I want to leave my phone at home or not have it on me most of the time. Most calls I get are meaningless spam and I rarely need to answer my phone for real calls outside my home (though it does happen on ocassion). One thing I do want and am accustomed to is having music, however.
I was looking at Amazon and Aliexpress for devices that can play mp3/mp4s, some can do that and even have ebook readers which is great. I don’t see any connectivity on them or microphones save for the one that is included on the earbuds or Bluetooth.
And that is one question I have: can Bluetooth compromised your privacy? I know Bluetooth hacking is real but how bad is it?
I guess if it has a microphone it is ok if I dont have any connectivity. What do you guys recommend?
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IDK if there are many of those things still being made, but sure, if there’s any private info on the player and you’re trying to be ultra careful, then get one without Bluetooth. I can also imagine (IDK if this has actually been done) someone using a bluetooth attack to turn the player into an audio bug from (say) the next room.
Players do tend to have built in microphones so you can use them as audio recorders. I had (and mostly still have) a bunch of different ones, though they were audio only and not video, or at any rate had tiny screens. There are tons of them on ebay.
If you’re going to carry a big player with video and an ebook reader, why not just take your phone? Put it in a mode that blocks all calls. Or get another phone and use it with no sim and turn off the wifi. Then you can run your usual audio and video players. Dedicated players were once popular but now are very niche, since everyone uses their phone now.
FIIO makes some good ones if you still want to shop around.
I have an ancient but functional Galaxy Ace 2. It a 2012 vintage. Would that be able to track me or would I be safe? It is a 3G max and is not 4g or LTE capable.
I’m not going to claim to be a privacy/security expert here, but I think the question is “safe from who/what?” Privacy is a sliding scale with diminishing returns, so you need to set your expectations according to the level of effort you are willing to put in.
If you just want to not be tracked/profiled by commercial big data or standard governmental operations, then an old phone with no sim, wifi/bluetooth turned off, and using wired headphones removes you from a couple tiers of lowest-hanging fruit.
But if you think someone is specifically and actively tracking you in particular, that is a whole other question.
Airplane mode might be enough to shut off the radios in a phone that old. Also the 3G network is basically shut down now. So it’s a matter of just how careful you want to be. You might be able to use some kind of field strength meter to tell if the phone is still sending any radio signals.