What Anyone Can Learn About You From Internet Traffic

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Ars has a rather interesting article posted today that shows you just how much information we all share online every day.

“Whoa,” Porcello said. “Yep, there’s Yahoo, NPR... there’s an HTTP request to Google... the phone is checking for an update. Wow, there’s a lot of stuff going on here. It's just thousands and thousands of pages of stuff... Are you sure you’re not opening any apps?” “I didn’t do anything!” Henn replied. “My phone is just sitting here on my desk.”
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It really is obscene the amount of junk we have running in the background on our computers and phones these days.
 
Ultima99 said:
It really is obscene the amount of junk we have running in the background on our computers and phones these days.
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I use greenify on my phone. My main reason was to save battery, but it does that by limiting what apps run in the background and can access resources when they want.

I do agree though, it's amazing all the things that attempt to communicate without our knowledge sometimes.
 
Before I even go into the article and only seeing the blurb I can say this is true and almost a duh. Take your old android phone. Turn it on airplane mode and see how long the battery lasts. Amazing right!

I haven't tested this by putting the phone in a a Faraday cage but I'm willing to bet it's not the powering of the radios, it's the USE of them. Unlike an actual computer that may depend on broadcasts for things this does not but it still seems to keep talking all the time. This happens over cellular too and I'm willing to bet that not many even worry about the overhead of encryption let alone the thought of "on the wire" security at all.
 
gamerk2 said:
Duh? The Internet is not, and will never be secure. End discussion.
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Exactly. If you're worried about security, the Internet is not the place to be. You can get kind of secure, but that will keep it away from the neighbor kids. Anyone that wants the data will get it one way or another.

The article reads more like a plug for the PwnPlug device.

I really didn't expect anything different than what was in the article. Seems like completely normal stuff. I just think that the average user doesn't know that and thinks that their communication is secure, and that it only works when they tell it to (nothing working in the background).
 
bigstusexy said:
Before I even go into the article and only seeing the blurb I can say this is true and almost a duh. Take your old android phone. Turn it on airplane mode and see how long the battery lasts. Amazing right!

I haven't tested this by putting the phone in a a Faraday cage but I'm willing to bet it's not the powering of the radios, it's the USE of them. Unlike an actual computer that may depend on broadcasts for things this does not but it still seems to keep talking all the time. This happens over cellular too and I'm willing to bet that not many even worry about the overhead of encryption let alone the thought of "on the wire" security at all.
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It's mostly the radios. When I visit family, that lives in an area with poor coverage, my phone, with data turned off, goes from 100% to 10% (or less) within a day. If I leave data off (and on this particular phone I generally do), it can go a week or more without a charge.

At Bonnaroo, I had virtually no coverage, not even SMS, (on 2 different phones from 2 different carriers) and the batteries withered if not in airplane mode. There's no doubt that if you have a lot of background data (auto email downloads, Facebook, Twitter, your camera or GPS) then it goes quicker, but phones with a poor signal lose power much faster.
 
gamerk2 said:
Duh? The Internet is not, and will never be secure. End discussion.
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And many people will never read past the title another internet truth.

The Story is more about how much shit goes out from your internet enabled devices, even when you don't realize its doing it.
 
jpm100 said:
And many people will never read past the title another internet truth.

The Story is more about how much shit goes out from your internet enabled devices, even when you don't realize its doing it.
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Well that and that so much of it that you thought was encrypted is not. You'll never be 100% secure or anonymous, but much of the stuff they mention could, and should, be secured via encryption
 
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