Privacy Blog

"Friends don’t let friends get spied on.' – Richard Stallman, President of the Free Software Foundation and longtime advocate of privacy in technology.

Cell Phones

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“Blackphone 2” Privacy-Oriented Phone and Tablet is Ready for Pre-order

I wrote about the Silent Circle encryption software for cell phones last December at http://goo.gl/4mXV9M and briefly again in March at http://goo.gl/r7x52E about the same company’s plan to sell a cell phone with the same voice encryption software already installed. Now the company is accepting orders with expected delivery in sometime in September. One problem: the producing company has not yet announced the price. It is expected to be expensive, […]

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Stagefright Bug Makes Nearly 1 Billion Android Phones Vulnerable

Zimperium zLabs VP of Platform Research and Exploitation, Joshua J. Drake (@jduck), dived into the deepest corners of Android code and discovered what we believe to be the worst Android vulnerabilities discovered to date. These issues in Stagefright code critically expose 95% of Android devices, an estimated 950 million devices. Drake’s research, to be presented at Black Hat USA on August 5 and DEF CON 23 on August 7 found […]

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NSA’s New Privacy Software Will Soon be Available for Everyone

Before the National Security Agency began complaining about being shut out of encrypted devices, it helped develop software for secure communications that could be adapted by the private sector. The NSA technology was developed for Top Secret Classified Communication and will now be available to the public later this month in the form of a smartphone application called Scrambl3 from a California startup which claims its “dark Internet tunnel” thwarts […]

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Easily Create Disposable Phone Numbers and Email Addresses

A new mobile app called Shuffle has launched a simple utility that lets you create additional, disposable phone numbers you can use to call or text as well as receive voicemail through, right from your iPhone. Shuffle allows anyone with an iPhone (an Android version is promised) to have a second or even a third telephone number and email address. The new number and address can be either temporary or long-term. […]

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Police Can Legally Obtain Cellphone Location Records Without a Warrant

According to Slashdot, a new ruling from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals found by a margin of 9-2 that law enforcement does not need to get a warrant to grab your cell phone’s location records. The justices ruled that there is no expectation of privacy for your location when you’re using a cell phone. This decision (PDF) was based on a case in which a man was convicted of […]

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Follow-up: The Easy Way to Track a Cell Phone or Even to Track an Automobile

I published the article The Easy Way to Track a Cell Phone or Even to Track an Automobile a few days ago at http://goo.gl/bZr6Pr. In the article, I described a free Android and iPhone app that will track a cell phone’s exact location and even offers the ability to lock the cell phone or to delete its contents remotely. I use the app on my primary cell phone and also […]

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How to Block Advertisers from Tracking Your Mobile Device

Mobile devices can track your Internet usage as well as the desktop systems do. You can block most (although not all) tracking rather simply. For Apple iOS (iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch): Go to Settings —> Privacy —> Advertising and turn on Limit Ad Tracking. For Android devcies: Go to Settings —> Account —> choose Google account —> Ads, and turn on Opt out of interest-based ads.

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