“We are all just prisoners here…of our own device…” – “Hotel California,” by The Eagles
ReadyNutrition Guys and Gals, this piece is on the heels of an article released by RT News on 3/8/17, entitled “85% of World’s Smart Phones ‘Weaponized’ by CIA.” The article is a very disturbing report; however, it isn’t something that just “surfaced” out of the zone of unpredictability. The basis for the report stems from the recent WikiLeaks release of the CIA-documents and information that just occurred. Here is an excerpt from that article:
“Google’s Android operating system, used in 85 percent of the world’s smart phones, including Samsung and Sony, was found to have 24 ‘zero days’ – the code name used by the CIA to identify and exploit vulnerabilities for the purpose of secretly collecting data on individuals. The techniques allow the CIA to access data from social messaging platforms, including WhatsApp, Weibo and Clockman before encryption, according to WikiLeaks. Both audio and message data were vulnerable to the exploit through the CIA’s exploitation of gaps in the OS.”
Now mind you, Readers, this piece is not a “news article,” although this event was just reported on 3/8/17. The purpose of this article is to serve as a “wake-up” call, in case you haven’t taken the measures already outlined in previous articles to protect yourself from your own devices tracking, recording, and (essentially) “spying” upon you. You may research past articles on electronic security that you can do, and this piece is a “refresher” that will enable you to secure yourself…. from your own equipment.
4 Ways to Block Your Cell Phone and Prevent Being Monitored
As mentioned in times past, Mylar can be your best ally. Mylar is simple to use, affordable, and it works at blocking the signals going to and from your happy cell-phone tracking and recording device. Here are some inexpensive sources for the Mylar:
- Chip/Snack bags: An infinite variety of sizes are available, and you will have to gauge what size you use after taking the size of your phone/device into account.
- Mylar in the form of “ponchos” or “space blankets”: these are a little more expensive than the chips, but only slightly so. You will end up with more Mylar to use, and the pieces you cut will not need to be cleaned off of salt and other detritus as with the chip bags.
- Freezer bags: Also in a variety of sizes, such as ones that hold up to 30 lbs. of food/ice (for a laptop-sized device) or just a small 1’ x 1’ bag, such as a lunch bag-cooler size.
- Another thing to do is to place your device inside of an ammo can (military issue). In doing so, make sure the rubber gasket around the mouth seals efficiently for a tight seal. There are other containers that can be used; however, you may have to reinforce the seams with something such as Aluminum HVAC duct tape (available for about $15 per roll from your local Home Depot) and cover them over. With the ammo cans, the container is contiguous with only the lid needing that rubber gasket that works.
How to Test for Protection
There is a way to test it out with your phone to see if you have the protection. Take your chip bag or bags. If they’re small, be advised that you will need about three complete layers around the cell phone. Also, place your phone in a plastic Ziploc bag before putting them into the chip bags. This will keep them clean just in case you missed wiping all of the stuff out of them. Wiping out the bags can best be accomplished with a dry paper towel: the oils, salts, and other filth will be caught up by the towel. Just remember to cover/swipe the entire inside surface of the bag.
Then turn your phone on, and turn up the volume of its ring all the way. Next, roll/wrap up your phone and fold it over in at least three complete layers of Mylar. Then use your house phone/landline/etc. to dial your wrapped-up cell phone’s number, and hold the wrapped-up phone close to your ear.
If you did the job correctly, you will not hear a thing. Also, make sure you only ring it 3 times. Any more than that and it may go to a voice-mail/other function, that will send it stored to your cell phone after you unwrap it as a missed call. This way it will not ring it, and the call will have been canceled.
Remember what General David Petraeus mentioned about the “Internet of things?” Well, those days are upon us. So, what else? You’ll have to figure out the best method for making your layers work and last a long time. You can take the chip bags, cut them open with scissors, and make three premeasured layers. Form a pouch, and cover them inside and out with duct tape. Then you just slip in your phone and secure the top (fold it over) with whatever type of clamp or clip works for you.
The continuous signal your cell phone sends out (every 4 seconds) will be interrupted. Inconvenient? No. Coordinate with your family members when you will call and talk to them beforehand. Emergency? Pull the phone out of the pouch and use it.
Bottom line: It is a discipline that will have to be followed to enable your privacy…from your own device.
99% of all people carry that thing around with them everywhere. They’re hooked to it more closely than a fetus to the umbilicus: they can’t function without it. But the point I’m making is this: Do you own the phone, or does it own you?
You can accomplish the same thing with your laptops and other “smart” toys…your palm-pilots, blackberries, cameras, and all of the other damnable devices that have made you an unwitting prisoner to the powers and systems that set them in place…not for your “technological convenience,” but for the very purposes of control, dominion, and surveillance over you.
Ammo cans work. The Mylar (when cleaned and fashioned properly) will work. Now you just received confirmation that it is happening, and I’ve given you methods to use to stop it from happening to you. The methods work. I have tested and used them myself. So, without further ado, figure out how much material you need and make one of these pouches for yourself. Your privacy is guaranteed under the 4th Amendment from illegal searches and seizures by the government. That right, however, needs to be exercised by action. So, finish those Doritos, clean out that bag, and wrap that phone up! We’d love to hear of any tips or improvements you have come to trust. Keep fighting that good fight, and send us your comments! JJ out!
Best to put the phone in airplane mode while in the bag or the “continuous signal your cell phone sends out (every 4 seconds)” searching for a cell tower will rapidly wear down the battery.
Actually, best thing is to pull the battery unless and until you want to use the phone. Even the best spyware doesn’t work without a power supply.
Ray, I read somewhere recently that, even if the power supply is turned OFF (and battery removed), the spyware (mic, pic) will still work and can be controlled off site.
Taking the removable battery from the phone won’t do anything to stop the internal battery built into the phone from supporting a lot of CDMA or GSM transmissions, especially since it won’t have to support the screen.
Even if it lacks the power to transmit, it still has more than enough to act as a voice recorder that can be easily read out the next time the phone is powered up.
Just for interest, look up the story of Theremin’s Bug. With it the Soviets effectively listened inside the Moscow U.S. embassy. With no power at all.
My friend in the industry told me not to bother taking the battery out- it has a back up.
The airplane mode prevents a cellphone from transmitting to answer a tower’s interrogation. Phones don’t search for towers, towers listen for phones.
I sure hope they are wasting their time on me. I use “pressure cooker” for cooking roosters, “ammonium nitrate” cause I fertilize the pasture, “terrorists”, the damn fire ants and any other key words on their radar screen. not supposed to spy on amerikans in the ussa, just proved wrong. thanks 9/11, trump you are to reveal the truth.
Welcome to ɥɐʞᴉɹǝɯ∀
Wow!
I am skeptical about the ammo can suggestion – the metal acts as an antennae – at one time people suggested wrapping your mobile device in aluminum foil to block signal – it actually worked to boost the received microwaves.
Something that totally encloses the phone will prevent it from receiving or being received. My concern with the ammo can is the rubber seal that isn’t designed to be conductive and through which electromagnetic signals can pass readily.
Aluminum foil, on the other hand, can be folded in such a way that it will completely block all electromagnetic and electrostatic signals.
Look up “Faraday cage.” The math is universal and indisputable. The only way to fail is to construct it badly.
Yes, I am familiar with the Fraraday Cage – practically speaking though, its not feasible for every day use, it doesn’t fit in my pocket and may be very inconvenient when I am 100′ up working on a radio tower when I have to receive a call 😉
Yes, well… if you have to receive a call, no matter where you are, using this would be a tactical error in the first place. 🙂
Just take a sledge hammer and smash it.
Why buy it in the first place?
I have a terrible time with misplacing my phone… sometimes I leave it in another room… sometimes it’s in a coat pocket with a bunch of stuff piled on time… sometimes I even have to shake out the blankets on my bed to find it. I frequently can barely hear it ringing.
Wouldn’t be a problem if you weren’t addicted to it.
Have been blocking my phone for years and testing various materials. Any metal thick enough, (aluminumj layers etc.) will work BUT the phone must must be entirely enclosed and not touch the shield (Faraday cage) or the shield becomes an antenna. Phone in sock, wrapped in cloth, in ammo can with styrene blocks to keep it from touching can will all work. Infowars sells a small RF proof pouch which is well designed and does work. Be sure to test YOUR method by calling in with another phone.
Ken
ps: Last poster was right. Airplane mode or turn it off, OR, remove battery AND sim card and place all separately in pouch.
You can’t be too rich,
too thin,
have too many guns,
or be too paranoid.
PSS: The absolute BEST way is to leave your cell phone at home. Even turned on.
The phone’s antenna would have to touch the shield to couple to it, and no cellphone has ever had the metallic part of the antenna on the outside of the plastic and rubber housing where that could happen. What good would the phone do you at home if you aren’t there?
In theory there’s no difference between theory and practice.
In practice there is. Both androids and blackberrys transmit when touching the shield.
Get back to me after you have tried it.
Leaving your phone at home for a particular event makes tracking you look like you’re at home, not at your Mentally Challenged Children’s meeting or where ever you don’t wish to be tracked.
I’ll say it again. Pay attention this time. There is no digital device whose ANTENNA is available to make contact with anything. The antenna is buried inside the device and cannot be touched without opening the device. There is no way that anything can make electrical contact with the antenna, and so, no coupling with a shield is possible. Leaving your phone at home makes it as useless as if it didn’t exist while you are away from home.
Here’s a better idea: DON’T USE A STINKING SMART PHONE! You won’t die if you don’t have a smart phone, or even a cell phone! If you know that these things are tracking/spying devices, and keep using them, even if you can disable the spying while they are not in use, they are still spying on you when you do use them, and that is the worst part!
Believe me, life is good without all of this high-tech electronic garbage!
Take back control over your life! Even without the spying, all of this junk is turning people into mindless automatons!
Thank you
Mylar is transparent to all radio frequencies, being plastic. It is the aluminum coating on mylar that blocks electromagnetic and electrostatic fields. That being the case, plain old aluminum foil is a more robust product to use than any aluminum coated plastic, because it can be folded over the device to complete a Faraday shield. The aluminum coating on mylar bags is more cosmetic than functional against most threats, bling being its most important characteristic. Aluminum foil is much thicker than the coatings and much cheaper by the roll than high-dollar cases.
“Also, place your phone in a plastic Ziploc bag before putting them into the chip bags. This will keep them clean just in case you missed wiping all of the stuff out of them. Wiping out the bags can best be accomplished with a dry paper towel: the oils, salts, and other filth will be caught up by the towel. Just remember to cover/swipe the entire inside surface of the bag.”
Just turn the bags inside out, dude. Don’t overthink it.
Just wrap it in aluminum foil. Works 100%.
Can you wrap it in Aluminum foil instead of mylar???
It’s NOT just the cell phones but it’s also the “smart” televisions. Samsung and others now have developed “Smart TV’s” and they are listening and watching you in the privacy of your own space (home). Things that are “smart” are not working to our advantage. They are “not” helping us out one iota. Our info gets into the hands of others through these “smart” devises. Haven’t you noticed the word “smart” everywhere. Pet Smart and Smart Cars, and Smart Tyson’s chicken, and Smart Meters and Smart phones and smart foods, smart magazines, smart articles, many “smart” things are out there, meaning spies everywhere…Are you aware, awake, watching?
Big brother can listen to us on just about anything in our home. Smart is not a tip-off. All he (big brother) has to do is make the manufacturers include listening devices in your products. With high quality batteries lasting 10 years, bugs can conceivably sit idle until awaken. Now you ask, how would they know who owns these devices? Registration, registration, registration.
Well George that’s probably true…I don’t think however that most people realize it, and if they do, do they even care? Many are just floating through life, oblivious to what they’re buying, and asleep at the wheel for the most part. They just have their poor little heads buried in the sand and cares of this life which is gradually passing away.
Somebody said the “smart card” will be the forerunner to the mark of the beast…hum, what do you think, George?
Two movies you should see. Logan’s Run and Soylent Green.
Give the people what they want.
Everything is a forerunner because it comes before the mark, which will be “IN” the right hand or “IN” the forehead, not on or near.
How about lead foil? Will that work? Anybody know?
1. The author suggest using Mylar for blocking the signals. To be clear, he meant metalized Mylar. NOTE: Just because the Mylar appears to be metalyzed does not mean it is. Test it.
I tested using a mylar bag, wrapped three + layers. Worked like a charm.
And yes, if I didn’t have to use this blasted thing for my work, I’d chuck it in a lake. Smashed of course beforehand.
Pass it between strong rare earth magnets to wipe the information
Throw your phone in the lake, problem solved..