UK Government Confirms Europe-first Ban on SIM Farms
The UK government has today confirmed its intent to ban SIM Farms (both possession and supply) some 6 months after the new Crime and Policing Bill (CPB) receives Royal Assent. The move is designed to better protect the public from fraudsters and scammers who also use the devices for criminal purposes (e.g. sending scam/spam messages and calls to mobile users).
Just for some context. SIM farms are electronic devices that are capable of using five or more SIM cards simultaneously or interchangeably, and which allows the user to send Short Messaging Service (SMS) texts or phone calls in large numbers over the telecommunications (mobile) network. Such “farms” can have legitimate uses too, but they’re frequently used by criminals engaged in fraud (e.g. sending phishing scam/messages that are designed to steal personal or financial data).
The plan was actually first proposed as part of the previous government’s Criminal Justice Bill (CJB), although this was disrupted by the 2024 General Election and the same measure now comes under the CPB. The previous CJB also included other new powers, such as one that can force Regional Internet Registries, Local Internet Registries or even broadband ISPs to suspend internet domain names and IP addresses used for criminal purposes.
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Fraud Minister, Lord Hanson, said:
“Fraud devastates lives, and I am determined to take the decisive action necessary to protect the public from these shameful criminals.
Two-thirds of British adults say they’ve received a suspicious message on their phone – equivalent to more than 35 million people – which is why cracking down on SIM farms is so vital to protecting the public.
This marks a leap forward in our fight against fraud and will provide law enforcement and industry partners the clarity they need to protect the public from this shameful crime. This government will continue to take robust action to protect the public from fraud and deliver security and resilience through the Plan for Change.”
The new offence will make the possession or supply of SIM farms without a legitimate reason illegal and carries an “unlimited fine” in England and Wales, albeit oddly falling to a £5,000 fine in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The move should complement action being taken by Ofcom, which has long been working with broadband, phone and mobile operators to tackle both domestic and international sources of spam and scam calls/texts. But delivering effective enforcement of such activity may be much harder, particularly when it occurs outside the UK.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Is it specifically sims? as if it included esims then some phones (including the iphone) would be a sim farm by that explanation
Page 94 (part 8, section 82) of https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/59-01/0187/240187.pdf defines it in terms of removable physical SIM cards only.
Additionally, the text around “simultaneous or interchangeable use” implies that a phone would be OK even if the regulations later amend it to cover eSIMs, since phones are usually designed so that only 2 SIMs are in use at once, with the rest of your eSIMs being unavailable for use unless you deliberately tell the phone to change SIM.
I’m glad I’m not the only one thinking this way, I can’t really tell with the word “interchangeably” whether you’re alright to have 5 SIMs on your phone with 1 or 2 active at one time or not.
I currently have 1 pSIM (O2) and 4 eSIMs (VOXI and a range of travel eSIMs from BNE, Firsty and Kolet) on my phone so not sure how that’s going to work.
Yes according to the Bill:
“SIM card” means a removable physical subscriber identity module.
However the Bill also says ministers can change this definition on their own authority.
Only “two-thirds” of Brits reporting they have received suspicious messages should be the big worry. It means the other third haven’t realised it.
That was my first thought, too. Many mid-high end smart phones are capable of 5+ eSIMs being used interchangeably, which would surely make many phones SIM farms.
On the other hand, the ban seems fairly easy to get around if it excludes eSIMs – SIM farmers will just obtain eSIM modules.
The ban just seems unworkable either way.
Follow up on my other comment:
Section 82(2) of the bill:
““SIM card” means a removable physical subscriber identity module.”
That clearly exclude eSIMs, so there’s probably about to be a huge uptake in eSIM-based SIM farms.
What a pointless ban.
Given that the Google Pixel series, Samsung Galaxy S series, and Apple at least – this is just three big manufacturers) support storing more than 5 eSIMs, of which only 2 can be active at one time, I would expect future regulation to be drafted to avoid accidentally criminalising phone possession.
The obvious one is to make it apply to simultaneous use or SIMs interchangeable without human intervention; that breaks the scammer use case (since the scammers don’t want a human to be pushing “change to SIM 1, change to SIM 2, change to SIM 3, change to SIM 4” etc), but not the phone use case.
How will this protect us from anyone who can order these tools from Asia?
Scammers have our databases, so they know our details due to the fact the “customer” services were a long time ago handed over to (mostly) india.
It reduces the burden of proof on the police; right now, a scammer can possess a SIM farm, but has to be caught actively sending scam SMS or placing scam phone calls in order to be breaking the law. It’s not that hard to put a cut-off switch in place so that your scam activity stops when the police are nearby, and actually catching you red-handed is hard.
With this change, having a SIM farm is itself unlawful; the police now just need to catch you in possession of the SIM farm (which is harder to hide when they’re nearby, since it’s a physical thing), at which point you’re in trouble unless you can prove you weren’t scamming.
Pulling all foreign aid to India until they sort out the organised crime in country carrying out the massive amount of fraud in the UK would probably be a far better solution.
a fat lot of use that will be ,It will not affect those who got them in the indian subcontinent or in west africa,what they need to do is stop these people using the +44 prefix as the majority of spam/scam calls dont come from this country,Ofcom has been weak in this regard why do we allow criminals to have access to this countries dialing code
Absolutely……i mean how difficult would it be to stop all access to 044 from overseas?
It will be difficult as so many people are on contracts who are outside the EU and have access to a UK number.
Stop giving them access to UK numbers then.
Yeah, I’ve received a HMRC scam call today from one of those sim farms number, then to legitimate it a spoofed call from 02079477828 pretending to be a Court of Appeal Civil Division. I thought it is no longer possible to get incoming call having UK landline number from abroad? If so, they must be using UK based VoIP.
I wonder if OfCom could ‘order’ the incoming international exchanges to “Not Allow” the Presentation Number flag to be set or actually block the presentation number on the incoming signalling message. For context the ‘Presentation Number’ (or name) is a part of the C7 message set for telephony; it overrides the originating number message also carried in the C7 message.
Re UK based VOIP. So many times in the US and UK, anti scammers have caught money mules and these residential homes also allow their VOIP services to be used to scam. Absolutely nothing gets done about it. Why??
Due to political lobbying.
Not little envelopes? Who’d have thought it?