Looking for a faraday bag that works

[tx2sturgis]

I go back to my opening statement: Put the phone in airplane mode. Poof, instant faraday cage.

For most people, most of the time, this will do the job of rendering your phone 'invisible' to the cell and wifi networks.

In other words, save your money and don't buy stuff that does nothing valuable, except maybe protects your phone (maybe) during a nuclear or N-EMP attack. And if that happens, you will have much bigger problems than not being able to use the phone.

 

[wanderin.pat]

Who are you trying to hide from?

I don't know, but if I was actually TRYING to hide from someone, wouldn't answering that question, be... well... kind of dumb? Just askin for a friend.

 

[dale]

I know the tin foil works because I've tested it, and the phone will not receive text or calls and can't be located with my locator app. Try it for yourself.

 

[Sofisintown]

You know it works because when you call it it doesn't ring. Atin box does not let any signal through. You can try it by calling your phone from skype, etc.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

.....Put the phone in airplane mode. Poof, instant faraday cage.....

All airplane mode does is disable cell, wifi, and bluetooth transmissions, and in some phones it also disables GPS. Even turning your phone off does not power down the circuit board (only removing the battery will do that). The NSA demonstrated it is possible to locate powered down cell phones during the gulf war.

If it gives someone peace of mind aluminum foil is cheap.

 

[Happy Camper]

Unless you are actively doing extremely illegal stuff and law enforcement knows about it and who you are, your paranoia isn't warranted.

The individuals and groups (non law enforcement) that have the capability to track or find you using your cell phone aren't interested or motivated to use those resources on you.

The simplest thing to do if you really are worried about being tracked via cell is simple.

Open a prepaid phone account and pay cash. Use a fake name when activating, and false address info. If they don't know the phone belongs to you, then why would they track it?

 

[tx2sturgis]

All airplane mode does is disable cell, wifi, and bluetooth transmissions, and in some phones it also disables GPS.

That's exactly what happens (Transmissions AND Receptions) just like turning off the wifi (or LAN) internet and bluetooth on your laptop, it renders a phone unreachable over the internet. And this is what needs to be done to render the phone mostly inoperative, and un-reachable by any normal cell tower, wifi network, bluetooth device, stingray, or any other method of pinging, polling, interrogating, triangulating, hacking or wiping the phone. As I said, turning the phone off OR using airplane mode is very effective in most cases (other than the situation where you have allowed wifi mode to scan for signals even in airplane mode),

Even turning your phone off does not power down the circuit board (only removing the battery will do that). The NSA demonstrated it is possible to locate powered down cell phones during the gulf war.

Somewhat correct. There is a very low power 'watchdog' latching circuit that is polling the power button intermittently, say once per second, to see if you have pushed the button and held it long enough to 'request' a boot-up sequence. But the circuit board and the cellular, bluetooth, NFC, GPS, and wifi radios are not fully powered up when the phone is off. The amount of energy required from the battery to power this watchdog is micro-miniscule and is not enough to power the phone otherwise.

The NSA has been known to be involved in all kinds of cellular interceptions, and planting malware on a phone which will cause the cell or wifi radios to remain active while the phone is in airplane mode or even turned off is possible, and it could be used on anyone, I suppose, at least in theory.

But most of us are not on a CIA or NSA or FBI watchlist so its really not a rational concern for most of us.

If anyone reading this forum is enough of an international bad actor, and a target of NSA malware planted on your $49 tracphone from walmart, well sir or madam: You are ON YOUR OWN!

 

[Morgana]

Sure, unless somebody in a govt agency ever went after somebody who wasn't a bad actor (say all LEOs are perfect saints but you happen to have the same name and birthday as a bad actor), or somebody not in a govt agency ever got their hands on the right [wrong] software, or some bratty 14-year-old genius picked you to harass today for no reason, or you were standing next to a bad actor when the G-person caught up with them, or you had a failed relationship with a vindictive IT wizard ...
Q: what could possibly go wrong?
A:
Besides, if the solutions are as inexpensive as people suggest, and it gives peace of mind ... belt and suspenders why not?

 

[Happy Camper]

Oh there are people that can do these things. But like I said, it requires resources, focus, time, and possibly money to be effective. My point is that there is no reason to put all of that towards some random person.

To be honest, if I wanted to find someone I wouldn't go through that trouble. There are easier ways.

As soon as you take that phone out of the perfect faraday cage and actually use it, you have betrayed your paranoia. You might as well not have a phone or Internet. I don't recommend that, but if fear owns you like that, your phone is the least of your concerns.

 

[armillaria]

Thanks for all the good info, people who are actually posting specific info rather than dismissive handwaving.

Here's this:

Are You Ready To Be Surveilled Like A Sex Worker?

 

[user 22017]

Thanks for all the good info, people who are actually posting specific info rather than dismissive handwaving.

Here's this:

Are You Ready To Be Surveilled Like A Sex Worker?

You make a good point.

How did the police get away with stingrays anyway? I'm sure I read that they were unconstitutional, since they are used without a warrant.

 

[Happy Camper]

So the sex worker (illegal prostitute) is frustrated and upset that algorithms can figure out that they are a prostitute? And therefore technology is evil and dangerous. Nothing in that article showed me anything regarding how anything but standard social engineering and law enforcement was used to locate someone.

Right now you can be shadow banned from any platform on accident for any number of reasons. That didn't make them evil or out to get you. That means they are fallible, and like anything else, can be used in unintended ways.

As I said before, they don't care about you and what you're doing specifically. Unless you're doing something well outside the law that would prompt them to spend resources on you.

This isn't hand waving. These are facts. I have been in almost all aspects of tech for decades, and have a pretty good understanding of what it takes to find someone if needed using tech.

The real point is that if you have tech (phone, computer, internet, credit cards, cards of any kind except for playing cards lol, and any number of other items), it can always be used in some way by somebody (with the right knowledge and resources. It's generally not simple or cheap) to find things out about you.

You can choose to live in fear, or live your life in a smart and thoughtful way. If you're on these forums you are motivated to be independent and free. Fear of some extremely random thing takes that freedom away. That's like saying you shouldn't ever buy gas because you heard that vehicles can catch fire. Be smarter than your fear.

There are enough real things to be concerned about. This isn't one of them. My $.32 cents ($.2 cents adjusted for inflation over the last year).

My comments are in no way trying to belittle or dismiss others thoughts and fears. My goal is to bring an understanding of the actual issue behind the question posed.

 

[user 22017]

So the sex worker (illegal prostitute) is frustrated and upset that algorithms can figure out that they are a prostitute? And therefore technology is evil and dangerous. Nothing in that article showed me anything regarding how anything but standard social engineering and law enforcement was used to locate some

I was referring to the scotus decision regarding Roe v. Wade. Tracking women and eavesdropping.

 

[tx2sturgis]

Absolutely NO doubt that criminals have been caught and convicted based on remote cellphone tracking and post-crime cellphone forensics.

So yeah if you have plans to do something illegal with your active cellphone in your pocket or vehicle, then you can expect to get caught. This is happening every day.

But for most of us, turning the phone OFF or placing it in airplane mode renders the phone invisible for all practical purposes.

For example in the early days of smartphones and the simultaneous buildout of TelCell (a cellphone company in Mexico) I used to get pop-up texts from TelCel anytime I drove within about 15 miles of the Mexico border. (many of us in commercial trucks back in the mid to late 2005 to around 2010 or so were using wilson cell boosters).

The pop-up message would say something to the effect of: "Welcome to Mexico! You are now on International Roaming and data charges will apply at the rate of $49 per MB. Enjoy your stay!" TELCEL would now be on the status bar at the top of the screen where normally ATT would be.

And no, that's NOT a misprint. Forty-Nine DOLLARS per megabyte! AND I was in Texas or New Mexico...NOT MEXICO!

(Just FYI: Turning off the booster only made a difference sometimes....most of the time the phone would just lose all signal then on the hills the phone would again make contact with the tower just across the border and I would get that same pop-up warning 5 miles down the road)

I would turn my phone off or place it in airplane mode INSTANTLY...for fear of a map update, a text, an ad, or an email arriving on my phone when I was driving along I-10 and ending up with a huge bill I would have to dispute.

The first few times this happened, when I was safely away from the border, I called my carrier AT&T and let them know I was NOT in Mexico....and the operator would usually say something like well are you SURE? Well ma'am OF COURSE I'M sure, I'm in a commercial truck and our authority is USA only...if I illegally crossed the international border, a big phone bill would be the LEAST of my problems.

He or she would follow that with, well sir those towers are not on USA soil, but if you are close enough, it might 'ping' your phone, get the ESN (electronic serial number) and SIM card info and send AT&T the data roaming charges which will show up on your bill in a couple of months. If that happens, just let us know. I told them, How would I prove it 2 months later? Log books? Bills of lading? Really? In the meantime I'd be fighting a bill from a HUGE Mexican cellphone company. I told her I'll be putting the phone in airplane mode from now on when I get anywhere near El Paso.

I did that for years before I discovered they finally fixed the problem, because the FCC got involved and somehow, they fixed the problem with aggressive TelCel towers.

I did NOT need a faraday sleeve to shut off the cell radios in my phone. Just a simple slide of the airplane mode switch on the screen.

The hardest part was remembering to do it!

 

[Morgana]

was referring to the scotus decision regarding Roe v. Wade. Tracking women and eavesdropping.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a short "update" on this issue here
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/...on-data-brokers-threaten-reproductive-privacy

You don't have to be a criminal to worry about data privacy. And "recognizing that risk exists" is not the same as "being fearful" -- in fact, it's often the opposite. (Time for the perennial plug of The Gift of Fear, which has really good advice on how to not be too paranoid or too complacent.)

That said, there's no one solution to this. You could live inside a Faraday bag and still get zapped the minute you poked your nose out. I assume the OP asked as part of a larger safety plan. Personally I think there are other safety steps that are more important -- like being careful what you click on, and remembering that with online entertainment "if it's free, you're the product" -- but still it's a legitimate question.

A book on this that I found really helpful was the super-hacker Kevin Mitnick's The Art of Invisibility. That was written in 2017 and God knows how much the cyber-arms-race has moved on since then. But it has good insights.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation seems to have some good resources in their Tools section.

Be careful but have fun / have fun but be careful!