Every cell phone works by communicating with the nearby cell towers. Each cell tower’s location is known, and each cell phone has a unique identifier. It’s simple to calculate geographic location from which cell towers are nearest and at what distance. And of course each call is well known to the system. Not only this but the concept of “switched off” is fictional to an important degree — it’s possible for phone software and hardware to be active even when it’s off. And it is definitely possible to compromise phones and install software on them without users’ consent or knowledge. And that can include access to microphone and camera. My understanding is that everything I have written here is true of button phones as well as smartphones.
I generate noise. Tons of it. My phone is constantly doing things and reporting locations that have nothing to do with me.
Meanwhile.. they'll pull you into court, they'll show the jury your faraday bag, ask "what type of person would even own this?" They'll show your phone logs, when it turned off and when it turned back on, then they'll correlate these times with whatever they want to pin on you. Then they'll show premeditation due to the bag.
You CANNOT hide from these people. You CAN give them TONS of useless data, however.
It's information war. You need an actual warfare strategy. Stealth isn't one.
You will be amazed at the battery life improvement with a Faraday bag, even if you had been keeping it turned off. Not to mention the peace and quiet. It's there for you to use in need, not there sucking up all your attention.
I was just reading an article about a faraday bag and it said to put your phone or airplane mode before you put it in your bag because the battery will drain searching for a signal. Does that mean you can't get incoming phone calls I wonder? And I watch a lot of those crime shows where cell signals are tracked to find a missing person, or to establish a suspect's movements around a crime. I guess a faraday bag would prevent a criminal from being tracked too?
I was keeping my phone in airplane mode and turned off, and the battery was still draining in a day. Now it lasts three weeks. The newer the phone, the more it tries to connect with nearby phones or bluetooth devices, even when you try to disable this in the settings. That drains your battery. Also, other devices are trying to contact yours, and if your phone responds that drains the battery. Putting the phone in a Faraday bag makes it invisible as long as it is in the bag, it can't receive a signal. If it tries to send a signal, which it shouldn't if you switched that function off, the signal won't go anywhere and battery use will be minimal. Your mails and messages might pile up if they go to some cloud storage.. Yes, the just and unjust alike are hidden.
I've been using a Faraday bag for my phone for a couple of years now. They work great. I strongly believe that you shouldn't use your phone for social media. Even if you think that you are hidden behind a VPN, the very nature of how your phone works gives away your exact position and the IMEI# will lead them directly to you. (I think it's called IMEI#, but I could be wrong). The safest thing that I know to do is only use my laptop at home for social media and I hide behind a VPN. They may be able to track my laptop as well, but at least my position is not being triangulated by 2 or more cell towers.
Exactly. Plus it's kinda funny to me that people use biometrics to unlock their phone. Imagine a reworded unlock message after using your fingerprint --- "thank you for confirming it is you via fingerprint. We now know everything you do after this point is in fact you'
Be wary of companies that sell Faraday bags that leak..... If you are going to to buy a Faraday bag, don't get ripped off by dubious claims. There are good companies though. But, I'm not here to advertise or pitch for any company.
You can easily make your own Faraday cage. At night place your phone in a cocktail shaker with lid closed and place it on your bed stand. Works 100%. Make sure you drank all of your cocktail though. And don't make the mistake of mixing a drink with your cell phone.
If you don't have an instrument for checking leaks, a cheap way is to use a radio. Tune in a station, place it in the Faraday cage and cover it. If you can still hear the station, the cage is not working.
Stainless Steel bathroom trash cans with lids work too. There may be some leakage between the lid and the base, but that can be remedied with aluminum duct tape to make a better seal. The ones that have an overlapping SS lip are best for Faraday cages.
Another idea is to use a ziplock bag. Wrap aluminum duct tape around the bag overlapping it to assure no leakage. Just place you phone in the bag, seal it and fold over the ziplock so the weight of the phone sits on the folded ziplocked end.
And yet another idea is to use aluminum foil, ziplock bag, with clear laminate plastic. This is the type used for IDs, photos, news clippings, etc. Place your phone in the ziplock bag. Take a sheet of aluminum foil and wrap it around the ziplock bag. You can double it for assuring better protection. Next take the clear laminate and sandwich the aluminum wrapped bag with the front and back laminate.
Finally, if you want to assure privacy at all times, just get rid of you cell phone altogether. I did 6 years ago and have never looked back. Despite what the wife says, there's never been any emergency that couldn't wait until I got home.
Thanks for sharing this so our fellow frogs don't get burned. I learned this lesson the hard way. The solution is to by one that is rated for military use. They're usually not anymore expensive than the crap ones either.
your microwave oven will shield your phone like a Faraday bag unless the microwave is leaking. If your microwave is leaking, get rid of it, it's slightly dangerous, especially to pregnant women. Just remember to take your phone out before you use the microwave ;)
There are free apps that you can download to test if your bag is fully shielding your cell phone. I use one on my android called Shielding-Tester
Bear in mind that a faraday bag is simple metallized polymer, very similar to mylar. Some use aluminum and some use copper mesh. These do work to convert signals to a voltage in the metal lining of the bag, however these are not perfect and simply attenuate the signals, they don't necessarily eliminate the signals. The mesh works better than the mylar type because the mesh wires run perpendicular to each other. This helps cancel out induced voltages To truly make a shielded enclosure, it has to be connected to ground to bleed the induced voltages off and prevent "retransmission" which is essentially signal being induced due to the varying electromagnetic fields. If you feel there is a likelihood that you have been targeted for some reason, get rid of your phone. Turn it off, place in a metal box with no gaps and ground the box to earth. A good box for this is a surplus military ammo can. These are great because they have a waterproof seal. If you need to have a phone, buy a prepaid diaposable cell to call people that you need to. One thing that most people today don't have is a physical phone number book. I recommend everyone write down their important contacts so that if you don't have your phone, you can still call family and friends. And for the love of all things holy, remember this website so you can let us know what is happening. There may come a time when we need to help each other out.
I had some sand stuck in my camera lens on my old phone. Every time I could hear the lens zoom in and out and it was multiple times a week that I would hear that thing zooming without me using it.
I assume that you just discovered that newer phones don't allow you to take your battery out. This was my first solution too. A cop friend of mine turned me on to the Faraday bags because they have to use them as well.
Sure. He told me a story about a SWAT team that got shredded by cartel thugs. The cartel saw them coming. Now they don't even take their cells with them and they keep their phones in Faraday bags as often as they can.
Unrelated, but this is similar to when the Navy had to ban sailors from wearing their Fitbit watches when they were deployed. It's kind of easy to find an aircraft carrier when it has has a few hundred Fitbits sending their location from the middle of the Atlantic.
This is dumb. Either decide to have a phone or not. Period.
Unless you're retired and the only person that needs to get ahold of you is the old lady - no calls or texts are going to come in while in a fancy chip bag. That means legit work or people who need to get ahold of you are SOL. What good is that?
The shits tracked... always has been. Nsa has it ALL. No matter what stupid idea you come up with to circumvent it. Get over it.
Just leave it at home...or grow up. Faraday bag... GTFOOH.
If you've suspected this from the very beginning, you've probably enacted some very personal measures to combat, such as saving scrambled passwords and using different devices only for certain apps. How they gonna track ten different me's scattered all across the innerwebs? They'll either sit and scratch their heads or just move along to the next "target".
One login to a username the AI can figure out is yours and they can draw an equal sign between the two devices and undo that work. And they know who your cell plan is registered to, that’s another way they can pierce the anonymity. There are many more.
How they gonna track ten different me's scattered all across the innerwebs?
Extremely easily. Goggles entire thing while I worked their was associating multiple accounts to one person and enhancing tracking --- of course in the name of "better marketing analytics". Evil masquerades around in a Marketing costume. And if the public at large understood how marketing actually works we would destroy the industry overnight.
It sounds like your threat model is a dude in khakis sitting there looking at your device and getting bored. Instead think about servers hoovering up all data that they can get their hands on and patiently storing everything that can give them a clue. Then they can run programs across all of that at once and get thousands of people in a button press.
i think catsfive is right. Also, these tasks are automated and there is likely an AI bot involved so it doesn't matter how many devices you are using, they still have the info from the cell towers that triangulates your exact position within a couple of feet, so even that doesn't really save you. I'm no expert, I'm just putting together the pieces of what I think is true. If you know better, please share so that we can all be a bit safer.
I remember Synth from Skycoin saying they have all got backdoors in them at the hardware level and could be remotely accessed, as most use the same cell radios and wifi radios iirc
He was designing open source chips and phones for this reason as part of the Skycoin project, open hardware would be a good place to start with phones.
They've gotten cheap and prolific on ebay and the big online stores. Some might be better than others, but a phone seems to be squelched pretty easily, even with a couple of mylar bags.
Indeed. The guys riding the crotch rockets used to just haul ass when the police got behind them knowing they didn't have backup out in the sticks and that there was no way the police could catch them. Now the police Geo-fence the areas where they frequent and then police catch them when they catch up. Geo-fencing data is admissible in court in many states.
Just be sure to test it. I bought a 'RFID shielded' wallet, and the RFID chipped card I use to get into the door at work will still trip the sensor when I wave my wallet with the card by it.
I personally saw a government server cluster whose exact owner was secret in a telco data center back almost 20 years ago, right about the time it came out that they were doing mass surveillance at telcos. (Before Snowden) I am a software developer and have had time to adjust, and I think it’s important for especially anons to get started if they haven’t headed down this path yet. It’s important information about today’s world, not paranoia.
Rob Braxman, if I recall the correct spelling, is a great resource on personal device privacy and security. He's been warning, alerting, tracking and reporting on the topic for years. If I got the name wrong, just look for How to De-Google Your Phone or something similar, and find his channel and watch his introductory stuff. Might not be on YT anymore, I'd start with Rumble.
I bought my Faraday bag on amazon. There are tons of them. There is a company that makes them that are approved for military use. The company is named Mission Darkness, but I'm sure there are others that meet the military standard for frequency blocking.
I bought the “Dehis Security Pouch” faraday bag from Amazon and have been very satisfied with it. It definitely blocks any signal. Quick and easy to put on and take off.
The first step is to read and understand all the comments on this page. Faraday bags do some things but everything depends on the threat model. Everyone engaging in in information warfare should have a clear understanding of the risks and threats they face, and this comment thread is providing information about that.
Better yet, throw the damn thing away.
Or don't buy a "smart" phone to begin with.
Every cell phone works by communicating with the nearby cell towers. Each cell tower’s location is known, and each cell phone has a unique identifier. It’s simple to calculate geographic location from which cell towers are nearest and at what distance. And of course each call is well known to the system. Not only this but the concept of “switched off” is fictional to an important degree — it’s possible for phone software and hardware to be active even when it’s off. And it is definitely possible to compromise phones and install software on them without users’ consent or knowledge. And that can include access to microphone and camera. My understanding is that everything I have written here is true of button phones as well as smartphones.
Further, tower sites have "panels" (antenna), they cover about 120 degrees. It is known what panel a phone is connected through/with.
Signal strength and math can develop an arc of probable location in that 120 degrees.
So if a connection to a tower is used, the more crowded the better, but then there are Ring cameras and such.
I just remembered....remember when Ghislaine was found and arrested? She had her phone wrapped in tin foil.
It's a free tool to fuck with them.
I generate noise. Tons of it. My phone is constantly doing things and reporting locations that have nothing to do with me.
Meanwhile.. they'll pull you into court, they'll show the jury your faraday bag, ask "what type of person would even own this?" They'll show your phone logs, when it turned off and when it turned back on, then they'll correlate these times with whatever they want to pin on you. Then they'll show premeditation due to the bag.
You CANNOT hide from these people. You CAN give them TONS of useless data, however.
It's information war. You need an actual warfare strategy. Stealth isn't one.
Wow, thanks for that info.
You will be amazed at the battery life improvement with a Faraday bag, even if you had been keeping it turned off. Not to mention the peace and quiet. It's there for you to use in need, not there sucking up all your attention.
I was just reading an article about a faraday bag and it said to put your phone or airplane mode before you put it in your bag because the battery will drain searching for a signal. Does that mean you can't get incoming phone calls I wonder? And I watch a lot of those crime shows where cell signals are tracked to find a missing person, or to establish a suspect's movements around a crime. I guess a faraday bag would prevent a criminal from being tracked too?
I was keeping my phone in airplane mode and turned off, and the battery was still draining in a day. Now it lasts three weeks. The newer the phone, the more it tries to connect with nearby phones or bluetooth devices, even when you try to disable this in the settings. That drains your battery. Also, other devices are trying to contact yours, and if your phone responds that drains the battery. Putting the phone in a Faraday bag makes it invisible as long as it is in the bag, it can't receive a signal. If it tries to send a signal, which it shouldn't if you switched that function off, the signal won't go anywhere and battery use will be minimal. Your mails and messages might pile up if they go to some cloud storage.. Yes, the just and unjust alike are hidden.
Yes, you’re correct. If it works it works. And yes it drains the battery searching for a connection.
Airplane mode turns the internet off, calls and text don't come in either. When reading a book I keep my tablet on airplane mode it saves the battery.
Yeah, I believe your phone will search for a signal. Put it in airplane mode. Being in a faraday bag stops all signals, in or out.
Airplane mode might not be true anymore, so the bag is a good idea.
added to cart
I've been using a Faraday bag for my phone for a couple of years now. They work great. I strongly believe that you shouldn't use your phone for social media. Even if you think that you are hidden behind a VPN, the very nature of how your phone works gives away your exact position and the IMEI# will lead them directly to you. (I think it's called IMEI#, but I could be wrong). The safest thing that I know to do is only use my laptop at home for social media and I hide behind a VPN. They may be able to track my laptop as well, but at least my position is not being triangulated by 2 or more cell towers.
Exactly. Plus it's kinda funny to me that people use biometrics to unlock their phone. Imagine a reworded unlock message after using your fingerprint --- "thank you for confirming it is you via fingerprint. We now know everything you do after this point is in fact you'
Plus the fact that they then have exact and precise scans available. Face, fingers, heartbeat pattern (watch), etc.
I agree.
Awesome. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. ;) Thanks for letting me know fren.
Be wary of companies that sell Faraday bags that leak..... If you are going to to buy a Faraday bag, don't get ripped off by dubious claims. There are good companies though. But, I'm not here to advertise or pitch for any company.
You can easily make your own Faraday cage. At night place your phone in a cocktail shaker with lid closed and place it on your bed stand. Works 100%. Make sure you drank all of your cocktail though. And don't make the mistake of mixing a drink with your cell phone.
If you don't have an instrument for checking leaks, a cheap way is to use a radio. Tune in a station, place it in the Faraday cage and cover it. If you can still hear the station, the cage is not working.
Stainless Steel bathroom trash cans with lids work too. There may be some leakage between the lid and the base, but that can be remedied with aluminum duct tape to make a better seal. The ones that have an overlapping SS lip are best for Faraday cages.
Another idea is to use a ziplock bag. Wrap aluminum duct tape around the bag overlapping it to assure no leakage. Just place you phone in the bag, seal it and fold over the ziplock so the weight of the phone sits on the folded ziplocked end.
And yet another idea is to use aluminum foil, ziplock bag, with clear laminate plastic. This is the type used for IDs, photos, news clippings, etc. Place your phone in the ziplock bag. Take a sheet of aluminum foil and wrap it around the ziplock bag. You can double it for assuring better protection. Next take the clear laminate and sandwich the aluminum wrapped bag with the front and back laminate.
Finally, if you want to assure privacy at all times, just get rid of you cell phone altogether. I did 6 years ago and have never looked back. Despite what the wife says, there's never been any emergency that couldn't wait until I got home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3-KLjaf9_4
Thanks for sharing this so our fellow frogs don't get burned. I learned this lesson the hard way. The solution is to by one that is rated for military use. They're usually not anymore expensive than the crap ones either.
Awesome post. I would like to add 2 things...
your microwave oven will shield your phone like a Faraday bag unless the microwave is leaking. If your microwave is leaking, get rid of it, it's slightly dangerous, especially to pregnant women. Just remember to take your phone out before you use the microwave ;)
There are free apps that you can download to test if your bag is fully shielding your cell phone. I use one on my android called Shielding-Tester
https://www.howtogeek.com/791386/what-is-a-faraday-bag-and-should-you-use-one/
Bear in mind that a faraday bag is simple metallized polymer, very similar to mylar. Some use aluminum and some use copper mesh. These do work to convert signals to a voltage in the metal lining of the bag, however these are not perfect and simply attenuate the signals, they don't necessarily eliminate the signals. The mesh works better than the mylar type because the mesh wires run perpendicular to each other. This helps cancel out induced voltages To truly make a shielded enclosure, it has to be connected to ground to bleed the induced voltages off and prevent "retransmission" which is essentially signal being induced due to the varying electromagnetic fields. If you feel there is a likelihood that you have been targeted for some reason, get rid of your phone. Turn it off, place in a metal box with no gaps and ground the box to earth. A good box for this is a surplus military ammo can. These are great because they have a waterproof seal. If you need to have a phone, buy a prepaid diaposable cell to call people that you need to. One thing that most people today don't have is a physical phone number book. I recommend everyone write down their important contacts so that if you don't have your phone, you can still call family and friends. And for the love of all things holy, remember this website so you can let us know what is happening. There may come a time when we need to help each other out.
I had some sand stuck in my camera lens on my old phone. Every time I could hear the lens zoom in and out and it was multiple times a week that I would hear that thing zooming without me using it.
Ha! I'll just the the battery out! Checkmate!
Um... Uh-oh.
I assume that you just discovered that newer phones don't allow you to take your battery out. This was my first solution too. A cop friend of mine turned me on to the Faraday bags because they have to use them as well.
Wait, what? Do please elaborate on this
Sure. He told me a story about a SWAT team that got shredded by cartel thugs. The cartel saw them coming. Now they don't even take their cells with them and they keep their phones in Faraday bags as often as they can.
Unrelated, but this is similar to when the Navy had to ban sailors from wearing their Fitbit watches when they were deployed. It's kind of easy to find an aircraft carrier when it has has a few hundred Fitbits sending their location from the middle of the Atlantic.
Once again I say more people need to be watching Rob Braxman's videos.
This is dumb. Either decide to have a phone or not. Period.
Unless you're retired and the only person that needs to get ahold of you is the old lady - no calls or texts are going to come in while in a fancy chip bag. That means legit work or people who need to get ahold of you are SOL. What good is that?
The shits tracked... always has been. Nsa has it ALL. No matter what stupid idea you come up with to circumvent it. Get over it.
Just leave it at home...or grow up. Faraday bag... GTFOOH.
Does anybody make a belt clip that basically does the same thing? If not good opportunity
My phone was using my mobile data without it being on. I noticed this when my wifi went down. :/
If you've suspected this from the very beginning, you've probably enacted some very personal measures to combat, such as saving scrambled passwords and using different devices only for certain apps. How they gonna track ten different me's scattered all across the innerwebs? They'll either sit and scratch their heads or just move along to the next "target".
One login to a username the AI can figure out is yours and they can draw an equal sign between the two devices and undo that work. And they know who your cell plan is registered to, that’s another way they can pierce the anonymity. There are many more.
Extremely easily. Goggles entire thing while I worked their was associating multiple accounts to one person and enhancing tracking --- of course in the name of "better marketing analytics". Evil masquerades around in a Marketing costume. And if the public at large understood how marketing actually works we would destroy the industry overnight.
All about psychological manipulation.
IMEI #
It sounds like your threat model is a dude in khakis sitting there looking at your device and getting bored. Instead think about servers hoovering up all data that they can get their hands on and patiently storing everything that can give them a clue. Then they can run programs across all of that at once and get thousands of people in a button press.
i think catsfive is right. Also, these tasks are automated and there is likely an AI bot involved so it doesn't matter how many devices you are using, they still have the info from the cell towers that triangulates your exact position within a couple of feet, so even that doesn't really save you. I'm no expert, I'm just putting together the pieces of what I think is true. If you know better, please share so that we can all be a bit safer.
ID Stronghold make faraday bags, wallets and card sleeves. I recommend them.
https://www.idstronghold.com/
I remember Synth from Skycoin saying they have all got backdoors in them at the hardware level and could be remotely accessed, as most use the same cell radios and wifi radios iirc
He was designing open source chips and phones for this reason as part of the Skycoin project, open hardware would be a good place to start with phones.
Where would you recommend a Faraday bag from?
You can make your own bag, lined with aluminium foil.
Alternatively, buy a silvered "antistatic" bag used for protecting electronic semiconductors. (Not the pink ones, the silvered type.) https://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Desco/13215?qs=sAA9Uk8jJ2hPt7qDCq%252BIQQ%3D%3D
Or simply set the phone to "airplane mode".
I just tuck it under my hat. It’s made of Reynolds.
Underrated comment here! 👏
You win the internet for the day!!
This is an awesome comment! Well done.
I would be highly surprised if they didn't have access to your phone in some capacity while in airplane mode.
They've gotten cheap and prolific on ebay and the big online stores. Some might be better than others, but a phone seems to be squelched pretty easily, even with a couple of mylar bags.
Like they haven't already been doing this.
https://www.amazon.com/faraday-bag/s?k=faraday+bag
Hmmm. Hypothetically of course I might occasionally ride a little fast on my ZX14R. Seems like a job for a faraday bag. : -)
Indeed. The guys riding the crotch rockets used to just haul ass when the police got behind them knowing they didn't have backup out in the sticks and that there was no way the police could catch them. Now the police Geo-fence the areas where they frequent and then police catch them when they catch up. Geo-fencing data is admissible in court in many states.
Just be sure to test it. I bought a 'RFID shielded' wallet, and the RFID chipped card I use to get into the door at work will still trip the sensor when I wave my wallet with the card by it.
I have wondered if these types of public statements are attempts to warn the useful idiots to prolong their usefulness.
Granted it depends on target audiences.
Nothing can stop what is coming.
Nothing.
"Not even your arrest?"
What part of NOTHING did you not understand?
Great thread!
Thanks to those who recommended Rob Braxman for learning how to get up to speed on protecting our privacy. I had not heard of him before this.
For anyone interested, here is a link to his yt channel (Rob Braxman Tech): https://www.youtube.com/@robbraxmantech/featured
It he has a rumble, etc., please share it. I'd love to know that as well.
I wonder how many people are left in the world who have never owned a cell phone.
Isn’t there a way to remove the GPS on a phone physically off the circuit board? WiFi would still give your location, though.
Yay! More paranoia porn for one's day!
I personally saw a government server cluster whose exact owner was secret in a telco data center back almost 20 years ago, right about the time it came out that they were doing mass surveillance at telcos. (Before Snowden) I am a software developer and have had time to adjust, and I think it’s important for especially anons to get started if they haven’t headed down this path yet. It’s important information about today’s world, not paranoia.
I couldn't agree more. They don't like us frogs.
How do I do it? Please thank you.
Rob Braxman, if I recall the correct spelling, is a great resource on personal device privacy and security. He's been warning, alerting, tracking and reporting on the topic for years. If I got the name wrong, just look for How to De-Google Your Phone or something similar, and find his channel and watch his introductory stuff. Might not be on YT anymore, I'd start with Rumble.
I bought my Faraday bag on amazon. There are tons of them. There is a company that makes them that are approved for military use. The company is named Mission Darkness, but I'm sure there are others that meet the military standard for frequency blocking.
Thank you and God bless
I bought the “Dehis Security Pouch” faraday bag from Amazon and have been very satisfied with it. It definitely blocks any signal. Quick and easy to put on and take off.
The first step is to read and understand all the comments on this page. Faraday bags do some things but everything depends on the threat model. Everyone engaging in in information warfare should have a clear understanding of the risks and threats they face, and this comment thread is providing information about that.
Amen fren