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Cyber

Smart phone's secret network activity

2024-06-28

[CyberNews] It is 10 times worse than what it's DNS logs report.

A single app can connect to dozens of websites while unused. An idle phone will make thousands of DNS queries per day. But the real situation is 10 times worse, one security expert explains.

Cybernews has already experimented with idle Android and iOS phones, each with 100 apps installed. When unused, the iPhone averaged 3308 DNS queries per day, compared to 2323 queries made by Android. Some requests, more often on Android, landed in high-risk countries such as Russia and China.

Say you install the Reddit app on your iPhone, start it once, and leave it without even logging in or interacting. It will connect to 30 different domains, according to research from Independent Advisor VPN...

Reddit was followed by QQ, the Chinese instant messaging software, which connected to 19 different domains.

Among the mainstream social networks, Instagram and X (Twitter) both connected to 10 different domains, each without any user interaction.

Posted by:NN2N1

#9 Burner phone + prepaid SIM. No apps that you have to log into.

Posted by: M. Murcek 2024-06-28 13:10

#8 Maybe dont install Apps?

Posted by: mossomo 2024-06-28 13:00

#7 You can turn it off or put it in a Faraday cage at night but it's doing that stuff in the daytime too. I don't have any social media apps on my phone but I wouldn't want to bet that some of these dubious activities aren't happening anyway. There is a whole lotta crap on that phone that I don't need, never use and have no idea what it might be doing.

Posted by: Abu Uluque 2024-06-28 11:33

#6 I want to see research on how much network activity smartphones with no batteries and sealed inside Faraday cages engage in.

Posted by: Gromble+Dribble4342 2024-06-28 10:17

#5 Faraday shield sleeves are sold on Amazon and elsewhere.

Posted by: Procopius2k 2024-06-28 09:05

#4 What if you just don't install all that crap?

Posted by: ed in texas 2024-06-28 08:06

#3 Thanks

Posted by: 3dc 2024-06-28 07:25

#2 I just power off the Samsung Android Smartphone until needed.

An use my old ITSEC safe Motorola Flip Phones ($25) bought at Dollar General for use on certain client site.

Cloning/Duping/Auto-forwarding the same # number isn't that hard. 😇... In fact, it was a widespread hack in 1990-2010

Google/D2D: "How to have the same number on 2 cell phones"

Posted by: NN2N1 2024-06-28 05:14

#1 Time to bring back the old EE8.

Posted by: crazyhorse 2024-06-28 00:15

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