Insights and Perspectives
Updates and analysis on security technology and implementation.
IMEI and the Law: Where Changing It Is a Crime
We’ve said repeatedly on this blog that changing your IMEI is a bad idea, and most of that advice has focused on the fact that it doesn’t technically work the way the marketing claims. There’s a second reason that deserves its own discussion: in much of the world, deliberately altering an IMEI is a criminal
What Your Phone Actually Broadcasts (RF 101)
Your phone is a radio. Several radios, actually, and most of them are talking far more than you realize, even when the screen is dark and you’re not using it. None of this is sinister by itself, it’s how the device works, but each radio is a different way of being noticed. Here’s a plain-English
Secure Boot: What It Does and Doesn’t Guarantee
Verified boot, often called secure boot, is one of the most important security features in a modern phone and one of the most misunderstood. People who know it exists tend to assume it means the phone is safe. People who don’t know it exists are missing one of the real reasons a hardened phone is
The GrapheneOS Battery-Life Myth
One of the most common worries about switching to a hardened, de-Googled phone is battery life. The assumption is intuitive: pile on security and privacy protections, and surely the phone works harder and dies faster. It’s a reasonable guess. It’s also mostly wrong, and the reasons why say something useful about where battery actually goes.
What an IMEI Number Actually Reveals
Dial a short code or open your settings and your phone will show you a 15-digit number called the IMEI. It looks like meaningless serial gibberish. It isn’t. That number encodes real information about your device, ties your handset to your movements, and follows the physical phone no matter how many SIM cards you cycle
MAC vs IMEI Randomization: One Works, One’s a Myth
These two identifiers get lumped together constantly, and conflating them is how people end up trusting a defense that does nothing while ignoring one that actually helps. A MAC address and an IMEI are both hardware identifiers, but they live on different radios, are exposed to different watchers, and have completely different answers to the
Airplane Mode Isn’t Enough
Airplane mode feels like an off switch for surveillance. Flip it, and the phone goes quiet. It’s a useful setting, but it was designed to keep radios from interfering with aircraft, not to make you invisible, and treating it as a security boundary will get you in trouble. Here’s what it actually does and what
Why ‘Military-Grade Encryption’ Is Marketing Nonsense
If a product brags that it uses military-grade encryption, you’ve learned something, just not the thing they wanted you to learn. You’ve learned that their marketing department is writing the security claims. The phrase sounds authoritative and means almost nothing, and once you understand why, you’ll spot it everywhere. Where the phrase comes from Military-grade
Why Your VPN Isn’t Hiding Your IMEI
A VPN is one of the most useful privacy tools you can run, and one of the most misunderstood. People install one and assume the phone is now anonymous. It isn’t. A VPN protects exactly one part of how your phone gives you away, and the hardware identifier your carrier cares about most is completely
The 7-Layer Phone Tracking Stack
Most privacy advice treats tracking like a single problem with a single fix. Install a VPN, the thinking goes, and you’re covered. The truth is that a modern smartphone leaks identity across at least seven separate layers, and almost every privacy tool only touches one or two of them. If you don’t know which layer
Recent Posts
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