The need for anonymity for legal reasons is absolutely not a straw man argument.

I just finished telling a woman how she should be careful on dating apps and always use an anonymous sim card, never give out her real number, or real contacts, to strangers.

But my country is making this impossible now too, and the reason is drug dealers using them for burner phones of course.

> The need for anonymity for legal reasons is absolutely not a straw man argument.

That's not really an argument against eSIMs. As you point out getting an anonymous real SIM is also impossible in many countries. What prevents anonymous SIMs (or eSIMs) are legal issues and is not related to the technical implementation. Potentially eSIMS could make the whole process of getting burners much easier, if it wasn't for the legal issues.

What problems do you suppose using an anonymous sim card solves in the real world of dating?

With many mobile providers, the name on the account is directly associated with the number. Try to enter your own mobile number into Twilio’s lookup feature and see what name pops up.

Not just for dating, women who flee their home with a child in their arm and are put up in a secret apartment by the local ROKS org here usually still have to contact the babys father at some point. I know first hand it's one of the biggest issues in those orgs to keep their apartments hidden from anyone but the police.

Remember also that about 1/3 of Australia just had their PII leaked because one of the nation's biggest telcos couldn't do basic isolation between dev and prod.