Make Your Cellphone More Private

[Gary]

https://disconnect.me/

This phone app, makes 2000 plus tracking sites, you run across daily, kiss off.

Google banned this app for a time, but through protest, it is back.    Because your cellphone is not dragging around so many spy programs, your cellphone also runs about 25% faster.

I am trying it. 

[on the fritz]

Cool.  Will look into it. 

Maybe it just combines all the spyware into one app instead of hundreds of them.  :-/

[Gary]

After a day of use, I see no change in the way the phone works.   If Google re approved it, they might have purchased the app and corrupted it to spy on us?

 So hard to know what to trust these days.

[GreyGeek]

The app could  be just a better spy program.    Shortly after I purchased my Cisco E2500 wireless router I got a popup msg from Cisco saying there was a security update, but to get it I had to register on Cisco's Cloud.  I declined and search the web about it.  Discovered that the NSA was working with several router makers to install spyware in the router itself.  I downloaded the open source firmware for the 2500 from DD-WRT and burned it onto the device.  Now, I am free from Cisco's spyware, and the html pages that the DD-WRT gives me is superior to that of Cisco's and unlike Cisco's it gives me COMPLETE access to all the settings and controls available on the router.

[whatsit]

<< grabs tin-foil hat and popcorn >>   

[Gary]

Jiffy Pop and you have both!

[GreyGeek]

<< grabs tin-foil hat and popcorn >>

While you enjoy your popcorn munch on this information:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/

A document included in the trove of National Security Agency files released with Glenn Greenwald’s book No Place to Hide details how the agency’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit and other NSA employees intercept servers, routers, and other network gear being shipped to organizations targeted for surveillance and install covert implant firmware onto them before they’re delivered.

The TOA operation began before 2010, when the photos were taken.  The face of one of the workers was "swirled", which can be easily reversed with a graphics editor.   Since then NSA realized that consumer routers could be implanted with a remote firmware update as well, which began to take place after 2010.  IF it hadn't been for Cicso's greed users of their consumer grade wireless routers would have never known that the NSA had a back door in their router.  Even your run of the mill crooks are getting in on the hacked router gravy train.