The memory goes so quickly. A video here, a hundred MP3s there, pretty soon you’re talking real storage. I consider 64gigs the minimum any more in a portable device.

It’s hard to articulate exactly why location tracking is creepy, but it definitely is. It’s like having a gaggle of Googlers following you around everywhere you go, taking notes on clipboards of your every activity. Or Apple Geniuses.

They do more with that data than you might think. Google Maps shows some examples. Click on a business for more info, and you’ll probably see a bar chart showing how busy the establishment is at various hours of the day. That information could only have come from collating location info from all the Android phones that went inside that establishment.

Since I live in California, I don’t have to give two effs about this, but it might concern many people to see that tracking info for a cannabis store. Or (not a personal example) their local sex toy shop, or massage parlor, or weight-loss clinic, or furby costume shop.

And they do keep personal identification with the tracking. Several times now, Google has sent me email asking me to rate an establishment I recently visited. Google is actively watching. Their words say one thing, their actions another.

If I were in the process of robbing a bank or committing a murder I probably would be concerned about that- but really what are they going to learn? Sure, I guess some statistical analysis has revealed that I have a truly pathological addiction to caffeine- but LOTS of people already know that about me…

Perhaps I have surrendered to the technological onslaught on privacy, but its nice to be able to ask your phone where the nearest caffeine dealer is and get a meaningful answer…

The Note 9 comes with Half a Terabyte of memory and can take an additional memory card (largest you can buy is another half terabyte) so you can have a Terabyte of storage in your pocket…

Could I possibly ever use that much storage? I do not know, but I know 64 Gigabyte was woefully inadequate for me on my last phone, and after a couple of weeks I am at ~60 GB used…

Most importantly it takes great pictures of my dog! Even at slow motion 960 frames per second!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u_P7NmexDI

It was a bad idea since the enclosure we would paint had many holes and cables going into it so even lining it with copper would have limited benefit…

But in looking into RF blocking paints and coatings I stumbled into the rabbit hole of crazy that is ‘Electromagnetic Hyper-sensitivity’- folks that have convinced themselves that RF emissions make them sick…

There is a thriving subculture of such people and a thriving industry of quackery that caters to them…

In the meantime, I can keep it wrapped up in my tinfoil hat when I’m not wearing it.

Turning off the power should be enough to keep it from being used to track you. I don’t buy into the paranoid belief that the NSA can turn on your phone and surveil you at any time. Something like that, across multiple vendors and product lines, would leave tracks.

You kinna violate the laws of physics, so a phone that could be turned on remotely would require the phone to never truly turn off, as it would be consuming power to keep the receiver on to listen for the naughty activation signal. You’d notice your battery discharging with the power off.

A Faraday cage is a little over the top, but then there are enough paranoids in the world that I’m sure you can buy some kind of metallic mesh bag for you phone somewhere. But keep in mind that a true Faraday cage is grounded, making it not exactly portable.

The truly paranoid open up their phones and remove both the battery and the SIM card. Pretty easy to do, actually, and probably more practical than a Faraday cage.

Good luck, ER.

I can see why they don’t allow replies. They’d have gotten about 100 million angry messages saying, in so many words, f*** right off. Jeez.

I’m not being facetious. I do not rely on my cell at all except for emergencies, like calling AAA after a breakdown on the Turnpike. In fact, I’m seriously considering getting a tin box I can use as a Faraday cage so it can’t be used to track me when I’m not using it.

Actually, I have 2 mobiles. One is a TraKphone drug dealer special I pay for with a $10/mo scraper card I buy at the stupormarket. The other one they gave me free at the VA, and it gets replenished free once a month or so electronically. Consequently, I don’t have to deal with plans, contracts, etc. So you’ll have to excuse me if I’m not too hip on Mobile Maintenance protocols.