https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2w7d4u/why_is_an_antistatic_bag_is_not_a_faraday_cage/

You've not bunked up with 53North have you?

The reason he's been quiet so long could be due to traversing the northern polar regions on foot to get to Canada and set up his base in your fair country.

Given the vastness of Canada though, he's probably had to use your phone's GPS to track you down, thus rendering his tin foil hat machinations somewhat hypocritical.

OK, but I duct-taped the phone to a truck that's bound for Louisiana.

You want it to use GPS but not anything else? You might've been better just getting a GPS device!

Nope, I don't want to be GPS tracked everywhere I go, even when I'm not using it. Also camera and mic.

Where are you potentially going, and what might you potentially be saying that you wouldn't want to be recorded?

Of course, you potentially wouldn't want to tell me on here and potentially bring about any risk.

 

I'm back to being confused. Why don't you just turn it off, again? When you use it, all that stuff is back on unless you disable it (in which case if you're going to be paranoid properly, know that disabling it in settings won't disable it fully). So what difference does it make?

I don't want to be tracked by google, any 3d-party apps I might want to install, the NSA, local cops or anybody really. It just creeps me out. :-S

If you're fine with being tracked by all of the above, fine. It's the default.

As milko points out, disabling the features in settings and even turning the device off doesn't necessarily disable the features.

I love a bit of Google tracking. Timeline in Google Maps is one of my favourite Google features.

Also, turning the device off does disable the features, because it's off.

Honestly I think the only way to guarantee all of that is to not have the device in the first place. And you probably have to worry about what sort of router you have at home and which ISP and whether to VPN for everything and yadda yadda it likely gets a bit difficult to manage when it all adds up.

That's what they want you to think!

If you're a law abiding citizen (and I'm assuming you are, I don't think there's a law forbidding tin foil hats), then is being tracked necessarily a bad thing? 

 

I'm not bothered about being tracked (and I'm far from a law-abiding citizen!) and I enjoy some of the products that depend upon tracking. But I do think that one should have the right not to be tracked if one would rather not.

http://www.pressreader.com/canada/toronto-star/20160715/281655369415092

I'm law abiding -ish, and maybe that matters now.

But in some dystopian future in which, say Donald Trump is POTUS, or UKIP forms a gummint. Crazy, I know...

The side scrolling on that page rather than the usual vertical up down arrangement stopped me from reading the article. Is this how Canada internets itself?

Interesting thing about the article, is it's in the print edition (which is where I saw it) but not the paper's online version (thestar.com), at least I can't find it there. I had to google the title to find that website, which I agree is stupidly formatted. Bonus: you can't select text! :-O~~~ Anyway, here's a screen cap of salient bits

Yeah, you should be able to have the choice, but in Smiffy's case, that choice is being decided by the delicate balancing act between all out paranoia and giving himself up to getting spied on by everyone with access to a command prompt or as Milko said, just leaving his phone at home (where presumably the powers that be already know he resides).

It maybe his recalcitrant attitude towards the establishment that stops him for benefiting from the plusses that a new phone has to offer, whether one outweighs the other is up to him, but does offer a more fundamental choice of use it and accept that it's possible someone might be looking at his selfies, or leave it in a drawer for use when necessary.

There's another option o'course, get a non-smart cell phone. No GPS, no cameras etc... <shrug>

It's not as draconian as you make it sound. All I need is a suitably shielded case/bag/wallet to carry it in, then when I need to use whatever features I choose (including gps, camera, whatever... actually the camera is crap), all I have to do is take it out and use it. Simple, easy -- said case/bag/wallet not so easy to find though.

Bonus: I'm unreachable when phone is in case/bag/wallet. (bounce)

Did I mention that I hate phones?

 :-D

Do you have any lead lined bags from using camera film?

I'm curious then, what do you actually want it for?

Also, if you are going to put it in a shielded case of some sort whilst leaving it powered on I'd recommend putting it in Flight Mode because I'm sure a phone without signal that is looking for signal uses far more battery.