Tower Triangulation

This is where multiple cellular towers are used to geometrically locate devices connecting or pinging them by measuring the strength of the connection from each tower.

more towers present around you = more accurate location

Towers even at a distance of 5 miles from you can be used to triangulate your location precisely.

Wifi Triangulation

Wifi routers often interact together especially when they're from the same ISP. When your device recognizes a wifi network nearby (as seen in the wifi details option of your phone) which also allows them to determine the signal strength of each router.

This can be used to geometrically determine your device's location based on how strong the nearby signals are, even when you're not connected to it.

Two routers are enough to track you precisely upto a 6 feet error. You're surrounded by tens of them.

On Android and Apple devices, wifi can also be used to geofence you with GPS through Google or Apple Network Location Provider (NLP) service. Making it even easier to geo-locate your device.

GPS/A-GPS

Your phone constantly searches for satellites to connect to Global Positioning System (GPS) signals.

Both Android and Google devices use Google-SUPL service for gps queries - [supl.google.com:7275]. This happens even if you do not connect your phone to a WiFi or Cellular data.

Blocking this service greatly impacts cellular data connectivity and disables location services on your device.

(A-GPS stands for 'Assisted GPS'. It is when the SUPL GPS service works with the on-device GPS module to be even efficient in location tracking.)

How to have a phone for anonymous use?

WARNING: Best preferred Android ROM is GrapheneOS. If you REALLY NEED a secondary phone and it is compatible with LineageOS, you can proceed with it, but remember, you WILL NEED to make changes to the LineageOS firewall (+ block supl.google.com:7275) for it to be even close to Graphene in terms of security.

WARNING/TIP: If you're proficient with linux and have experience using ubuntu touch, you can proceed with the same steps of setting up and precautions after you have secured its firewall.

SETTING UP:

• Get yourself a grapheneOS phone. Only proceed if you get one. Otherwise, don't use a secondary phone at all.


• Get a decently reviewed Faraday bag on amazon. However its recommended to buy it physically with cash or learn how to make Faraday bag here, here, or here.
  
  WARNING: Make sure to check whether your faraday bag works on not at your home prior the protest by putting your or someone else's phone inside it with cellular data and gps/location enabled and trying to call/track it.


• Back up any important data and flash your phone with grapheneOS or LineageOS after a factory reset and check if it booted in your new ROM. DO NOT CONNECT TO ANY WIFI OR CELLULAR NETWORK. Now switch your phone off and immediately put it in a faraday bag, making sure its completely sealed. Its is good to disguise the faraday bag as a normal envelope or put in a bag to avoid high-level suspicion.

Next steps (a) & (b) are for accessing internet anonymously ONLY AFTER you have completed the above steps.

a. Accessing internet anonymously - eSIM

• Dress up all black and go to a random place insignificant to you, get your phone out of the faraday bag, and connect to a public wifi.


• Download tor browser in your grapheneOS phone.


• Via the tor browser, with some monero, purchase an eSIM from https://silent.link, and activate it on the secondary phone.


• Make sure that while you're doing this, you're not under any security surveillence (cameras, law encorcement buildings, etc).


• Once you validate that the eSIM works, disconnect from and forget the public WiFi network, power the device off, and put it in the faraday back again right away.

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⚠️ Although eSIM method works well, you need to remember that the moment you activate it, the systems start tower-triangulation right away and doing it anywhere close to your location of interest might be potentially risky. You also need to be careful NOT to switch it on at your own home by any chance, or you could hear the bang on your door soon. This is why its best to use open public wifi.⚠️

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b. Accessing internet anonymously - public wifi

• There are multiple advantages to use tools like openwifimap to find public WiFi cafe networks to connect to.


• If for some reason the app/website does not show free open WiFi around your area, you might want to go for a walk like a normal person just to grab some coffee and note down the password without any suspicious movements.


• Make sure to install f-droid on your grapheneOS and install tor browser and orbot vpn from it. Check "Setting up package managers" section of this to be guided through how to install fdroid securely.


• Go in your grapheneOS settings and search for 'VPN' , find and select more options for orbot vpn after opening the orbot app once and giving it permission to start a VPN. Select the option to set orbot as an "Always-on VPN" and turn on "Block all connections not using this VPN".
  
  (or)
  
  Install Mullvad VPN and proceed with the same steps to block all connections not using Mullvad.
  
  

  ⚠️ Although Mullvad is one of the very few trustable VPNs out there, we can NEVER trust a single entity so its better and free to use orbot. ⚠️

Now whenever you are outdoors onto doing something sensitive, being unidentifiable with the uniform and your gear, you can take the phone out of the faraday bag, power it on and use it.

Anonymous Communications

A trusted, decentralised communication platform for discussing things about the protest is the most important thing. Despite having all the proxies and anonymization tools in your hand, if the Law Enforcement already knows about the people going to protest, they can arrest them prior the protest.

This is why you need a secure, decentralised, end-to-end encryption based messaging platform.

An extensive guide on how to use and why to use PGP encryption in messengers can be found here.

Simplex Chat

For sensitive communications while outdoors, it is suggested to use SimpleX chat with disappearing messages turned on.

We will be also showing how to use SimpleX as an all-in-one privacy messenger for all your activities in one of our future tutorials.