Re:Find My Device on Android
by ssl-3 on Tuesday April 09, 2024 @01:30AM
(#39976395)
The only time I've used RF-blocking gear for privacy or security was when I had a little Faraday pouch for my old flip phone a million years ago[0].
It was nice-enough case for my phone and it primarily kept the phone from getting beat up by other pocket-stuff that would happen in a workday. But it also had two compartments: One was shielded all around by conductive fabric and this made a fairly good Faraday cage, and for the other one layer of that conductive fabric would be pushed aside so that the Faraday cage was incomplete (and thus largely non-functional).
It gave me a choice, and that choice worked well.
I think I paid $3 for it back in the day from DealExtreme (which was a lot like Temu is today, except shipping normally took months instead of days or weeks).
Is choice not a thing in modern RFID-blocking wallets?
[0: There was a time when my company felt it was useful to track people with their company-provided cell phones. I didn't mind that during the workday, so much, but we were also encouraged to use these as our personal phones if we chose to, and strongly encouraged to keep them with us 24/7 so we would be reachable.
And I didn't mind being reachable most or all of the time and I certainly enjoyed not having my own cell phone bill back then, but I did not like being tracked 24/7: Sometimes, I wanted to do my own private shit on my own time without being snooped on.
I could tell the tracking app to exit, and that did work, but doing so sent a notification to my completely stupid, abusive manager -- who would variously either call to ask why I did that, or just silently turn it back on remotely (which the system permitted).
And I did not (and do not) think that, as a professional, I needed to excuse my choice to have privacy at any given time. (Given my own role in the company I had access to this tracking data as well, but I'm not the abusive type.)
So, the solution was simple: Normally, the phone was in the non-shielded part of the case. And when I dropped it into the completely-surrounded Faraday portion instead, the phone just simply dropped off and silently stopped providing updates.
This worked 100%, and while I refer to them as separate compartments to aid in functional clarity, the design of this case didn't really take up any more space than any other phone-case would have.]
It was nice-enough case for my phone and it primarily kept the phone from getting beat up by other pocket-stuff that would happen in a workday. But it also had two compartments: One was shielded all around by conductive fabric and this made a fairly good Faraday cage, and for the other one layer of that conductive fabric would be pushed aside so that the Faraday cage was incomplete (and thus largely non-functional).
It gave me a choice, and that choice worked well.
I think I paid $3 for it back in the day from DealExtreme (which was a lot like Temu is today, except shipping normally took months instead of days or weeks).
Is choice not a thing in modern RFID-blocking wallets?
[0: There was a time when my company felt it was useful to track people with their company-provided cell phones. I didn't mind that during the workday, so much, but we were also encouraged to use these as our personal phones if we chose to, and strongly encouraged to keep them with us 24/7 so we would be reachable.
And I didn't mind being reachable most or all of the time and I certainly enjoyed not having my own cell phone bill back then, but I did not like being tracked 24/7: Sometimes, I wanted to do my own private shit on my own time without being snooped on.
I could tell the tracking app to exit, and that did work, but doing so sent a notification to my completely stupid, abusive manager -- who would variously either call to ask why I did that, or just silently turn it back on remotely (which the system permitted).
And I did not (and do not) think that, as a professional, I needed to excuse my choice to have privacy at any given time. (Given my own role in the company I had access to this tracking data as well, but I'm not the abusive type.)
So, the solution was simple: Normally, the phone was in the non-shielded part of the case. And when I dropped it into the completely-surrounded Faraday portion instead, the phone just simply dropped off and silently stopped providing updates.
This worked 100%, and while I refer to them as separate compartments to aid in functional clarity, the design of this case didn't really take up any more space than any other phone-case would have.]