Editor's note: This post was written in early 2023. Beyond the screenshots and end of the article is a brief 2026 addendum.
A comment that comes up often for us on Twitter from the common troll (who apparently have thought this through more than the inventors of the product, and all of our high security tech and military customers who use it) is that an expensive Faraday sleeve is useless; turning off your phone or putting it in Airplane Mode is all it takes to disable location tracking, microphones, and cameras. This popular misconception can deceive uninformed readers who'd like to believe it was this simple. We'd like to believe it as well, but it’s not true, and the potential consequences are serious. So, we created the solution.
At the essence of the need for a Faraday sleeve and physical blocking mechanisms for the cameras and microphones, is that software solutions to privacy problems are not to be trusted. As one example, Apple, Facebook and Google have all been recently caught blatantly ignoring whether or not a user turned off location tracking, and took that data regardless. These are companies that have to pretend to play by rules. Hackers and stalkers don't.
If your hotel room had a camera facing your bed or bathroom, would you trust the front desk when they tell you "don't worry, it’s off", or would you cover it up?
Unfortunately, this goes not just for the microphones, GPS, and camera access, but for Airplane Mode and "on/off" itself.
Even when (never) your phone can be trusted to be free of malware, Airplane Mode doesn't approach being a serious method of security. "Find my phone" works in Airplane Mode, as do your connected Bluetooth speakers, for example. Turning off the entire phone is a step further, but your phone is not fully off until its battery is removed. As a real world example beyond Twitter screenshots, high security and military friends and customers report that prior to any meeting, a phone being in the “off” state is not sufficient, they then have to be placed into metal (Faraday) boxes.
To worry that a phone in its off state is still tracking you may seem extreme, but it is a very real concern to many- especially any who have experienced "stalkerware" or those in security or journalism who are familiar with malware such as Pegasus, which grants full access to all components of your phone to people who can then use that access for blackmail or physical harm via your location. The gravity of this is why we don’t let “just turn it off” comments go unaddressed.
This leaves us few options. We could throw our sledgehammered phones into the ocean, or leave them at home in a drawer all day, but we recognize their utility and many of us cannot afford the luxury of not owning a smartphone. The Ghost Sleeve gives you the power of a smartphone when you want it, and removes the tracking when you don't.
2026 Addendum
Within the past week, Apple spent nearly two billion dollars to acquire a "stealth startup" that specializes in deciphering "whispered speech", and Google was forced to admit that they illegally record audio and sell that data to advertisers:
Thanks to headlines like these and the surrounding chatter, In the six years since our founding, the common culture has largely shifted to no longer viewing these kinds of privacy concerns as conspiracy theories. However, we do notice a "defeatist" and helpless attitude among many when the topic arises: the surveillance and tracking is everywhere, why even try to be private when there is an Alexa or license plate camera around every corner? Our response to that concern is simple: there is no other device carried as frequently and with as many surveillance "surfaces" (camera, microphone, Bluetooth, location) as the smartphone. The Alexa is stationary at home and can be stuffed in a closet (you shouldn't have one). The license plate reader reads your license plate as you drive by (to use two random examples). The phone, however, is by your side 24/7, your own little personal spy in windows of the day that it isn't being used, and your personal, private life's perfect record keeper. As nobody knows where all this data is going, and the people controlling it look less and less trustworthy by the year, we would strongly recommend taking phone privacy security seriously, whether you arrive at that destination by investing in a flip phone, or in our privacy products, if your lifestyle mandates a modern smartphone.
More:
“On recent iPhones, Bluetooth, Near Field Communication (NFC), and Ultra-wideband (UWB) keep running after power off, and all three wireless chips have direct access to the secure element. As a practical example what this means to security, we demonstrate the possibility to load malware onto a Bluetooth chip that is executed while the iPhone is off.”
https://www.hackread.com/attackers-install-malware-on-iphone-when-it-is-powered-off-research/
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2205.06114.pdf
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