A phone unique identifier is a distinct code assigned to a mobile device to recognize and track it across networks and services

Thanks!

"Every smartphone contains a cellular baseband modem running proprietary firmware outside the control of the operating system. As long as the modem is on, the device is talking to towers. So the real question isn't "is my OS private?" It's: who are you trying to be invisible from? An abusive ex? Big Tech? Telecom providers? State-level actors? Because total invisibility is a lie. Privacy is about understanding the layers. Good OPSEC is about understanding your tools. And sometimes the correct tool for a radio... is a Faraday bag." View quoted note →

And being on flight mode doesn't necessarily mean the baseband is turned off...

Fuck your ai voice

The AI voice is bad

This is not an attack on you and I am a fan of actual privacy. A Faraday bag sounds cool but to me it seems, idk, temporary and not very useful really. If someone is trying to track you they're going to know where you are as soon as you open the bag. And you can't use the phone while it's in the bag so I don't see how that would be better than just turning the phone off.

I recommend to never use it with mobile connected. But when you use it always do it with an anonymous SIM and route all traffic over For.

I want to watch this. Saving.

@Uncle Ted ⚡️ knows how to be invisible

So the real question is when do I want to turn my radio on... FTFY

At this point, privacy is playing an infinite game of leveling up. You don't play an infinite game to win, you play to keep the game going. You play to keep it interesting. So, you've played the game for a long time, all these years. An elite player outclassing all others. What's your prize? I know you don't play the privacy game for prizes, but what is it?? Mindset. You get mindset. Everyone sees it, everyone knows it. And it looks something like this. Private everywhere, except for your mind. You glorious warrior.

Good instinct—get the bag. But a Faraday bag sitting on your desk while your phone is powered on and connected to Wi-Fi isn't doing anything. If you want to actually minimize your footprint, the starting point is understanding the layers. GrapheneOS is not magic. It's discipline expressed in software. The physics don't care about your OS. Your phone is a radio. GrapheneOS hardens the operating system exceptionally well—stronger sandboxing, exploit mitigations, hardened memory protections, tighter permission controls, and a significantly reduced attack surface. That matters. But it does not change the underlying reality that a smartphone contains multiple radios—cellular (baseband), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and others. When those radios are active, the device emits signals that can be observed or correlated. Edward Snowden summarized the principle in a 2019 tweet: "If I were configuring a smartphone today, I'd use @DanielMicay's @GrapheneOS as the base operating system. I'd desolder the microphones and keep the radios (cellular, wifi, and bluetooth) turned off when I didn't need them. I would route traffic through the @torproject network."

X (formerly Twitter)

Edward Snowden (@Snowden) on X

If I were configuring a smartphone today, I'd use @DanielMicay's @GrapheneOS as the base operating system. I'd desolder the microphones and keep th...

The actual stack if your threat model demands it: — All radios off. Airplane mode. Wi-Fi off. Bluetooth off. No SIM. — Ethernet via USB-C, wired directly to a network (not your home network if your threat model demands it). — Route all traffic through Tor via Orbot. Optionally, if you're concerned about your ISP seeing a Tor connection, run an always-on VPN with kill switch enabled first, then Tor via Orbot on top of it. Your ISP sees the VPN connection, not Tor. That's a personal call—not everyone trusts a VPN provider as a second party, and that's a valid position. — For calls and messaging—Signal or SimpleX over that connection. — Faraday bag when not in use. You can feed an Ethernet cable through and run it from inside the bag. GrapheneOS says it kills the radios in software. I believe that. But I still keep that phone in a Faraday bag—because I don't fully trust software to kill hardware. A phone with physical kill switches would be better. Until that exists cleanly, the bag is your physical guarantee. One note on Faraday bags: not all bags are equal. Buy quality and test them regularly. Put your phone in the bag, call it, text it. If anything gets through, the shielding isn't doing its job. — A note on DNS: DNS leaks can expose your queries before, during, or after your tunnel is established—often resolved by your ISP without you knowing. Your DNS resolver is also a separate trust decision. Even when your traffic is encrypted, whoever resolves your queries can see the domains you're visiting. Confirm DNS leak protection is enabled and know who is actually handling your queries. @GHOST Ghost has written some excellent field manuals on this topic. The financial reality. Total device segmentation is not optional—it's structural. Banks and financial institutions actively block VoIP numbers, international eSIMs, and many MVNO numbers for SMS 2FA. And it's not just finance—this is becoming increasingly common across platforms and services of all kinds, many of which also reject alias emails. Your front-facing device with a real carrier SIM and a real email address isn't a compromise—it's a necessity if you participate in modern digital life. Having a front-facing identity is also less suspicious than having none. A cell phone—GrapheneOS or stock—is tracked at the carrier level regardless. That's a conscious choice, not a failure. For higher threat models—burner and bug-out discipline: — Buy it anonymously. Cash. Have someone else buy it if necessary. — Never power it on near your home or any location tied to your identity. — Always power it on and off at the same random location, at least five miles from home. Same intersection every time. That creates a false anchor point in your location data. — Pattern recognition is its own attack surface. Your movements create a mobility fingerprint—where you sleep, where you work, which restaurants you frequent, which addresses you visit regularly. This is called mobility fingerprinting, and it can identify you from location data alone without your name ever being attached. Same time, same spot, even "randomly"—that's a fingerprint. — Faraday bag. Always. The segmentation model: Device 1—front-facing daily. Real SIM. Real email. Banks, 2FA, carrier identity. GrapheneOS or stock—doesn't matter. Tracked and accepted. Device 2—private GrapheneOS. No SIM. Radios off. Ethernet. Tor. Signal. Device 3—burner/bug-out. Anonymous. Bag. Distance discipline. One more thing worth saying: the Android ecosystem is shifting. Google has been locking down device trees and hardware drivers, making it harder for projects like GrapheneOS to operate, and pushing users toward KYC through the official Play Store. That landscape is worth watching. None of this means you have to run a three-device stack to benefit from better privacy practices. This is tiered. At minimum—kill your radios when you're done using your phone. Note that on stock Android, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth may still perform background scanning for location services even when the toggles appear off. GrapheneOS disables this behavior by default and allows you to set timers that automatically turn Wi-Fi or Bluetooth off when they haven't been connected for a period of time. Airplane mode costs nothing. GrapheneOS is an excellent step toward better mobile security and privacy. It's just not a finish line. Total invisibility is a lie. But understanding the layers and building accordingly is how you stop being an easy target. Know your threat model. Build accordingly. #IKITAO #Privacy #OPSEC

One thing worth adding: GrapheneOS uses stronger MAC address randomization for Wi-Fi connections—reducing long-term identifiers that can be used to track your device across networks. Stock Android typically uses a persistent randomized MAC per network, which can still be correlated over time. This is one of the concrete ways GrapheneOS reduces Wi-Fi tracking exposure. It doesn’t change the physics. But it raises the floor.

You could toss the phone in a lake and still be traceable in many areas (cameras and accompanying software). You'd have to go to perhaps impossible lengths to be totally invisible. I certainly can't. And even if you could, it would be temporary. No man is an island.

I uploaded the liberated Nostr-native video in the post. If you can't see it, then it could be a relay or a client issue.

Aah - was just slow to load, thought it was an image, thanks!

Ed needs to post on Nostr.

Thanks for digging out and reposting Snowden's notes @Ava I stumbled upon @GHOST website today, it's awesome 🫡

When I connect to hotel WiFi I have to log in every single time. I would be annoyed if it weren't so darn cool that my MAC is spoofed each time.

If you’re going to go full tinfoil hat then you wouldn’t use an Android powered device at all…🤦🏻‍♂️

I do ?!?!?!

Shaquille O’Neal Just Made History Again 📖

Well if if wasn't for your brother, they never would have found you

Great piece, very useful An alternative approach (different tradeoffs) is to rent a long term (real) sim online, and use this for kyc facing interactions This way the number isn't tied to your geolocation and you don't need the extra device Then, use your main graphene phone without sim - always in airplane mode. Always. If you ever turn it off, even without sim, you just pinged a cell tower your device identifier. Finally, for mobile internet, a second graphene with a data only sim. No apps. Use this phone only for hotspot, when there is no wifi, and turn off immediately (or at that familiar junction) when not in use. This way you can swap out your "marked" device without needing to transfer your local data.

Thank you. This is a solid approach worth discussing. The remote SIM model using services like silent.link is legitimate and used by people serious about separating identity from connectivity. But there's a practical problem I've run into firsthand: silent.link numbers and similar services are increasingly blacklisted by financial institutions and major platforms for SMS 2FA—for the same reason alias emails are blocked. They've built detection for these ranges. So if your threat model includes any interaction with banking or Big Tech services, you're back to needing a real carrier SIM somewhere in your stack. The hotspot-only second device is clever segmentation. Separating the device that touches the cellular network from the device that holds your data is sound thinking—and it’s very much in line with the layered model I outlined. But that hotspot device is still a radio on a network—it's trackable. You've isolated the exposure, not eliminated it. As covered in the original post—a SIM-less device is not the same thing as a radio-silent device. If the cellular radio is active, the device can still interact with nearby towers. The radio doesn't care about the SIM. A thoughtful alternative—just understand the gaps before relying on it.

An open source device (hardware) with degoogled os is the dream. Who needs sims now anyways. It's just for 2fa no one actually calls anyone anymore. It's big tech that's keeping us anchored to the requirement of having a SIM card. I wouldn't mind just accessing the internet at Wi-Fi spots as I move around.

This is all useful but the only thing I'm concerned about is Tor at this moment since it's been quite buggy lately and is prone to centralization. If there was a way to route all traffic through I2P or some mesh network like RNS that would be much better IMO. Amazing guide otherwise!

Valid concern. Tor has known limitations—especially around traffic correlation attacks. But it’s still the most mature option for anonymous access to the open internet, which is what most real-world use cases require. I2P and mesh networks are interesting and more decentralized, but they solve a different problem—they’re not drop-in replacements for clearnet access. Different tools, different layers.

Rubber won’t do anything for RF, and lead isn’t the right tool here. Lead is used for ionizing radiation (like X-rays), not the radio frequencies your phone uses. What you need is a conductive enclosure—a proper Faraday bag or cage with a good seal. Continuous shielding, no gaps. That’s what actually blocks the signals. If it’s not designed for RF shielding, it’s not the right tool for the job.

December 31, 1996 was 29 years ago. Things have changed.

Understood. If you’re worried about microphones, the most reliable way to eliminate the risk is a hardware-level cutoff—something that physically cuts power to the mic. That’s not software muting—that’s a hard disconnect. Same idea applies to cameras—without a hardware cutoff or a physical cover, you’re still relying on software and trust. GrapheneOS does a lot at the OS level to lock things down, but I trust a physical switch more than software running on top of closed-source components like the baseband/modem. If you want absolute certainty, you can physically disconnect or desolder the mic entirely. Anything short of that is still trust-based. There are niche devices like the Librem 5 and the newer Liberty Phone that already do this, but they come with trade-offs and aren’t exactly mainstream daily drivers. It’d be nice to see this kind of control make its way into flagship phones.

Also worth noting—there are newer devices like the Jolla phone starting to move in this direction with physical privacy controls. Still early, still trade-offs—but it shows where things are headed in the open hardware and privacy space.

That’s a solid approach. If pulling the battery works for you, that’s as definitive as it gets—no power, nothing running. The kill switches are just there for convenience when you still want to use the phone.

I’ve seen you mention this before. Not sure exactly what you mean, but that sounds intense. Cutting the radios, using physical controls, powering devices down, removing the battery, or using something like a Faraday bag—those are all solid steps in the right direction, depending on your threat model and how you approach compartmentalization and isolation. GrapheneOS does a lot at the software level to disable radios, and I have no evidence to doubt that—but I still trust physical cutoffs more than software controls.

And his freaking wife 😒

Throw away all technology and go hunting and trapping in the Appalachians. It isn't that different. Just requires a psychopath.

One day at a time

i dont know do a cloud....

Anybody that thinks graphing OS is going to protect you for any tracking is stupid. Security is always about layers. Getting Graphene OS is one step in the right direction. But ideally, there should be many different operating systems on many different devices in different methods to put in operating systems. It should be back like how it was like 20 plus years ago with phone operating systems.