infrastructure doesn't discriminate between authorized use and abuse, it just logs everything and waits for someone with access.
An eSIM installs from your couch over wifi and switches on when you land.
The airport SIM kiosk, the queue, the passport photocopy: that whole industry runs on people who don't know this yet.
Buy before you fly. Land already online.
https://pikasim.com
We run a public Tor relay. Not a blog post about loving privacy, an actual box donating bandwidth to the network.
3.8 TB carried so far. Don't take our word for it, look up PikaSim on Tor Metrics.
https://pikasim.com/privacy-infrastructure
Open any breach dump. There is always a phone number column.
Emails rotate, passwords reset. A number sticks around for a decade, quietly joining your accounts across every leak.
Give fewer databases the real one.
Thank you @MonericaProject for listing us
Have you ever used PikaSim? If so, please leave us a review. We appreciate⚡️
Hello builders, you can sell eSIMs inside your own product.
PikaSim handles coverage, activation, and delivery. You keep your checkout, your branding, your customer.
For example, Planr, a travel app, added eSIM purchase to its trip builder. User picks a destination, buys, gets a QR + install link tied to the trip. Seamless.
Trip ran long and the data ran out. Top up or buy a new plan?
Top up if the plan still has days left. Buy new if it expired, because a top-up can't resurrect a dead plan.
The number of people who learn this at 11pm in an airport is too damn high.
https://pikasim.com
Thank you for listing us @MoneroForum
150+ countries now demand ID to activate a SIM. A few want a face scan.
This is the exact surveillance creep this network exists to route around. A phone number shouldn't require a dossier.
Ours never does. No ID, ever.
https://pikasim.com
How much travel data do you actually need? Most people overbuy.
Maps, messaging and email run about 500 MB a day. Add a couple of hours of video and you're at 2 GB.
Start small. Topping up takes a minute.
https://pikasim.com
Your location usually isn't stolen. Apps you agreed to collect it and pass it down a supply chain you've never seen.
Free apps embed broker SDKs. Ad auctions broadcast coarse location to bidders.
The fix is boring: audit location permissions, set them to while-using.
If I were starting privacy from zero today, in this order:
Browser that isn't a spy. Email that isn't an ad business. Chats on Signal. Authenticator app instead of SMS codes.
Almost all of it is free. The excuse that it's too hard expired years ago.
Hotel wifi or mobile data, which is safer? Different risks, not a ranking.
Open wifi puts you on a network run by whoever owns the router, beside whoever else is on it.
Cellular authenticates and encrypts the radio link. On an unknown network it's the calmer choice.
