As of , smartphone manufacturers have started to recognize that this kind of tracking is problematic, but it may not be fixed in every device for years—if ever. In comparison to GSM monitoring, these forms of tracking are not necessarily as useful for government surveillance. This is because they work best at short distances and require prior knowledge or observation to determine what MAC address is built into a particular person's device.
However, these forms of tracking can be a highly accurate way to tell when a person enters and leaves a building. Turning off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on a smartphone can prevent this type of tracking, although this can be inconvenient for users who want to use these technologies frequently. Wi-Fi network operators can also see the MAC address of every device that joins their network, which means that they can recognize particular devices over time, and tell whether you are the same person who joined the network in the past even if you don't type your name or e-mail address anywhere or sign in to any services.
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On a few devices, it is physically possible to change the MAC address so that other people can't recognize your Wi-Fi device as easily over time; on these devices, with the right software and configuration, it would be possible to choose a new and different MAC address every day, for example. On smartphones, this commonly requires special software such as a MAC address-changing app.
Currently, this option is not available for the majority of smartphone models. Apps can ask the phone for this location information and use it to provide services that are based on location, such as maps that show you your position on the map. Some of these apps will then transmit your location over the network to a service provider, which, in turn, provides a way for other people to track you. The app developers might not have been motivated by the desire to track users, but they might still end up with the ability to do that, and they might end up revealing location information about their users to governments or hackers.
Some smartphones will give you some kind of control over whether apps can find out your physical location; a good privacy practice is to try to restrict which apps can see this information, and at a minimum to make sure that your location is only shared with apps that you trust and that have a good reason to know where you are. In each case, location tracking is not only about finding where someone is right now, like in an exciting movie chase scene where agents are pursuing someone through the streets.
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It can also be about answering questions about people's historical activities and also about their beliefs, participation in events, and personal relationships. For example, location tracking could be used to try to find out whether certain people are in a romantic relationship, to find out who attended a particular meeting or who was at a particular protest, or to try and identify a journalist's confidential source.
A tool called CO-TRAVELER uses this data to find relationships between different people's movements to figure out which people's devices seem to be traveling together, as well as whether one person appears to be following another. There's a widespread concern that phones can be used to monitor people even when not actively being used to make a call.
As a result, people having a sensitive conversation are sometimes told to turn their phones off entirely, or even to remove the batteries from their phones. The recommendation to remove the battery seems to be focused mainly on the existence of malware that makes the phone appear to turn off upon request finally showing only a blank screen , while really remaining powered on and able to monitor conversations or invisibly place or receive a call.
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Thus, users could be tricked into thinking they had successfully turned off their phones when they actually hadn't. Such malware does exist, at least for some devices, though we have little information about how well it works or how widely it has been used.
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Turning phones off has its own potential disadvantage: if many people at one location all do it at the same time, it's a sign to the mobile carriers that they all thought something merited turning their phones off. An alternative that might give less information away is to leave everybody's phone in another room where the phones' microphones wouldn't be able to overhear the conversations. Phones that are used temporarily and then discarded are often referred to as burner phones or burners. People who are trying to avoid government surveillance sometimes try to change phones and phone numbers frequently to make it more difficult to recognize their communications.
They will need to use prepaid phones not associated with a personal credit card or bank account and ensure that the phones and SIM cards were not registered with their identity; in some countries these steps are straightforward, while in others there may be legal or practical obstacles to obtaining anonymous mobile phone service. First, merely swapping SIM cards or moving a SIM card from one device to another offers minimal protection, because the mobile network observes both the SIM card and device together. In other words, the network operator knows the history of which SIM cards have been used in which devices, and can track either individually or both together.
Second, governments have been developing mobile location analysis techniques where location tracking can be used to generate leads or hypotheses about whether multiple devices actually belong to the same person. There are many ways this can be done.
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For example, an analyst could check whether two devices tended to move together, or whether, even if they were in use at different times, they tended to be carried in the same physical locations. A further problem for the successful anonymous use of telephone services is that people's calling patterns tend to be extremely distinctive. For example, you might habitually call your family members and your work colleagues. Even though each of these people receive calls from a wide range of people, you're likely the only person in the world who commonly calls both of them from the same number.
So even if you suddenly changed your number, if you then resumed the same patterns in the calls you made or received, it would be straightforward to determine which new number was yours. Remember that this inference isn't made based only on the fact that you called one particular number, but rather on the uniqueness of the combination of all the numbers that you called.
Indeed, The Intercept reported that a secret U. The document describes the Hemisphere database a massive database of historical call records and how the people who run it have a feature that can link burner phones by following the similarity of their call patterns. The document refers to burner phones as "dropped phones" because their user will "drop" one and start using another one—but the database analytics algorithms can draw the connection between one phone and another when this happens, so long as both were used to make or receive calls to similar sets of phone numbers.
Together, these facts mean that effective use of burner phones to hide from government surveillance requires, at a minimum: not reusing either SIM cards or devices; not carrying different devices together; not creating a physical association between the places where different devices are used; and not calling or being called by the same people when using different devices. This isn't necessarily a complete list; for example, we haven't considered the risk of physical surveillance of the place where the phone was sold, or the places where it's used, or the possibility of software to recognize a particular person's voice as an automated method for determining who is speaking through a particular phone.
The Global Positioning System GPS lets devices anywhere in the world figure out their own locations quickly and accurately. GPS works based on analyzing signals from satellites that are operated by the U. In fact, the GPS satellites only transmit signals; the satellites don't receive or observe anything from your phone, and the satellites and GPS system operators do not know where any particular user or device is located, or even how many people are using the system.
This is possible because the individual GPS receivers like those inside smartphones calculate their own positions by determining how long it took the radio signals from different satellites to arrive. Usually, this tracking is done by apps running on a smartphone. They ask the phone's operating system for its location determined via GPS.
Then the apps are able to transmit this information to someone else over the Internet. This is because the malware — or spy app — may be using up phone resources to scan the device and transmit the information back to a criminal server. Do you find your phone frequently freezing, or certain applications crashing? As with reduced battery life, many factors could contribute to a slower phone — essentially, its everyday use, so first try deep cleaning your Android or iPhone.
Another sign of a compromised phone is an unusually high data bill at the end of the month, which can come from malware or spy apps running in the background, sending information back to its server. While not all pop-ups mean your phone has been hacked , constant pop-up alerts could indicate that your phone has been infected with adware, a form of malware that forces devices to view certain pages that drive revenue through clicks.
If a hacker has access to your phone, they also have access to its accounts — from social media to email to various lifestyle or productivity apps. In this case, you could be at risk for identity fraud , where criminals open new accounts or lines of credit in your name, using information taken from your breached accounts. For Android, we like Bitdefender or McAfee for their robust feature sets and high ratings from independent malware analysis labs. Lookout for iOS flags apps that are acting maliciously, potentially dangerous Wi-Fi networks, and if the iPhone has been jailbroken which increases its risk for hacking.
By now, government spying is such a common refrain that we may have become desensitized to the notion that the NSA taps our phone calls or the FBI can hack our computers whenever it wants. Yet there are other technological means — and motives — for hackers, criminals and even the people we know, such as a spouse or employer, to hack into our phones and invade our privacy. From targeted breaches and vendetta-fueled snooping to opportunistic land grabs for the data of the unsuspecting, here are twelve ways someone could be spying on your cell phone — and what you can do about it.
Many are advertised to suspicious partners or distrustful employers, but still more are marketed as a legitimate tool for safety-concerned parents to keep tabs on their kids. Basically, almost anything a hacker could possibly want to do with your phone, these apps would allow. When we studied cell phone spying apps back in , we found they could do everything they promised. Worse, they were easy for anyone to install, and the person who was being spied on would be none the wiser that there every move was being tracked. Spy apps are available on Google Play, as well as non-official stores for iOS and Android apps, making it pretty easy for anyone with access to your phone and a motive to download one.
And with people often checking their email apps throughout the day, phishing emails are just as lucrative for attackers. Android will warn you, though, when you try to download an unofficial app and ask your permission to install it — do not ignore this warning. Quite likely. Hacked iCloud and Google accounts offer access to an astounding amount of information backed up from your smartphone — photos, phonebooks, current location, messages, call logs and in the case of the iCloud Keychain, saved passwords to email accounts, browsers and other apps.
And there are spyware sellers out there who specifically market their products against these vulnerabilities. Online criminals may not find much value in the photos of regular folk — unlike nude pictures of celebrities that are quickly leaked — but they know the owners of the photos do, says Wisniewski, which can lead to accounts and their content being held digitally hostage unless victims pay a ransom.
Having access to a primary email can lead to domino-effect hacking of all the accounts that email is linked to — from your Facebook account to your mobile carrier account, paving the way for a depth of identity theft that would seriously compromise your credit. Any wireless connection may be vulnerable to cyber-snoops — and earlier this year, security researchers found a vulnerability in Android 9 and older devices that would allow hackers to secretly connect over Bluetooth, then scrape data on the device.
In Android 10 devices, the attack would have crashed Bluetooth, making connection impossible. And once connected, your personal information would be at risk. Another reason to be stringent about what you post online: cybercriminals can call up cellular carriers to pose as legitimate customers who have been locked out of their accounts. In a spat of Instagram handle thefts , for example, hackers used known login names to request password changes and intercept multi-factor authentication texts sent to the stolen phone number.
The purpose? To hold victims for ransom or, in the case of high-value names, sell on underground marketplaces. Some people have also had cryptocurrency accounts hijacked and drained. Researchers were able to provide these details by first sending a text instructing users to call a certain number, which played a voicemail telling them to call a second number. A since-fixed glitch in the Android onboard Camera app, for example, would have allowed attackers to record video, steal photos and geolocation data of images, while malicious apps with access to your camera app see below might also allow cybercriminals to hijack your camera.
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While many apps over-request permissions for the purpose of data harvesting , some may be more malicious — particularly if downloaded from non-official stores — requesting intrusive access to anything from your location data to your camera roll. According to Kaspersky research, many malicious apps in take advantage of access to Accessibility Service, a mode intended to facilitate the use of smartphones for people with disabilities.
Some stalkerware apps, for instance, take advantage of this permission. Free VPN apps are also likely culprits for over-requesting permissions. Eavesdroppers on an unsecured Wi-Fi network can view all its unencrypted traffic. And nefarious public hotspots can redirect you to lookalike banking or email sites designed to capture your username and password.
Any tech-savvy person could potentially download the necessary software to intercept and analyze Wi-Fi traffic. According to InfoSec Institute, apps that use weak encryption algorithms can leak your data to someone looking for it. Or, those with improperly implemented strong algorithms can create other back doors for hackers to exploit, allowing access to all the personal data on your phone.
This method could also be used to hack other online accounts, from email to social media, wrecking financial and personal havoc. The likelihood is growing, as the minimal resources needed to exploit this vulnerability have made it available to cybercriminals with a much smaller profile who are seeking to steal 2FA codes for online accounts — rather than tap the phones of political leaders, CEO or other people whose communications could hold high worth in underground marketplaces.
Malicious charging stations — including malware-loaded computers — take advantage of the fact that standard USB cables transfer data as well as charge battery.
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Older Android phones may even automatically mount the hard drive upon connection to any computer, exposing its data to an unscrupulous owner. There are no widely-known instances of hijacked charging points, while newer Android phones ask for permission to load their hard drive when plugged into a new computer; iPhones request a PIN. However, new vulnerabilities may be discovered. National Guard, Army and Navy are among the government bodies known to use cellular surveillance devices the eponymous StingRays that mimic bona fide network towers. The American Civil Liberties Union has identified over 75 federal agencies in over 27 states that own StingRays, but notes that this number is likely a drastic underestimate.