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Beware of find-my-phone, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, NSA tells mobile users:
The National Security Agency is recommending that some government workers and people generally concerned about privacy turn off find-my-phone, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth whenever those services are not needed, as well as limit location data usage by apps.
"Location data can be extremely valuable and must be protected," an advisory published on Tuesday stated. "It can reveal details about the number of users in a location, user and supply movements, daily routines (user and organizational), and can expose otherwise unknown associations between users and locations."
NSA officials acknowledged that geolocation functions are enabled by design and are essential to mobile communications. The officials also admit that the recommended safeguards are impractical for most users. Mapping, location tracking of lost or stolen phones, automatically connecting to Wi-Fi networks, and fitness trackers and apps are just a few of the things that require fine-grained locations to work at all.
But these features come at a cost. Adversaries may be able to tap into location data that app developers, advertising services, and other third parties receive from apps and then store in massive databases. Adversaries may also subscribe to services such as those offered by Securus and LocationSmart, two services that The New York Times and KrebsOnSecurity documented, respectively. Both companies either tracked or sold locations of customers collected by the cell towers of major cellular carriers.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 05 2020, @09:29AM (9 children)
Security experts recommend that you don't install apps on your phones. If you must install an app, you MUST understand that you are trusting everyone in the development chain, as well as every distributor of that software between you and the authors. If you install an app, you have handed over all of your data to people who you cannot check up on. They own your ass from the moment you install their app. Let the buyer beware.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Wednesday August 05 2020, @09:49AM (7 children)
Not installing apps is not enough. To be truly private, don't use a phone. Or at least not a smartphone. And switch it off when you are not using it. Maybe remove the battery (if your phone still allows it).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 05 2020, @10:17AM (5 children)
Rather than removing the battery, which can be a pain in the ass, why not just dump it into a Faraday cage? It need not be fancy, pretty, or anything like that. Just a metal cage or box that will hold the phone when not in use. Or, if you demand something pretty - invest a few dollars and make it pretty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @11:52AM
It does have to be fancy, pretty cage, so that when i hold it up to my ear, people will be jealous of my gilded faraday cage X.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday August 05 2020, @11:58AM
You might as well just remove the battery then, no calls are coming thru to your phone while inside the cage. Question is then is it faster to push the battery back in then to open up your cage of awesome? If speed is a factor. I guess the cage would be safer and less risk of damage, compared to taking out and inserting the battery over and over again (however many times you would have to do that on a daily basis), the cage might lose out on not being very portable -- or I guess it could be. It probably doesn't have to be that much bigger then the phone (or?).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @03:46PM (1 child)
A Faraday cage might increase phone battery usage as the phone increases its radio power usage to try to connect to a cell tower. Depending on the phone, of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @04:36PM
A Faraday cage plus airplane mode [wikipedia.org] then?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @06:44PM
https://www.infowarsstore.com/alex-recommends/infowars-privacy-pouch [infowarsstore.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by leon_the_cat on Wednesday August 05 2020, @12:08PM
On my ancient rooted cyanogenmod 2.3 phone i installed something to disable the cell radio. The phone is nicely setup and had had nothing installed in years but i vowed never to get into using android phones ever ever again (or probably till it dies).
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday August 05 2020, @12:19PM
Actually, it can be worse than that. You might have to trust FUTURE "authors" of the app. There have been browser extensions that got bought and malware'd, for example.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]