IS YOUR SMART PHONE SPYING ON YOU?

Is your smart phone spying on You? 

( Image downloaded from internet)

Some of what I am going to tell you looks like fiction, but believe me, it is all true! I have looked up several references to write these facts; strange but true. 

These are written to help people who are hounded by the blackmailers, the women who are stalked by the creeps.

The 'smart' (but gullible) folks, meaning the majority of people like you and me, may not have the time to learn these facts! 

They become an unsuspecting prey to the so called 'smart' phones and 'smart' mobile applications! Which after all may not be a smart idea! 

These are certainly not written to aid the fugitives who run away from justice! 

As always , these secretive methods are also employed by the commercial firms to compete with each other, to sell to the highest bidders namely the companies vying with each other to sell their consumers more products. They are also employed by various governments including foreign ones to steal information, industrial secrets and also before various meetings to influence our leaders' opinions to suit their own selfish needs! I expect a lot of it may be used for military purposes.

'Spy' is defined as "a person who secretly collects information about and reports about activities of a person or organisation to another country government or another organisation"

We lock up our car, secure our house, bolt our doors and go to bed at night to prevent anyone coming in and stealing our secrets. Apparently under the false assumption that everything is safe!

But little do we know that we are keeping a spy with us all the time who is, without our knowledge transmitting or at least is capable of passing on all our secrets to the whole world!?

That spy is the mobile phone which we constantly carry with us . 

So let us look at what spies in general do, and apply them to the mobile phones we carry.

1. Is your mobile phone tracking your movement and recording it without your knowledge?

2. Is your mobile phone listening to your conversation without your knowledge, recording and reporting it to someone else?

3. Is your mobile phone watching you without your knowledge and sending the video to someone else?

Let us look at them in more detail!

1. Is your mobile phone tracking your movement and recording it without our your knowledge? 

(Image downloaded from internet)

Yes, most certainly you can be tracked with the help of a smart mobile phone even without a sim card or even when the phone is switched off.

How is this possible? Smart phone has an embedded GPS function. This can be traced by the sim card; when phone is off, it can be traced by the embedded mobile chip! 

(Ref Wall Street Journal)

This type of tracking of your movements is done 

-without your consent

-a record of it is kept for many days

-Since the servers are in the West, the data can be stored and used by foreign security services.

We know this already anyway! When we travel from TN to Kerala, the smart phone says 'Welcome to Kerala', even when we have not made a single call. How is this possible? Many ways -

1.Phone tracking without the owner's knowledge is done with ' Cocospy'

2.When you say 'Yes' to an app that asks your for location without a reason, stop and think. Your are authorising it to access and sell your data

3.Dozens of companies track your location and serve advertisements based on them. The data collected by from the phone is compiled to form a full report and is chopped into market segments. The data is then sold to the companies.  For instance, if you google 'shirts', next time you open Facebook, you see adverts of shirt companies. So you know this is a commercial fact already anyway!

4.Every time you open WiFi spot anywhere, you are freely broadcasting your new address as you go! Even the stores you visit are traced by the WiFi spots and the 'artificial intelligence' gives you the list of other alternate stores nearby.

In all fairness, there may never be a breach of location enough , but private hackers and government security agencies can track our leaders, scientists , researchers, even us?! for their own nefarious purposes. Remember, the servers are stored in the West and are accessible to their security services!

Ref: Wall Street Journal

2. Is your mobile phone listening to your conversation without your knowledge and reporting it to someone else? 3. Is your mobile phone watching you without your knowledge and reporting it to someone else?

(Image downloaded from internet)

We can consider the 'eavesdropping' and the 'video-sneaking' of your movements together! 

FBI director James Comey in 2016 had taped his webcam camera in the laptop! So you can imagine the amount of truth and paranoia in what I say!

Even apps such as WhatsApp, FB, Instagram, Snap Chat, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc which most of us use do it are not so innocuous!  When you let the app access your camera phone, it does the following:

• accesses your front and back camers
• records you anytime 
• takes pictures and vides without telling you
• uploads the pictures and videos without telling you
• uploads the pictures and videos it takes immediately
• real- time face recognition of people on the video and the pictures
• live streams the web camera real time to the net
• detects by facial recognition of you or whoever uses the phone, video
• detects if you are alone or with someone else, even identifies the other person!
• uploads the random frames of the video stream to your web service and creates a 3D model.

Some of the examples are

a) If you used ' Find my Phone App' this program follows the phone thief without his knowledge with video and audio. It naturally, means that the same thing applies to the owner of the phone too!

b) Snowden revealed the western security program called 'Optic Nerves' . Webcam images every 15 minutes were taken from yahoo users with video chats, recorded without their knowledge and stored for future use!

c) Government agencies including the ones abroad can access your devices thorough inbuilt backdoor! They listen to your phone calls, read your messages, capture your pictures, stream your videos, read your mails and steal your files'!

d) Hackers also purposefully gain with was via the Apps, PDF files, multimedia messages ( pictures which we download easily), and even emojis (smilieys)!!

Once you open the PDF file, the hacker 

• installs any software or App
• uses key goggle to gain your password
• steals your documents
• takes your pictures/ videos and also
• captures your past and live audios!!

Precautions to take:

1) Be careful with your digital usage

2) Be cautious and careful on the internet

3) Install adequate, appropriate antivirus program

4) Tape your camera both in front and back ( at least when appropriate)

5) Think!! - When an App asks for permission for your camera ( LinkedIn - really,Why ?!!; Twitter - Why access your microphone ?!!) check out the reviews and prevent self harm, instead of blindly typing 'yes' to rush with your consent!

6) Cover your web camera in laptop with tape like the FBI director

7) Plug your microphone even when not using it!!

Ref:(Dylan Curran in Guardian 6 April,2018 )

In general, one can use several precautions:

1) Smart phones have embedded GPS signalling, and so they can be tracked even when switched off ( identified by the unique number on the handset!). 

But non-smart phones cannot be tracked unless they have GPS embedded in addition!... So the smart phone users may not be so smart; on the other hand, the non-smart phone users are really the smart ones - ha ha !

(Image downloaded from internet)

2) When there is a confidential conversation taking place, switch off your phone completely and even remove the batteries. 'Malware' can recording  conversations while surreptitiously showing you a blank screen on the mobile!

3) Or leave all your phones in another room ( like in the IT firms, or like in the TN hospital recently looking after a VIP) , while reporting for confidential talks, confidential work. Confidential conversation should be held in another room where it cannot be overheard!  

(Image downloaded from internet)

4) Phone Burners- These are guys who keep discarding their phones immediately after using them. This method is followed by fugitives (Like Matt Damon in Bourne Identity!)

Ref: Surveillance Self Defence 10, Oct 2018

5) If you change your sim but still keep the old smart phone, tracking is easily done by network by the unique number on the handset!

6) So use a lot of 'common sense' while using mobile phones! 

All that glitters in not gold! If you do not want to be stalked or tracked, be smart and use a non-smart phone!