What do you want advice about?
Hi, I wanted to ask the people in this forum about their opinion and experiences on the specific limitations of signal/radiowave blocking methods and how they might raise eyebrows during security checks, giving unwanted trouble. I live in the EU and that’s my main area of interest. Some individual countries I’m curious about are: Germany and Bulgaria.
For this discussion I want to rule out end-point security measures such as passwords, full drive encryption, etc. That’s because I’m particularly interested in the blocking of signals coming from my phone. Even though my identity is known when going through security, for me it’s about reducing the information available to them.
My goal is to reach a high level of “traveling phone privacy” with a bit of conscious effort (but not going overboard), while also not making myself too suspicious for any security checks.
What have you considered or looked at already?
- Turning everything off through settings of OS (which is Android in my case) when not in immediate need of using it.
This would be WIFI, no automatic reconnect, Bluetooth, GPS, NFC, turning on Airplane Mode and renaming the device to non-descript name like “Phone”. Let me know if I missed anything important.
- Turning off the phone. Like, completely off.
Below I list ones I have not tried but thought about them, and I don’t see immediate privacy use-cases in doing them if I’m doing the above already (you can try to change my mind though):
- Using a faraday bag for my phone and putting it in a backpack.
- In a modular device like the Fairphone 5 one can relatively easily remove the battery. This would ensure not even the baseband processor is active.
In brief, tell us about your privacy threat model?
I’m what is considered “low threath model”, just privacy conscious, security remains important to me in areas of preferred precaution, but I’m not really any kind of political dissident at this moment in time in my current country (though I’m not ruling it out for the future)
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I think the easiest and simplest way to do it turning on Airplane Mode but turning off WiFi and others, obviously.
And the best way if you ask me is simply turning off your device in full.
If you want to be able to access and quickly ensure the phone doesn’t have any access to it or to outside, then faraday bags do work too.
But traveling in the EU doesn’t seem too difficult and warrants such changes and efforts if you ask me. Honestly, I’m not sure why you’d to do this.
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Germany has a pretty strong call on privacy and individual rights, so It’s unlikely that you will have a problem in Germany (as long as you don’t do something bad e.g. kill someone).
To be hones If I were in your situation I would just use a Faraday bag. It might be a bit of an overkill, but it’s not extremely expensive, and you can have a peace in your mind that your phone won’t make calls.
But if your threat model is low and your happy with the solution you already use, why not stay there?
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Yeah for Germany, Japan (well I guess unless you’re a content creator for Japan staaaaaaares at certain content creator who ruined all of this), Netherlands and Switzerland I honestly wouldn’t worry about it as Individual privacy here are strong so I wouldn’t worry about needing to be searched on my phone or compelled.
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Thanks, I think that’s a good summary of what I needed to know/get some thoughts on. I’m sticking with turning off the phone completely as my primary method, and in cases where I feel like I’m going to a sensitive gathering of people, perhaps a protest of sorts, I could use a faraday bag. And, I agree with you @Onscreen5341 I got my first faraday bag since yesterday because I’d like to experiment with it, how it feels before want to make a judgement. Like you said they are pretty affordable and it might help with a peace of mind. It does still feel a bit odd so I might not end up using it for 99% of places I go but at least I’ve tried
Also, it’s reassuring to know traveling in these countries is better for digital device privacy