This is why my Phone is Graphene OS, I use VPN, and my computer is linux based.
Discussion
Your phone could be made of magic, but it's still gonna leave a record of your movements with the cellular towers.
Yeah, I use a non contract carrier but I know it still goes through Verizon towers.
Plus backdoored cellular modems with over the air root
If you turn on airplane mode it disables the cellular modem, also if the modem is compromised it can't affect the OS because it's isolated via IOMMU. The only thing a compromised modem could do is ignore airplane mode commands.
If you're going to keep airplane mode on 100% of the time, why would you have a device with a cellular modem? If you're going to turn airplane mode off, your backdoor is open. It's just a thing we have to accept for now if we want to have phones.
Someday we'll have better hardware.
Unfortunately our smart phones nearly always have gsm modules
wish it were possible to have a pocket sized android without the cellular tracking.
pixel tablet, if it were smaller, for instance.
What phone do you recommend?
No phone
GrapheneOS is good if you've got to carry one. The point is never to forget that if you're carrying a phone, you're still being tracked, even if you're limiting the damage from app-based threats. It is baked into the design oftheinfrastructure: if you can see the network, the network can see you. And it takes notes.
Good advice, thank you. We need a viable alternative to traditional phone carriers and towers, most people need to stay connected for work or with family these days, unfortunate that it comes at such a cost.
fact.
What about Pinephone Pro with the modem disabled by the hardware toggle or Librem 5 with the modem removed or disabled via the switch?
How about unplugged phones Ed? Care to share your thoughts?
This is what Zuri would use. #CODEDSHADOWS www.codedshadows.com
(Thanks to Spinnekop in South Africa 😎🤙⚡️🔥)
Is unplugged worth a view for Americans?
What about phone in flight mode? Can we trust that in your opinion?
I like the punkt phone first gen. Wish it was still compatible and available to get so I can use a simple tech phone again. I miss simple tech in sometime cases. Wish there were more options like that.
Meshtastic anything out of band.
You’re doing better than most of us at least
And a VPN could be a honeypot . . . channeling all your activity into Eye of Sauron
What do you think about silent.link ? It seems that it provides much better privacy if you only use data roaming.
unless your phone is in airplane mode, it is constantly pinging your location, regardless of whether it has a sim / esim
My understanding is that data roaming uses different towers or something and that determining location is more difficult that way. Maybe I’m wrong.
The value of silent.link is the number is not KYC, no account data to go along with the number. But the number is connecting to the towers, and that's triangulated precisely. Frequent location spots like your home will help deanonymize it. There is INVISV PGPP that mitigates these things but it's not open source
I thought the phone number was optional?
They are, you can select with number or not or just data
There is always a phone number whether it is enabled for voice and text or just data. In addition though, there are other unique numbers associated with your sim and IMEI is the one your phone sends to every tower to handshake with to receive service.
Yeah I don't see a number. Anyways I was referring to the IMEI which is a unique identifier.
Yeah nothing we can do about that unfortunately
There is a mitigation provided by PGPP, it uses a zero'd out IMEI, and some other cool things to thwart triangulation, reducing the precision to an area instead of a pinpoint. I think an important factor is number of users for the "hide in a crowd" effect, and I don't know anything about how many users they have. Also I want it to be open source but given their background I doubt it ever will be, it would have to be re-implemented based on their white paper.
Phone still givs off IMEI to the local tower
Phones devices have unique ID. So if its connecting to a tower the tower sees this unique ID and all the towers csn record this. so your home, places you visit. Even with NO sim.
Silent link is great in many many ways. But it still can not hide the built in device ID.
afaik graphene doesn't hide imei's yet or maybe never wil
just use airplane mode
edward snowden himself demonstrated a phone case about 13 years ago that showed that even in airplane mode and even when turned off most phones emit radio signals
welcome to 13 years ago, it's way way way worse now
this is true of google android and iOs, however I understand it is NOT the case for graphene OS
but you have verified gaussmeter evidence that it is true?
I don't think you'd use a gaussmeter but rather a mobile base station so you can measure the incoming pings
This was the approach used by SRLabs when testing their Blue Merle software for IMEI switching
https://github.com/srlabs/blue-merle?tab=readme-ov-file#imei-randomization
doesn't necessarily have to be mobile radio protocol, just something that someone can pick up, doesn't have to be strong, about 20 metres is probably enough, and that won't detect it
The only way is to remove the battery, which was easy on cell phones 20 years ago. Now the quickest and easiest way would be to destroy the phone
Is it enough to remove the SIM card these days?
Joe GL we have someone in our community that works or worked on cell towers
Even if wifi only on Graphene. Your connection patterns even if using VPN are or will be easily trackable.
💕❤️💔
What are your thoughts on the unplugged phone?
Is magic open source though?
What if there is only one cellular tower?
What say I use GrapheneOS, keep it on airplane mode, randomize wifi mac, only use public wifi internet with a vpn, and when I'm in a pinch only turn on cellular data with a data-only no-kyc esim?
Do you have a suggestion for this issue?
Many cities I travel to for work and where I live, they offer cellular over "city-wide wifi". Would this be a potential solution?
I also heard T-Mobile will be using Starlink -- but if I understand it correctly, their towers will be linking to Starlink so the phone-tower connection will still be based off current infrastructure -- and thus will not be any more anonymizing.
Maybe a LoRa network for around town?
Boy this guy’s a master of the obvious.
My phone is GrapheneOS too, but all cellular modems are inherently compromised
You'd need your phone not to be linked to your id. Ideally without an IMEI number (if that's possible). You would have to make sure your email, social media BANKING on your phone were totally anonymous. Even if you're using an esim which is not connected to your id, your phone will still track your movements.
Most threat levels won't warrant such paranoia but don't be fooled. I love and use Graphene btw
Get yourself an esim router and change anonymous esim regularly. Only ever connect your phone via wifi. Use built in VPN/Tor in the router.
@silentlink
Now imagine if everybody would do this. Additionally devices could connect as a mobile meshnet.
What about stealing someone else's wifi like a mile away?
If you take your phone between even just your home and work —doxxed locations— it is trivial to associate it with your true-name identity even if all of the hardware and services are perfectly anonymous. Even journalists have managed these kind of investigations. "Anonymized" location data is unfortunely not anonymous — it *can never* be anonymous. And yet it is sold like any other product.
Your phone's movements through physical space are unique. Even if you live in a building of 400 people, the movements of 399 of them are not going to match the tower records of your phone's movements. Even if you work in the same office. People's geographic movements are unique—and identifying.
I'm not trying to make you guys wrap yourself in tinfoil— almost nobody needs to be as paranoid as I am, and even I am tremendously lazy about opsec these days. The key is *awareness*: to simply be cognizant of what kind of records you're generating as you go about your life, so you can make informed, reasoned judgments about how much of it you can leave hanging out, and what parts of it you'd rather pay an effort-tax to shield from appearing in somebody's (or everybody's) database.
I walked the floor at ISC West (international security conference) last year for shits and gigs. It was fucking terrifying…
The level of sophistication in surveillance software/hardware is so far beyond what people think it’s insane… and as more and more datasets get integrated together, it only gets worse…
And this was just the stuff they publicly showcase to any Jabroni like me who walks the floor…
Don't worry, it's going to get worse.
Well, thank goodness for that…
Thanks for visiting Nostr today :D
Snowden: We are all screwed. Anyways, back to parenting.
Oh well.. 
MANDIBLES
Yeah with that attitude
Up until the money dies. Once that happens, who’s going to continue to fund sophisticated surveillance? Governments need citizens and currently there is no need to compete for them. Citizens should have zero fear about their digital footprint. It will change. These things take time. But I agree, currently in clown world under the fiat standard the sky is the limit.
few.
#fixthemoney
🥹🫂
I tried saying, and repeating 20 years ago to anybody who would listen. The government should be banned from leveraging computers in ANY way to tally, track or process any data about US citizens. Including the IRS, DMV, as the lowest level.
There will never be an exit from this.
Would the government ban itself from this? You can't solve the problems caused by the state through the state.
Theoretically, there is a Congress, which represents the best interests of the citizens who elect them.
Of course, most here know that's a fairytale. Nullified in the early 1900s
I'm not sure people understand how invasive it'll get. I've been working on a graduate engineering degree. All the new research projects have AI integrated into them.
What do we do about this? How do we turn the tides?
Who is paying for this surveillance state ... taxpayers
It is always darkest before the dawn
😉
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Love it. Can point it towards all the normies at work.
But it's not something that can be defeated by technology (alone).
The goal has to be to make the data worthless by removing the use cases for the collection and analysis.
Recent email: "move your FitBit account into your Google account today! All your exercise and health history stored securely."
🤡
Say more
Walked the same trade floor pre-COVID and it was disturbing back then.
Absofuckinlutely! It's all about threat models. AFAIK I haven't pissed of my government, that much? Apart from the trips to Russia!!!
I've come to appreciate your sacrifices and am glad you're jurisdictionally an arms length to be a bit lazy
“Thank you” feels entirely insufficient. Nevertheless… thank you 🙏
Yea I can buy Reynolds tinfoil or Deadpool guy's tinfoil but what will keep safe? Wrap my phone in tinfoil? I'm so tracked they will follow me to and from my home and work to the store for the machine or they'll harass and stalk the driver who delivered the package l, etc
I hear ya it's just non stop with them. It's enough level. And every time I attend these meetings I'm always surrounded by cops. And this time it's worse.
Using grapheneOS WiFi only and somehow disable the radio modem would be best.
I really only need to use my phone as a "computer" at home over VPN and tor for amethyst and Bitcoin Lightning.
Hate the experience on desktop for both due to various reasons.
Pixel 8 pro has an amazing camera for sunsets, landscapes, and nature etc. Don't need any connection for that photography either till ireturn home.
I am very happy with my pixel and graphene
Thanks for the advice and for everything you do for the world.
How do you use the camera on Graphene, i the Graphene camera app sucks, no?
looks good, thank you. so you use the Graphene camera app or the original from Google in a container like shelter?
I use both for different controls. Night time and sunset I use the google pixel camera app.
Google Services are sandboxed by default in GrapheneOS.
did not know that, thank you. so i dont need an extra container app?
no. Graphene does all the hard work and setup for you.
fantastic thank you
Also highly granular app permissions. So you can turn off network access for, say, the Google Camera.
Completely agree.
Thanks for your work and service for the free world!
It will be appreciated later or sooner.
Fuck Zuck
Everyone just needs to find something they love that is useful to society and stop playing superheroes.
Wow so far the FBI is still pissed about my status in America and still accusing me of requiring an immigration visa to live in America. Even tho I'm an American born citizens.
I’m choosing to be on NOSTR as my real identity. It is an informed choice. Privacy is a human right as much as air and water, if I choose to be private for some of my life, that is my freedom.
Others choose their own privacy. That is their freedom.
Attempting to stop that freedom should be a crime in all civilised nations.
Thank you for saying this part, I find it to be the most important aspect of privacy.
Hey I wonder if we should have a NOSTR phone off day or two at random. This would be in the spirit of messing with the eve droppers. Thoughts?
I'm thinking it would be great to see their faces when their screens go blank.
And you can get someone else to do it for you, and the "price" for that should be something more expensive than money. Sometimes it's harder to hide people behind "7 proxies" than it is to hide network traffic behind "7 proxies". But it's not impossible.
> https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/good-luck-im-behind-7-proxies
Don't put a sim inside the phone.. for one. Secondly, don't run a googled device. Make sure it's something like GrapheneOS and always in airplane mode so your cellular radio is off at all times. You can use airplane mode and still use wifi or Bluetooth. But make sure you're only connecting then with a VPN.
this is the single biggest threat to my kids generation. everything is a quick click, join, share, accept. They have ZERO clue or worry about what type of footprint or data they leave or how it can be used against them. They are all poisoned for ease of use. Its honestly one of the main reasons I hate Apple products.... dumbs tyem down to the most simple uses and none of them can spare the time to even include cross use platforms. the iPhone users refuse to take any extra steps to include via other apps other kids in IChats or video calls if not just the simple click of FaceTime. its destroying the kids in the U.S.
I need
Is it true that your phone pings various Bluetooth trackers even in retail locations - thus revealing your movement to data brokers?
if bluetooth is on at all
So I need more than one phone? lol 🤣
Shheeesh. I’m going back to the way it was;
The best using a phone without sim using hotspot router and custom rom with fdroid app store.
Like rob explained in this video.
🤔
Data brokerage is a $200B ind.
Everyone should read data and goliath by bruce schneier
Add to the towers triangulating data, there's a gyroscope(position of the phone), accelerometer, barometer(sensor of pressure = your altitude), wifi AP's signals triangulation which greatly enchances your location data.
You can literally be seen walking up/down the stairs.
Every single step.
More. Scrolling through your FB feed tour camera tracking your eyes movement can basicaly think what exactly you're looking at/reading/skipping.
Analyzing your patterns and comparing them to some control/average interactions with the help of AI you can basically be read throughout.
Stay safe.
What are your thought about Graphene OS?
But even an old nokia would dox you in that sense, so the solution would be no phone at all or other system than antennas. Prople will not give up their phones, so the antenna infra may be where we should focus on.
none of this should be a problem except .....
like everything else somebody has to weaponise it.
we can only hope that sanity will return one day
thank you for all you have done and continue to do.
GM 🙃
This presumes a SIM card right?
your phone connects to cell towers even without a sim.
that's why you can dial 911 without a sim.
🤙🫡
#086 cop has been following me all around the city for days and no one will give me a ride unless I'm doing laundry after I've been stalked by the cops. There's definitely racial segregation with the black community. Both by the cops enforcing it probably and their own hardened hearts. The nicer I am to the black community the more they push me away.
This is why I leave my phone exactly halfway between home and work. I check it in the mornings on the way in and again at the end of the day on the way home. This has enabled me to carry on with my life and not need to move to Russia.
During covid the Canadian government bought all the "anonymised" data from from Google to see how often people went out. Yeah it's plain to see if someone was going back to the same house everyday that they live there. Google should not be allowed to sell/give any of this away.
#UnplugSkynet
If you seek privacy you do not carry a phone
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Lose the baseband and bluetooth chips, 2.4Ghz WiFi / cable only should be the norm for privacy “phones”
