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My wife and daughter came home from Wal-Mart today with an interesting story. They went to the electronics section to get a couple of things my daughter wanted. There was a guy at the electronics cash register when they heard a guy at the register getting a little frustrated and somewhat beligerent. It didn't take them long to realize the guy was trying to by 15 prepaid phones. The clerk was explaining that the register wouldn't allow him to finalize the sale and he had called for a supervisor.

When the supervisor saw what the guy was purchasing, she immediately said she is terminating the transaction because she couldn't sell him that quantity of prepaid phones because it is illegal. She said The most she could sell him would be 2 per transaction and 5 per day. The guy got really agitated and angry. By then, my wife and daughter decided to move along and create some distance between them.

Is that really a law or just a Wal-Mart policy? I also wonder for whom he was getting that many phones. Was he getting them for drug dealers, criminals or terrorists? Makes me wonder if he is one of these thugs.

Made for a semi Interesting little story. Not a lot of excitement in Boerne.

Methinks it's a policy--perhaps in effect for quite a while--but not a law: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15335329/ns/t ... ll-phones/.

But I gotta say that after having constructed a Google search string for it, before I pressed "Search" I realized that, no, that ain't the kind of thing I want to run through Google. Don't want anyone wondering why I'm asking about laws limiting the number of prepaid burner phones I can buy.

Google sees enough odd searches from me as it is. The old NBC news article was the first one https://duckduckgo.com/ found for me.

I hear you about Google. I used Startpage. It didn't look like a law to me either. Seems arrange to be buying that many burner phones at once.

If it's a law, I don't like it. Why would anyone need that many phones? Don't know, not my business.

Maybe he has a small business and is buying for his employees. Maybe he is about to hike the Appalachian trail and needs reliable phones for him and maybe a couple of his buddies. Maybe he hates Walmart and wants to buy a year's supply so he doesn't have to go there anymore.

Sure I'd be curious too, but in the end it's not my business, Walmart's, or uncle sam's.

Pig Renter wrote:If it's a law, I don't like it. Why would anyone need that many phones? Don't know, not my business.

Maybe he has a small business and is buying for his employees. Maybe he is about to hike the Appalachian trail and needs reliable phones for him and maybe a couple of his buddies. Maybe he hates Walmart and wants to buy a year's supply so he doesn't have to go there anymore.

Sure I'd be curious too, but in the end it's not my business, Walmart's, or uncle sam's.

Don't know if you realize it or not but there are all sorts of "red flags" out there that retailers, bankers, insurance agents, car dealers etc. have to watch out for and report if they meet certain requirememts.

Boerne is a long way from the Appalachian mountains. Is the cell service for cheap burner prepaid phones really that reliable there?

Pig Renter wrote:If it's a law, I don't like it. Why would anyone need that many phones? Don't know, not my business.

Maybe he has a small business and is buying for his employees. Maybe he is about to hike the Appalachian trail and needs reliable phones for him and maybe a couple of his buddies. Maybe he hates Walmart and wants to buy a year's supply so he doesn't have to go there anymore.

Sure I'd be curious too, but in the end it's not my business, Walmart's, or uncle sam's.

Or triggers for suicide belts...

I did a little bit of Google searching. I really don't care about such things coming up in my search history, and I'm known for baiting these invasions of privacy on general principle...freedom of speech and all that.

That said, it does appear that it's Wal-Mart policy and has been for some time. Other stores (Best Buy) reserve the right to limit purchase quantities, allegedly more from a resale standpoint (?)

It appears that Chucky Schumer is proposing a new law (again) requiring identification to buy prepaid cell phones, but so far it hasn't gotten off the ground, and it didn't get off the ground in 2009 either.

Kind of makes me want to go buy some burners just because it raises red flags. Besides, I do some telecom work, and I can assure you that there are plenty of legitimate uses for "burner" phones in the t-com world...they're great for testing and R&D around call center and queue routing for example.

Skiprr wrote:Methinks it's a policy--perhaps in effect for quite a while--but not a law: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15335329/ns/t ... ll-phones/.

But I gotta say that after having constructed a Google search string for it, before I pressed "Search" I realized that, no, that ain't the kind of thing I want to run through Google. Don't want anyone wondering why I'm asking about laws limiting the number of prepaid burner phones I can buy.

Google sees enough odd searches from me as it is. The old NBC news article was the first one https://duckduckgo.com/ found for me.

Tor + DuckDuckGo
By the time you type it in, Google already knows what you've typed...

I would like to see a picture of the person attempting the purchase.

For another thought on why someone might want that many disposable phones, watch the TV series "The Wire." It's great watching and one of the plot threads is when the cops hacked into the drug gang's communications by finding out where they bought their disposable phones. It was actually more complicated than that, but that gives you the idea.

tomtexan wrote:I would like to see a picture of the person attempting the purchase.

I would like to see a picture of the person denying the purchase.

My first thought, well, actually my second thought, after the bomb switch thing, would be that there was some super-duper deal on the phone. I would be sidling up to the guy to see the make/model of the phone so I could find one and go scan the price. On deal sites there's frequently some great deal that people are talking about clearing the shelves on. Many of them then sell the item on ebay.

Don't know if they still do it, but there used to be groups that would buy as many subsidized phones as possible, ship them to Asia, and flip them for a nice profit.

I'd suspect that's partly responsible for the sales limit.

To remain untraceable is a valuable thing to folks who want to be under the radar and be invisible to government. Using cheap one use phones is one way to do this.

Maybe he wants some parts out of them to make something sinister.