Must Read "Alexa, are you spying on me?"

[DrHenley]

The first actual beta version of Android on a phone wasn't until 2007. Google mainly bought an idea in 2005 and they were the ones that actually developed it into a marketable product.

Android 1.0 (2008): (after three years of development by Google)

 

[GaRp58]

I have one the oldest cell phone contracts in my town. I got my first cell phone back in October of 1996 and only had a single band Nokia 1610, with the first display with about 48 pixels. Each dot on the display was a 1/16 of an inch or so square. No spyware, weighed in at a 1/4 of a pound and was tourquise colored and an inch and a half thick. People here are going retro and buying the older models again. I still have 2 with spare batteries also...

 

[Codokaktus]

i havent watched the tv news since 2016. forgive my being a bit behind lol

Just talked to my buddy about this issue and he made a heck of a good point. The snapdragon chipset alone costs more than I paid for the phone. When you start to price out all the things that go into it, like 6 cameras, a 2k screen, stupid fast processor, 128gb internal memory, 4GB ram, it becomes obvious that someone else is footing part of the bill ~ government subsidy. It is the worlds most effective spy tool, they want you to afford it.

And the sad reality of it is this... You volunteered the information to their servers, which makes it their property. Guess who no longer needs a warrant. I thought the stingray (now Hailstorm for the 4G world) cell site simulator was bad.... BTW, if you are not up to speed, Google bought Android.

just an old saying from the data-miners; "If You get it for free, You are the product."

 

[OldButtoni]

The hubs and I are still using flip phones. Yes, we're still in the Dark Ages. Hopefully only GPS tracking is possible with those. Watched a video on Y-tube on how two open up the back and cut off the GPS tab on the board inside, but the back of the phone doesn't easily want to come off and I'm afraid to force the back to get inside. Our call phone service is lousy down at our BOL as it sits in a sort of depression between two rolling hills, but at least we have communication with the outside if the phones are working. We walk out to the back fence line that is higher and the signal usually comes in good there. Inside the cabin...........signal is often weak.

 

[MNwr786]

The hubs and I are still using flip phones. Yes, we're still in the Dark Ages. Hopefully only GPS tracking is possible with those. Watched a video on Y-tube on how two open up the back and cut off the GPS tab on the board inside, but the back of the phone doesn't easily want to come off and I'm afraid to force the back to get inside. Our call phone service is lousy down at our BOL as it sits in a sort of depression between two rolling hills, but at least we have communication with the outside if the phones are working. We walk out to the back fence line that is higher and the signal usually comes in good there. Inside the cabin...........signal is often weak.

If you know what band the phone is using, you can make a passive repeater (not really a repeater at all) with an external antenna (typically a yagi) connected to another antenna indoors at the other end of the coax. Ive used this setup here on band 12 (about 722MHz) and my signal in the cabin goes up so high that it thinks Im closer to the tower and switches me to band 5 lol. I go from -122dBm to -96dBm in the cabin. The only trouble is to home brew such a device, you will need a network analyzer capable of tuning antennas at that frequency because if they are not matched to the coax, it just wont work.

 

[Wiredog8]

Just start all your conversations with...."Hunter and Joe Biden are guilty because......" and the cellular feed will not be recorded. lol

 

[OldButtoni]

If you know what band the phone is using, you can make a passive repeater (not really a repeater at all) with an external antenna (typically a yagi) connected to another antenna indoors at the other end of the coax. Ive used this setup here on band 12 (about 722MHz) and my signal in the cabin goes up so high that it thinks Im closer to the tower and switches me to band 5 lol. I go from -122dBm to -96dBm in the cabin. The only trouble is to home brew such a device, you will need a network analyzer capable of tuning antennas at that frequency because if they are not matched to the coax, it just wont work.

Would that either of us had the electrical/network skills to pull that off. Are you for hire out of state? LOL Thanks for the tip though. The son of a friend suggested a "booster" but again, have absolutely no idea what that is or how to set up things. We're both fully ensconched in the of the "plug-n-play" generation.

 

[Helen Back]

Read this and you won't click 'I agree' ever again: We're being spied on by phones, computers, TVs, cars – even the doorbells. Worse, argues Oxford professor CARISSA VELIZ, we're doing it to ourselves by giving away our data

Read this and you won't click 'I agree' ever again | Daily Mail Online


What irritates me most is that you HAVE to agree to use it. My Samsung tvs say you cannot use the tv unless you agree. Same with the internet on my phone. THIS should be illegal, but those A holes in congree don;t really care about We the Sheople.

So, let's talk about ways around.

I use OTA antenna so they cannot see what I watch.
I use prepaid credit cards with cash, so they cannot see what I buy, and I pay for streaming services with them
I sign up for everything using TOR, and a VPN.
I like prepaid cells too, but my wife HAS to have an iphone for some reason, so the rule is the phones HAVE to stay in the kitchen when not in use.

I do what little I can, and feel sorry for the next generation who blindly hits "accept" on everything; and even worse, doesn't care if they are spied on.

Someone gave my wife Alexa for Christmas and we just taped up the paper as soon as we saw what it was and re-gifted it to a young person.

 

[grayghost668]

if you are on the WEB,,,,,,,,,,, you are being tracked and there is nothing you can do about it

you have a smart TV a smart phone you get on the WEB,,google microsoft every website you visit,,,, they are all tracking you,,, your phone is even tracking your location.......... it's the way of the world we live in

 

[MNwr786]

I agree... The trick is to limit what people allow others to see while inevitably being tracked.

For instance, I use a GPS spoofing app that alters my GPS coordinates. Sure, this does not stop the government from gaining access to the cell data (as in what tower are you registered on) as a means to passively track you, but it does interfere with the apps doing it to sell your habits to marketers. Price out the components in your phone and see what it would cost to build it. It's far more than anyone here paid in cash. The real payment is knowledge of your habits.

Another example would be to limit how much of your personal activity you share and hiding your friend lists from public view. China has been assigning its population a "social" credit score for years, and it is starting to happen here in the US. Who you keep as company and how you spend your free time is now a major factor bankers look at when determining if you are eligible for a loan. Be conscious about this social credit scoring and adjust your online footprint to suit what you want "not friends" seeing. Sharing the intricacies of your personal life used to simply pose a petty crime risk, now, it determines your social "worth".

20 years ago, everyone drove to town without a phone, comfortable in the idea of walking to the nearest house to make a call if anything happened. Nowadays, people get separation anxiety if it is not with them 24/7. Start reconditioning yourselves out of that mindset and walk away from it for a while. If you go outside to do lawn work, leave it in the house. If you go in the store, leave it in the car. It's a start anyhow. If you miss a call, you can call them back. If you need it, go get it. You will be surprised how much more work you can get done without that distraction! The cool part with that is, at first, family and friends will constantly worry because you didn't immediately answer or respond, but eventually, they will realize you are just busy. In doing so, you will be indirectly helping others remember what life was like without constant communication and that its still OK.

TV is another rabbit hole people have fallen into, I won't go there

 

[Proud Prepper]

if you are on the WEB,,,,,,,,,,, you are being tracked and there is nothing you can do about it

you have a smart TV a smart phone you get on the WEB,,google microsoft every website you visit,,,, they are all tracking you,,, your phone is even tracking your location.......... it's the way of the world we live in

Not true, there's a lot you can do about it.

 

[Arcticdude]

if you are on the WEB,,,,,,,,,,, you are being tracked and there is nothing you can do about it

you have a smart TV a smart phone you get on the WEB,,google microsoft every website you visit,,,, they are all tracking you,,, your phone is even tracking your location.......... it's the way of the world we live in

Doesn't have to be that way. There are ways around some of it. I don't have internet at home, I have smart TVs, but without internet they are useless, my phone is very limited due to our location. It only receives a signal in certain locations. I never use Google anymore. I use duck-duck go now. Not perfect privacy but better than nothing.

 

[Amish Heart]

I have a fifteen year old flipphone.

 

[Proud Prepper]

Well I have an 18yo flip phone

 

[Jayson]

I picked up a flip phone at a garage sale. It keeps connecting me to some place called Starfleet Command.

 

[Graynomad]

 

[Dracos]

One very clever scam the advertisers have pulled off is for people to pay money to watch commercials. You pay for the cable, you pay for the phone, you pay for the satelite. And then you get commercials. Also since it is my TV and my remote it should do what I want, not what some advertiser wants.

 

[GaRp58]

I am using the browser "BRAVE" and it is programmable to block in three levels of aggressive ways.
The VPN of my anti-virus changes my internet position between 5 different NATIONS around me.
My cell phone is an old Nokia without internet connection and a removable battery to make it go "dead" and make it not traceable and I spend days without it and have to look for it sometimes by asking my wife to call me...
When the laptop is not being used the connection to wifi is off. When being used, it is only with a re-started VPN in a different nation each time and I can open a "private" window for some things which is not trackable.
It is possible to minimize your being tracked, my browser shows me each time I open it how many thousand trackers it has blocked and is constantly showing me how many trackers are being currently blocked while on YouTube, Gab, Twitter and such sites also...

 

[Graynomad]

I use Brave as well, it seems to do a good job.

 

[backandbeyond]

I don't have an issue with modern smart phones, I just treat them as though I was having a conversation or browsing the web or taking photos in a police station. Admittedly mine is off more than it's on, and has a removable battery if I wanted to get totally paranoid, but When I'm on a ride up in the hills for the day I don't want to deny myself access to weather radar, a decent camera and stuff like that. I'd never buy apple products though.