And it gives the corp and even easier time to monitor the habits of its employees Who takes too long in the restroom, which ones are hooking up, which ones goto bars every night, which ones have stepped onto another corps territory, etc

If you assume you're in a low-paying job you can only barely afford Low lifestyle with, you're looking at (roughly) 3 days worth of work (say, 16 hours of overtime pay) to afford a cheapass commlink. That's really not beyond the pale.

Besides, I'm sure there's plenty of "reinfranchise the poor, donate your old commlink!" charities out there. There's "donate your old computer" places *now* that won't take really old hardware.

I think plenty of megas would gladly give you last year's cheap commlink model, as long as you sign the EULA that lets them spy on you, er, "monitor your habits to better meet your needs".

The way I've played it as a Gm, from 2nd edition on (Your main credstick had very similair abilities, now it just runs an OS too) MADS picks up something that might be a light pistol, system queries your stick (or in SR4 your commlink) for a valid license, your system relays said license and system checks that against database, coming back with a match. Now, depending on security level of said area you are about to enter (you haven't even made it a meter past the MADS embedded archway yet) security might be notified, might not. If the mall is on a hightened state, a polite guard might ask you to stow the weapon in a safety locker at the main guard desk where you can retrieve it on your way out, or they may follow you discretely through the security cameras, or they may send you an email warning you that it's a heavy pistol minimum in the bar. Point is, the cops and in theory the programmers supporting them don't have time to go scanning too deeply, just not value adding for them. If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck then it probably is a duck. So carry 2+ commlinks, one for your public persona, the one you shop for groceries, pay your rent on the primary doss with, your tram pass carrying fake identity, keep nothing of importance on it. Then you have your secondary commlink, with moderately better stats and the information you want your teammates to have access to, this you keep in hidden mode. The you have your real commlink, with maxed out everything that will always remain hidden that runs your PAN.

Personally, when I play a cybered character I have a pair of glasses and earbuds for the open commlink, but with the volume muted physically (the system thinks volume is at normal level) and the opacity of the AR interface is 0% but the commlink is spoofed to see it at a normal 60~85% while the real data is on my display link in my cyber eyes and the audio runs through my cyber ears. An agent on the "runner" link hacks into the public link and poses as my character, closing ads, etc. usual nonsequiter kinda stuff and forwards any messages that are flagged using code words to the runner link.

I like the sin card idea, they would be a RFID tag,

And you could always say “well my COM link was working when I left home.”

I should say that not possessing a SIN is not a crime in canon. It just means you’re a probationary citizen, with few rights. Failure to display your SIN however would be a crime in secure arias however would be (effectively making being there without a sin illegal), secure arias would include all government facilities (with the possible exception of the sin registry office, you need to be able to go there without one to make an application) ports, harbours, airports, public transport services and many extraterritorial sights.

Edward

Be careful not to get busted carrying multiple IDs on commlinks. It'd be like getting frisked and being asked why you have two wallets Mr. Hernandez / Jornsen.

There isn’t much risk when carrying 2 COM links with different IDs. Just don’t have them both turned on, carrying 2 COM links isn’t all that suspicious (spare in case battery runes out, old one your thinking of giving to a friend, propriety data you don’t want on a broadcasting channel.) if you have gotten to the point where there interrogating your COM link your already in a world of pain.

Edward

I do like the added level of complexity. I think about it this way, before it was much easier to roll with fake ids, you could actually get away without walking around with a credstick with SIN type info on it, and if you were ever querried "WHats your SIN citizen?" you could spit out a number from the few you had memorized.

Now I suppose you could carry multiple comlinks, or I wonder if you can datadump/transfer SIN/id info between comlinks and your secure storage somewhere. Kinda like loading programs for matrix stuff, swap sorta on the fly, hopefully covering the traces that you've switched ids./

Given how ubiquitous the commlink is, I don't think it's too far out there to assume that pulling someone over for a speeding ticket would involve at least some minor commlink interrogation. The worse the offense the more likely it is they'll sic their virtual dogs on your second one.