I guess it's a good way to avoid receiving calls.

 :-@

... which doesn't actually work I discovered this morning, when I dialed the cell number while it was in the bag, and it rang. So I might have to spend some real money.  :-((

I'm confused. Why not just switch it off and/or leave it at home if you don't want it to work.

GPS

https://www.justsecurity.org/31876/world-this-uk-government-hacking/

This is the main reason that has held me back from getting a cell.

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?