A British soldier disobeyed a direct order to remove the SIM card from his cellphone before being deployed to a part of Estonia, approximately 90 miles west of the Russian border.
As a result of his refusal to engage in this element of operational security (opsec), the soldier, had his phone hacked, and nude photos of himself were stolen and used as blackmail against him.
The reason given by the soldier was that he didn’t want to be cut off from his family and and wanted to be in touch with his daughter on her birthday.
Cool reason bro, if only there were options other than normal phonecalls and SMS.
It isn’t like we have invented WiFi and Discord/Matrix/Email/FaceTime/hundreds of other communication platforms.
I am also quite certain that there are other sanctioned ways of staying in touch with your friends and family, even if not ideal for the person in question.
They literally told him to use a VPN. He could have connected to any wifi and WhatsApp video called them.