Aluminum foil works. At least, I can’t receive calls or texts through it last I tried.
Get the heavy duty kind. It’s not any more conductive, but is more durable against tearing.
Note that a gap in your phone’s tracking data can look suspicious at times. Sometimes it’s less suspicious to leave your phone at home.
Just want to note here that suspicion does not equal proof. Consider honestly what you are trying to accomplish, and what the risks are. There are absolutely scenarios in which even raising suspicion is unacceptable, and others where it isn’t.
I’m not selling dope, I just don’t need Google knowing everywhere I went on the way to the doctor’s office, where I’ll probably sit and look at cat videos in the waiting room. I have anxiety and I can’t stand surveillance like this constantly.
Have you tried risk management instead? You can turn off your cellular network, wifi network, and Bluetooth. Hell, you can just toggle on air plane mode. This should theoretically turn off GPS too.
If this isn’t enough management then you’re suspecting that the OS is somehow keeping track of you or there’s some firmware that is bypassing OS controls to track you. Unless you are doing something highly illegal or you are someone highly important, I highly doubt this is the case.
I do not think I need to be important at all. I just want something to throw it in. I have also checked a degoogled ohone that I think might actually work in my country.
De Google your phone if your that paranoid. Switch to Apple if unable to degoogle phone.
Hahaha what? “Give THIS company all your information instead” is kinda…
It can’t be degoogled without gettung stuck in a boot loop.
surely it would be more cost effective to buy a degoogled phone and sell your current one?
I am checking on that. It took a while for me to find an option. It expensive, but at least it is not Snoople or Samsux. I swear my firewall swats down google constantly. They hit me over and over and over again. And I wonder why my electricity bill is through the roof.
Then yeah, faraday bag will suit your use case :)
I second this. I’ve seen videos of cell phone thieves getting caught and they all have rolls of aluminum foil on them. I trust they know how to effectively block wireless signals.
Getting caught? Can’t work that well then!
jk
It’s not any more conductive
quick note: you’re likely correct the conductivity may not be higher, but the conductance likely is.
in other words, i second your suggestion of heavier duty foil (for EM reasons, skin effect etc) alongside the mechanical factors you mentioned.
Bags don’t really work, but hard shell boxes do.
Back when I was working with radio devices, we needed real isolation on lab benches, along with the ability to selectively allow RF paths with specific impedance. The gold standard was Ramsey test equipment enclosures, and they really work (although they only provide isolation up to about 90 dB at the frequencies we cared about; for extreme isolation sometimes we had to nest two like Matryoshka dolls).
It doesn’t sound like you need any conducted signal, just isolation, so that will make for a cheaper bulkhead. Here’s the smallest/cheapest Ramsey enclosure. You can probably find used ones on ebay for less, but you may need to hunt for a while.
Another company that makes real enclosures is ETS Lindgren but they’re larger and much more expensive.
If you don’t like the weight/bulk/cost of that solution, then no, you’re not going to find something that actually works.
That certainly is cost prohibitive. Is it because of the frequency range of cell and wifi?
Also, thanks. I still might get one.
I have a little more time now to write more. A Faraday cage needs to fully enclose an object with electrical conductivity in all directions. Solid metal is best, but holes are fine as long as they are substantially smaller than the RF wavelength you’re trying to block.
WiFi has wavelengths between 5 and 13 cm (speed of light divided by frequency). Microwave ovens are also around 12 cm and you can see the small holes in the screen you can see in the glass through the door. “Substantially smaller” than 12 cm, at least by an order of magnitude (10x), but approaching 2 orders (100x), around 1 mm.
5G is a bit all over the place, so let’s stick with wifi.
What matters is the size of the holes in your mesh, the type and thickness of metal, and the quality of the electrical contact across all seams. No gaps bigger than a half millimeter (based on 1/10th the wavelength, or maybe no gaps under 0.05 mm), anywhere. Bags have sewn seams and could spend a little or a lot of effort making it be conductive. Conductivity isn’t a normal sewing consideration and doing it well costs more. Then there’s the access hatch.
In an Anechoic chamber, the door has very good copper (and possibly gold plated, I don’t recall) connections all around a solid door on a big hinge with a big handle that cam-locks everything tightly. Obviously that’s really expensive, but it scales down from there. A good mesh bag folds the lip over on itself, but its still going to be poorly electrically connected at a micro level, especially with dirty durable metals.
You’ll open and close it a lot and it will definitely flex and get dirty, so I expect it to get worse over time.
The seam on a Ramsey box is a U-shaped aluminum channel on the bottom, containing conductive foam covered in a flexible wire mesh layer that gets compressed against the top aluminum edge in the middle. All of the aluminum edges are raw for electrical connectivity, while the outer shell of the aluminum box is coated to make it durable and easy to handle. There’s a decent latch to put a lot of force into holding it closed and compressing that foam tightly. It wears out over time. There’s a lot of work that goes into making that $600 box perform really well.
I’m sure you could find a bag that works half decently, but it will be pretty expensive and it will get worse over time. I’ve handled an evidence bag designed to keep devices isolated in transit. It looked decent, but I didn’t test it. Maybe you can find one of those but I bet it’s not from Bezos.
I kinda disagree with your overall plan being the best response to pervasive corporate and government surveillance, but you should at least be empowered with a scientific basis to evaluate a solution so I hope that helps.
Science Fucking Matters.
Yes it does. It sounds like I need to buy materials and experiment.
I think it’s mostly about durability and great conductivity all along the closure.
Are you trying to EMP-proof your phone, or block signals/tracking for a time?
I just want it to not be tracked constantly.
I have a bag from silent pocket. Works great.
SLNT Faraday stuff is supposed to be good. I’ve never used one. Michael Bazzell recommends them.
Does a microwave work?
They work good, phone lost all connectivity inside. So does Mission Darkness.
Does a microwave work?
From what I heard you won’t find a real Faraday bag that works well and blocks almost all signals, those found on Amazon are really not that effective and only “military grade” bags could be useful in these kind of threats
Okay. That means I need to chexk the surplus stores. Maybe I will get lucky.
I don’t think that if real Faraday bags meant for military work they are avaible in surplus store for civilians
This is not bleeding edge tech.
I know but don’t think you could find them there. The only way of getting good ones is surely to buy some that seems reputable (aka not amazon shit) and test them in labs (maybe someone already done that and that Faraday bags recommandations exist online)
i made one with tinfoil and a ziploc bag
Did it work?
yes took about 6 layers of tinfoil though
Something meant to maintain a high or low temperature. A Thermos or pizza delivery bag or a bag for bringing frozen groceries home. Some might just be foam, but there are also ones with metalic coating or a steel shell.
Use an SLNT bag
My first faraday bag was a ‘HODUFY’ pouch. It works fine.
After that, I bought the Nickle/Copper fabric from China and tested making pouches using cyanoacrylate glue and velcro strips. I found a supplier now that sells 10 m x 1.1 m fabric for $65 + shipping.
If you are in a hurry and you only want the cellphone pouch, you can buy a cheaper pouch online and test that you cannot call it nor connect via Bluetooth when it is inside the pouch. Working with the fabric directly lets you make custom pouches by cutting, folding, and gluing.
Here are some photos of a HODUFY and the DIY pouch. In the third photo you can see that the material inside the pouch is a similar type of Nickel/Copper fabric.
To make the pouch, a single piece is cut into a rectangle and folded in half, leaving three open sides. Two of the three open sides are folded over twice and glued shut. The remaining side is the opening, which makes use of velcro strips to close. This opening also needs to be folded when closing, like this:
The key point here is that you do not pierce the fabric, and you make sure that the edges are sealed shut properly by folding.
This is actually badass. I might try that. It the fabric fairly rugged? Why did you stop using the Hodufy?
The hodufy works for a phone. I just wanted to experiment to learn. I don’t use any of them often - I keep my phone in airplane mode and without a sim card and only use it with WiFi.
So you use wifi calling?
I video call my family over WiFi, usually when I am home. For me it is easy to get by without making a phone call. In the past few years I remember making one phone call to cancel an internet subscription and one to make a doctor’s appointment. Calling is not my preferred medium, I strongly prefer e-mail. I do keep a prepaid SIM card inside my phone’s case in case of emergency, but fortunately I have never needed it.
Why would one want to put their phone in a faraday cage? I know what the cage does, but don’t understand why you’d want to use one instead of turning the device off.
Edit: According to this, unless your phone is compromised, turning it off is sufficient.
Some phones, even if they are turned off, still send telemetry data.
I use GrapheneOS and for safety reasons, when I know I won’t get a call, or if I have to travel somewhere discreet, I’ll use one :P Works well for me!
Some phones, even if they are turned off, still send telemetry data.
I can’t find anything other than redditors making this claim. Is there a better source I can look into?
