Faraday Bags for Privacy

When you turn-off your cellphone it goes into a dormant state, but unless you remove the battery it is still possible that the phone can still send and receive some signals. In February 2018, I wrote here in the blog Creepy Tech - Google is Tracking You, and in this post, we saw that turning off  location services on your cell-phone provides some limited tracking protection, but to ensure that your phone isn’t gathering data to transmit to Google the next time it connects you have to block all signals to the phone. This means removing the battery so that it has no power whatsoever or placing your phone in a Faraday Bag so that it blocks all signals to and from your phone.

A 2013 article in the Washington Post reported that as early as 2004 the NSA had developed a technique that enabled the agency to find cellphones even when they were turned off. Simply put, just powering down your cell-phone does not stop it from sending and receiving some types of signals, such as base band access, nor does it keep it from gathering data which can be transmitted the next time it has a cellular connection.

The Privacy & Security Podcast #28 - Faraday Bags discusses the topic of faraday bags in detail. It is worth your time to spend an hour listening to this podcast to learn more about faraday bags and why you should use them.

In addition to protecting you from cell-phone tracking, faraday bags also block RFID and NFC signals protecting you from having your credit card and ID information captured. A 2015 article by KOMO4 News "Digital pickpockets using smartphones to steal credit cards" showed how the news agency was able to "steal" credit card numbers using RFID scanning and then use those stolen credit card numbers to make purchases in Seattle area stores.

Even the US Government recognizes the risk of RFID data collection, issuing a RFID blocking sleeve to protect DOD CAC cards (military ID cards) and the US Passport card.

I use faraday bags to help protect my privacy and safeguard my electronic data. If you are concerned about data privacy and personal security, this might be something that you should consider as well.

The following links to faraday bags on Amazon will show you some examples of what is available.

Mission Darkness Non-Window Faraday Bag for Phones

Co-link Cell Phone Anti-tracking Anti-spying GPS RFID Signal Blocker

Blackout RFID Blocking Faraday Cage Privacy Bag