Comments on: Disabling location services on a mobile device does not turn off GPS, and does not significantly reduce the risk of location exposure

By: Kevin M.

Kevin M. — Sun, 30 Aug 2020 00:04:30 +0000

The well dressed man always has a faraday pouch handy. I favor the mos equipment line of products.

By: TRX

TRX — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 16:06:54 +0000

“disabling location services on a mobile device does not turn off GPS”

On Android, the “disable” sliders don’t actually disable anything; apps are free to ignore the settings if they want.

You’ll have to search on Bing or Yandex to find many references to that; for some reason Google seems not to have noticed the pages talking about it…

By: RLVC

RLVC — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 03:17:13 +0000

Thank you, NSA.

Be most concerned about private collection by third-party apps. Many third-party apps themselves include third-party frameworks, for ads and other purposes. Some of these third-party frameworks collect your location and sell it to anyone with a credit card. Some of these “anyones” include state and federal agencies, such as the IRS, which has used the so-collected whereabouts of its “suspects” to build cases against them.

You will want to delete most of your third-party apps unless they are open-source projects backed by reputable organizations. You can find a weather forecast with a simple search if you really need one.

Then be concerned about other forms of bulk collection, private first, then public. The Silicon Valley surveillance oligopoly are less likely to sell your information than the cellular providers, but the former know more about you and are much, much smarter. The NSA loves you and wants you to be happy.

Then be concerned about active collection, such as by fake towers or overflying drones.

And only then be concerned about the integrity of your device, OS-level.

P.S. Soon you will need to be concerned about the retail chains, which are all-in on rolling out their own private AI-powered surveillance grids; these will not rely on your smartphone for their purpose.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 15:18:50 +0000

One American guy said he destroyed the Norwegian army during a war-game by running Tinder from multiple locations and trilaterating the sluts on the other side. “Inga is only 3.4km from your location!” Thanks Inga, you just got your whole platoon shelled to bits.

By: Bob Sykes

Bob Sykes — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 12:54:40 +0000

If you are that concerned about surveillance, leave your smart phone home, or don’t buy one in the first place. If you need to make a phone call, buy a burner, use it once, throw it away.