This video explains how to secure your smartphone when traveling or attending protests to avoid surveillance and data collection. It provides a list of actionable steps, such as disabling biometrics and using offline maps, to keep your information private in high-stakes environments.
Essential Phone Privacy Settings for High-Risk Situations
This video explains how to secure your smartphone when traveling or attending protests to avoid surveillance and data collection. It provides a list of actionable steps, such as disabling biometrics and using offline maps, to keep your information private in high-stakes environments.
- Views
- 340.8K
- Likes
- 16K
- Comments
- 184
- Topics
Analysis
What do you want us to learn? Following federal agents. Give me my cell phone.
What do you want us to learn? Following federal agents. Give me my cell phone. At protests, airports and border crossings, authorities can collect device identifiers. Fake cell towers can intercept traffic. Suddenly, your metadata becomes evidence. This is how to prepare your phone for high risk environments. Firstly, turn off voice assistant. This is something which can be used to make your device do things that you don't want it to do. Enable some kind of auto lock, meaning that once your device has been unlocked and untouched period of time, it will turn itself off. Turn off biometrics as you can be forced to unlock your phone in certain situations using these or if you have to use them, use a strange finger rather than your normal index in order to unlock a device. Many devices will have something called lockdown mode which allows you to quickly disable biometrics in the event of an emergency. Use disappearing messages. This will mean that anything that you send or receive will will only stay on your phone for a short period of time. Use a black background for your phone. A picture of a loved one, a pet, or even worse yourself can easily be linked back to you. Turn off location services, Bluetooth and WiFi. All three of these things are constantly pinging and working against you. If you want to stay private, download offline maps, ensuring that you can navigate around in the event that you can't use the Internet. Log out of any non essential accounts because you never know which one of these is snitching on you.
- 01The Dramatic Scenario Hook
Start with a role-play or a direct question that puts the viewer in a high-stakes situation.
- 02The Threat Context
Establish the specific danger or risk that exists in this environment.
- 03The Mission Statement
Clearly state the purpose of the video.
- 04The Risk Mitigation Tip
Provide a specific action to stop an automated or passive risk.
- 05The Safety Lock Tip
Provide a setting that ensures the asset secures itself when not in use.
- 06The Access Override Tip
Suggest a manual workaround for forced access situations.
- 07The Trace Removal Tip
Advise on how to ensure no permanent record is left behind.
- 08The Identity Masking Tip
Explain how common personal items can be used against the viewer.
- 09The Connection Hardening Tip
List technical connections that should be cut off.
- 10The Offline Workaround
Provide a way to function without being connected to the network.
- 11The Final Cleanup & Punchy Outro
Final maintenance step with a cynical or cautionary warning.