SIM reader - is this legal?

[Astranomical]

So yesterday I was at the local markets and found a USB SIM card reader, neat little doodad that plugs into your USB port and allows you to copy data to and from your SIM. I bought it as my phone doesn't have a data cable, and I thought it'd be worth it to back up my phone numbers in the event I lose my phone, or my SIM is damaged.

Anyway, i'm just curious - are these even legal? I always thought they were illegal, due to the fact that they can be used to clone/re-flash SIM cards and the like...

[Tom_1569]

Correct me if im wrong, but its a READER.... You can read the data, you cant write back. Backing up your sim would then be pointless, because you cant transfer it back anyway. Also most new phones have their numbers stored on the phone not the sim. Though with my phone I can set it to backup to the sim, which is handy.

[Reaper]

Can't imagine why it would not be legal. I would use it to store data and possibly recover the phone book if it otherwise became corrupted. Even re-flashing it would be fine as long as you aren't using it for the purposes of fraud etc.

Reaper

[Astranomical]

Correct me if im wrong, but its a READER.... You can read the data, you cant write back. Backing up your sim would then be pointless, because you cant transfer it back anyway. Also most new phones have their numbers stored on the phone not the sim. Though with my phone I can set it to backup to the sim, which is handy.

Actually, I think it can write to the SIM as well - the crappy Chinese software that came with it has options to read from the SIM and write to it, so yeah. Haven't tried that part of it yet though.

[50LTRv8]

These arn't illegal. I have used one for work and they go pretty good. It will not bypass the sim code (you have to enter the pin to access anything).

They are very handy for backing up contacts and also good for duplicating a standard set of contacts across multiple phones. We had about 30 phones issued for APEC and they saved heaps of time