I rented an electric scooter recently. Thought I could go along this really nice beachfront bike trail, but no...the scooter looses power as soon as it gets on it. Geofencing locked me out.

Thanks for your insight!

Unless you are roaming I believe the cell phone provider has this data no matter what phone or software you use. If your SIM and IMEI is KYC'd they will know who you are.

To my knowledge there is no way to have a working cell phone where the cell tower does not know your IMEI

So, if you want to avoid these dragnets you should buy a pixel with cash, no KYC. Buy an eSim from https://silent.link/ anonymously.

But even then, if you have patterns like using that phone at home, taking it with you to work or when you go out. Your patterns will connect you to your address. Which for most people is know by authories if not public.

It is possible to not expose yourself but very inconvenient.

Yes.

From the article:

These warrants were used on an unprecedented scale in order to identify over 5,000 devices at the US Capitol during the January 6th riot. The FBI were able to identify phones that were on airplane mode or out of service, and even received data about users who had attempted to delete their location history after the fact. In fact, the attempts to delete location history after the riot were used by the FBI to single out 37 individuals for further investigation.7