Every keystroke is captured. I also have a flip phone, or at least I will until they no longer make them. I also only turn it on to make a call.
Not just keystrokes, there is a whole range of parameters besides that with which you type, speak, or video that are tracked such as walking cadence, in range phones, BT devices, wifi and cell tower, body temp, etc all used to ID you, people around you, activities going on etc, etc. Basically every sensor (transceivers, cameras, mics, temp, gyros, etc) on your phone provides data on you on those around you either on their own or in aggregate..
Yep.
The stasi could only dream of tracking their ‘people’ to the extent which many today would now willingly or ignorantly oblige by having a smartphone. If only people really understood the phone is smart, not the person carrying it.
For all the instant communication it provides, people are now more socially isolated than ever (even prior to kung flu). People see a friend’s FB page, or tweet, or onlyfans video (heh 😉 ) and think that somehow they have touched base or are still somehow active in their life.
The only ones who know you better than ever are those who are definitely NOT your friends.
I got caught out when my carrier took down the 2g network, so when they announced they would be taking the 3g network down I decided to be ahead of the game and went to Walmart with 30 USD in my pocket to get a new flip phone.
My new flip phone runs a Snapdragon processor with more raw computing power than my desktop tower of 20 years ago. It has WiFi, Bluetooth, aGPS and Google Assistant. YouTube and Google Maps apps also come preinstalled and there is an online app store. New apps can be written in HTML5 and JavaScript.
In other words, it’s a smartphone.
This is the new minimum spec for a phone. They don’t have to pry your old dumb/feature phone from your cold dead hands. All they have to do is disconnect the 3g network. If it’s a 4g phone, it’s a smartphone, even if it comfortingly looks like your old dumb phone.
It’s a Brave New World.
It does at least have one old world feature: you can remove the battery, although it does take a spudger or risking breaking a nail to do it.
Don’t take out the battery. Just wrap it in aluminum foil when not in use.
Totally not “listening”.
Yeah, his denial there–while it may be true, as far as he’s aware at least–seems more of a deflection than anything. His thesis that Big Tech doesn’t need to listen doesn’t mean that it doesn’t.
My buddy and me were once talking about a specific thing at a work function (~120 people grouped). I got back to my desk ~10 minutes later, and I started seeing ads for the thing on my work-computer instance of FB. We never touched our phones, and I think mine was in my shirt pocket. Were that many of my co-workers also discussing the thing that I got sucked into guilt by association? I think not.
After that, I did a test and shortly thereafter disabled my FB app on my phone. I lost a bunch of useful features, but I gained in privacy. A bit, anyway, given the permissiveness necessary in some Android apps. Got a bit more aggressive about general script/ad blockers, too, and I was already using them.
Yes, smartphones capture a ton of information about you. In this case it probably is much simpler than that. The home router has one external IP address for every device connected to it. If anyone bought, searched or clicked on an ad for that brand of toothpaste from that router, it’s IP address is now associated with said toothpaste. Further your device ID and probably email address is now associated with that IP address and hence said toothpaste. Thus the ads. I use a VPN to get an unique external IP address that changes regularly.
Another good point…wonder why the guy missed that obvious connection.
My neighbor had his wifi wide open. I often saw people parked in the front of his house typing away on laptops. I warned him and offered to set up the basic security but he just shrugged it off. I let it go and about 2 months later I came home from work to see Sheriff cars and ATF cruisers parked across his front lawn. Dog teams searched his house and all of his neighbors got “interviewed”.
Someone had used his open wifi to research sniper rifles and home locations of local politicians. I helped him out by providing 7 days of security camera views of our cul-de-sac showing the various cars that stopped to use his open hub. We don’t know if they ever tracked the guy down.
He had me set up his security for him right after he got out of his 10 hours of interrogation. Don’t shrug off protecting yourself!
In Canada, you are legally responsible for anything anyone does over your wifi connection if it does not have a password or is otherwise secured.
We were travelling and another person was using Waze to navigate. I mentioned “hey, I’ve never eaten at a Jack ‘N The Box” let’s stop (we didn’t still haven’t).
Got back to the hotel, fired up my tablet (don’t have an Ad blocker like I do on my computer)…first ad was for…you guessed it.
Coincidence, maybe….
Yet the authorities cannot seem to locate or intercept any ANTIFA communications. Nope. They coordinate and plan all their attacks in secret. Talk about misused and misplaced technological abilities …
No wonder the FBI consider ANTIFA a “concept”
A thread about electronics and privacy? Perfect timing!
I have so far been able to avoid the worlds of Facebook, Twitter, etc, and I have been working on reducing my reliance on Google and YouTube. Nevertheless, I am in a situation where I NEED to open an FB account to deal with a specific organization. It would simply involve checking in on their ‘page’ for updated info.
I know from my time on SDA that we have more than a couple tech-savvy regulars here, but as importantly, I know they exactly understand my concerns about privacy in today’s hardcore partisan world. Ha, the above posts make that clear.
Is it even possible to open a FB page and keep it ‘private’? Can I use a fake identity? I am not interested in being pestered with a lifetime of old acquaintances wanting to ‘connect’ and then being dragged down the FB rabbit-hole, like some I know. Any quality advice on security, privacy settings, etc., would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Well I don’t think we can hide from this, so there’s got to be a way we can flood their databases with useless data. Start trading phones amongst ourselves. Or or certain days we all give our phones to one friend who takes them to a gay bar or a strip club or other random locations. You know…really mess with their algorithms.
Or find a way to clone the phones of certain high profile figures, not to eavesdrop, but simply to have them visit certain “interesting” locations, and potentially meet with other “interesting” figures.
I’ve tried multiple times to salt my phone’s audible data collection with very specific terms. Disappointingly, not once have I seen the effect described here.
I don’t have FB or Twitter or any social media apps installed on the phone. If I ever need to use those sites, I hit them through the phone’s browser and I clear my phone’s browser cache at least daily. I am guessing that browser access may have less data hoovering capabilities. The apps can probably listen to you, but browser cookies and JavaScript code may not be able to do so.
Rather than experiencing the “holy crap, it was listening to me!” effect, I just gets ads for things that I’ve already bought online. After I bought a 3D printer on Amazon, ads everywhere showed me the same 3D printer on Amazon until I cleared my browser cache. Maybe they thought I’d like to buy another one.
The infallible AI also shows me endless ads for gutter leaf filters, particularly on YouTube. Which seems really dumb as Google knows my address and must know that I live in a highrise rather than a house.
One trick I learned on my laptop is to keep some ‘custom/classic car sales’ links that I tap on regularly which at least creates a steady influx of ‘pretty car pictures’ around my borders when surfing. Ha, a tiny bit of control is better than none.
Also, my understanding is that most algorithms are rather simplistic and operate more like a sledgehammer than an icepick. YouTubers regularly complain about being punished for stringing a couple of words together, context mattering not. Tim Poole seems rather adept at dealing with YT, successfully reversing a few of these ‘charged and convicted by algorithm’ actions, but sad to see him so willfully self-censoring to keep his little empire flourishing.
i kept getting ads for occil lascopes , two for one occil ascopes , so many i switched away from gmail . they started up again about a year later. i swear i only looked them up once ,
I worked for a Canadian retailer and we collected customer info including phone numbers and email addresses. When a customer opened our weekly flyer, and later entered a mall where one of our stores were located, they would get a ‘push notice about something they looked at in our flyer. We could actually track them to see where they opened that flyer and how often they opened it.
I have no use for a flip phone. My phone needs to be dead serious.
Every keystroke is captured. I also have a flip phone, or at least I will until they no longer make them. I also only turn it on to make a call.
Not just keystrokes, there is a whole range of parameters besides that with which you type, speak, or video that are tracked such as walking cadence, in range phones, BT devices, wifi and cell tower, body temp, etc all used to ID you, people around you, activities going on etc, etc. Basically every sensor (transceivers, cameras, mics, temp, gyros, etc) on your phone provides data on you on those around you either on their own or in aggregate..
Yep.
The stasi could only dream of tracking their ‘people’ to the extent which many today would now willingly or ignorantly oblige by having a smartphone. If only people really understood the phone is smart, not the person carrying it.
For all the instant communication it provides, people are now more socially isolated than ever (even prior to kung flu). People see a friend’s FB page, or tweet, or onlyfans video (heh 😉 ) and think that somehow they have touched base or are still somehow active in their life.
The only ones who know you better than ever are those who are definitely NOT your friends.
I got caught out when my carrier took down the 2g network, so when they announced they would be taking the 3g network down I decided to be ahead of the game and went to Walmart with 30 USD in my pocket to get a new flip phone.
My new flip phone runs a Snapdragon processor with more raw computing power than my desktop tower of 20 years ago. It has WiFi, Bluetooth, aGPS and Google Assistant. YouTube and Google Maps apps also come preinstalled and there is an online app store. New apps can be written in HTML5 and JavaScript.
In other words, it’s a smartphone.
This is the new minimum spec for a phone. They don’t have to pry your old dumb/feature phone from your cold dead hands. All they have to do is disconnect the 3g network. If it’s a 4g phone, it’s a smartphone, even if it comfortingly looks like your old dumb phone.
It’s a Brave New World.
It does at least have one old world feature: you can remove the battery, although it does take a spudger or risking breaking a nail to do it.
Don’t take out the battery. Just wrap it in aluminum foil when not in use.
Totally not “listening”.
Yeah, his denial there–while it may be true, as far as he’s aware at least–seems more of a deflection than anything. His thesis that Big Tech doesn’t need to listen doesn’t mean that it doesn’t.
My buddy and me were once talking about a specific thing at a work function (~120 people grouped). I got back to my desk ~10 minutes later, and I started seeing ads for the thing on my work-computer instance of FB. We never touched our phones, and I think mine was in my shirt pocket. Were that many of my co-workers also discussing the thing that I got sucked into guilt by association? I think not.
After that, I did a test and shortly thereafter disabled my FB app on my phone. I lost a bunch of useful features, but I gained in privacy. A bit, anyway, given the permissiveness necessary in some Android apps. Got a bit more aggressive about general script/ad blockers, too, and I was already using them.
Yes, smartphones capture a ton of information about you. In this case it probably is much simpler than that. The home router has one external IP address for every device connected to it. If anyone bought, searched or clicked on an ad for that brand of toothpaste from that router, it’s IP address is now associated with said toothpaste. Further your device ID and probably email address is now associated with that IP address and hence said toothpaste. Thus the ads. I use a VPN to get an unique external IP address that changes regularly.
Another good point…wonder why the guy missed that obvious connection.
My neighbor had his wifi wide open. I often saw people parked in the front of his house typing away on laptops. I warned him and offered to set up the basic security but he just shrugged it off. I let it go and about 2 months later I came home from work to see Sheriff cars and ATF cruisers parked across his front lawn. Dog teams searched his house and all of his neighbors got “interviewed”.
Someone had used his open wifi to research sniper rifles and home locations of local politicians. I helped him out by providing 7 days of security camera views of our cul-de-sac showing the various cars that stopped to use his open hub. We don’t know if they ever tracked the guy down.
He had me set up his security for him right after he got out of his 10 hours of interrogation. Don’t shrug off protecting yourself!
In Canada, you are legally responsible for anything anyone does over your wifi connection if it does not have a password or is otherwise secured.
We were travelling and another person was using Waze to navigate. I mentioned “hey, I’ve never eaten at a Jack ‘N The Box” let’s stop (we didn’t still haven’t).
Got back to the hotel, fired up my tablet (don’t have an Ad blocker like I do on my computer)…first ad was for…you guessed it.
Coincidence, maybe….
Yet the authorities cannot seem to locate or intercept any ANTIFA communications. Nope. They coordinate and plan all their attacks in secret. Talk about misused and misplaced technological abilities …
No wonder the FBI consider ANTIFA a “concept”
A thread about electronics and privacy? Perfect timing!
I have so far been able to avoid the worlds of Facebook, Twitter, etc, and I have been working on reducing my reliance on Google and YouTube. Nevertheless, I am in a situation where I NEED to open an FB account to deal with a specific organization. It would simply involve checking in on their ‘page’ for updated info.
I know from my time on SDA that we have more than a couple tech-savvy regulars here, but as importantly, I know they exactly understand my concerns about privacy in today’s hardcore partisan world. Ha, the above posts make that clear.
Is it even possible to open a FB page and keep it ‘private’? Can I use a fake identity? I am not interested in being pestered with a lifetime of old acquaintances wanting to ‘connect’ and then being dragged down the FB rabbit-hole, like some I know. Any quality advice on security, privacy settings, etc., would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Well I don’t think we can hide from this, so there’s got to be a way we can flood their databases with useless data. Start trading phones amongst ourselves. Or or certain days we all give our phones to one friend who takes them to a gay bar or a strip club or other random locations. You know…really mess with their algorithms.
Or find a way to clone the phones of certain high profile figures, not to eavesdrop, but simply to have them visit certain “interesting” locations, and potentially meet with other “interesting” figures.
I’ve tried multiple times to salt my phone’s audible data collection with very specific terms. Disappointingly, not once have I seen the effect described here.
I don’t have FB or Twitter or any social media apps installed on the phone. If I ever need to use those sites, I hit them through the phone’s browser and I clear my phone’s browser cache at least daily. I am guessing that browser access may have less data hoovering capabilities. The apps can probably listen to you, but browser cookies and JavaScript code may not be able to do so.
Rather than experiencing the “holy crap, it was listening to me!” effect, I just gets ads for things that I’ve already bought online. After I bought a 3D printer on Amazon, ads everywhere showed me the same 3D printer on Amazon until I cleared my browser cache. Maybe they thought I’d like to buy another one.
The infallible AI also shows me endless ads for gutter leaf filters, particularly on YouTube. Which seems really dumb as Google knows my address and must know that I live in a highrise rather than a house.
One trick I learned on my laptop is to keep some ‘custom/classic car sales’ links that I tap on regularly which at least creates a steady influx of ‘pretty car pictures’ around my borders when surfing. Ha, a tiny bit of control is better than none.
Also, my understanding is that most algorithms are rather simplistic and operate more like a sledgehammer than an icepick. YouTubers regularly complain about being punished for stringing a couple of words together, context mattering not. Tim Poole seems rather adept at dealing with YT, successfully reversing a few of these ‘charged and convicted by algorithm’ actions, but sad to see him so willfully self-censoring to keep his little empire flourishing.
i kept getting ads for occil lascopes , two for one occil ascopes , so many i switched away from gmail . they started up again about a year later. i swear i only looked them up once ,
I worked for a Canadian retailer and we collected customer info including phone numbers and email addresses. When a customer opened our weekly flyer, and later entered a mall where one of our stores were located, they would get a ‘push notice about something they looked at in our flyer. We could actually track them to see where they opened that flyer and how often they opened it.
I have no use for a flip phone. My phone needs to be dead serious.