I’m all about cheap simple solutions. Behold the Faraday cage!
Quit laughing. It works and it’s cheap.
What you’re looking at is a sleeve made of duct tape and tinfoil. The silver and gold is actually duct tape. The tinfoil is inside. (I should invest in less gaudy tape.)
It’s easy to make a Faraday cage cell phone case. In fact, I was so lazy I didn’t even do it myself. I gave a teenager some tinfoil and duct tape and told them to get creative. If a teenager can do it so can you.
While my phone is in a Faraday cage it’s locked down tight. Anyone who wants to spy on me has to do me the honor of personally lurking in the bushes and peering through drapes like the little perverts they are. I’m old school like that.
The phone pops back “in sight” when I take it out of the cage to make a call. For the duration of the call it creepily records my location, to whom I’m calling, for how long, and probably my preference in breakfast cereal. No biggie. It’s just a few minutes. When I’m done, the phone goes back in the gimp box. How easy is that?
So there you have it. Your phone can have it’s very own tinfoil hat. Just because herds of cheesedick bureaucrats insists on poking into your life you don’t have to make it easy on them. Stop ’em at the threshold with physics.
You’re too good for duct tape? For $58 this object has the same functionality as my creation without appearing quite so nutty.
Incidentally there are commercially made Faraday cage cell phone cases. My ugly little sleeve cost basically nothing. If you wish, you can drop $58 on a Black Hole Faraday Bag
My only complaint is that a tinfoil brick the size of a smartphone looks somewhat like a packet of drugs. I didn’t see that coming. I find it pretty ironic. I decided I’d avoid leaving it on the truck dash but I’m not too worried about it, I just think it’s funny.
A.C.
* If you buy a Black Hole Faraday Bag from any of the links on this post Amazon gives me a cut. I’m not saying you have to buy it. I’m not saying I bought one. I’m not saying that it’s functionally better than a wad of tinfoil. I’m just saying if you want to buy one please use a link from this post. Please please please. It won’t cost you a penny and I’ll feel super smug all week.
**If you drop $58 in my tip jar I’ll happily ship you a bespoke, locally made, totally authentic redneck approved, special paranoiac model, duct tape/tinfoil Faraday cage cell phone case. Shipping and handling included because I’m nice like that. You could be the coolest kid on the block!
And if someone wants to call you? Oh right… 🙂
Now you’re gettin’ it!
I am … tempted.
I’ve already sold one… no shit!
Now, where the hell did I leave my duct tape?
Sorry, but stuffing your own cat into one of those things does NOT count as a “sale.”
At least, not unless one has donated an appropriate amount to the correct political entity…
Jeez what sort of paranoid loon enjoys yanking the chain of authority so much as to ho to these lengths! Both of apparently, lol! I made something a year ago. Unfortunately I don’t have your sound marketing strategy!
So there are two tinfoil wrapped cell phones running around? It’s a movement!
It’s a International movement. I’m on a different continent! See how fast these things grow! Next stop our own representative at the UN.
I can’t go to the UN. I break out in hives at contact with diplomatic corps yahoos.
Actual exchange of worthless Federal Reserve Notes.
Actually they’re electronic bits of data that represent the idea of worthless Federal Reserve Notes. 🙂
I was just thinking I could carry my smart phone in a metal Band-Aid box, then it occurred to me that I haven’t seen a metal Band-Aid box in years, for that matter you don’t see much of anything metal as you used to. I don’t buy Band-Aid anyway as they are made in Brazil nowadays, I buy Murican bandages from Walgreens, just because I can and want to. https://www.richardcraver.com/2012/07/shopping-tip-save-money/
On another subject, my ballistic nylon wallet I’ve been carrying for 10 years is beginning to look like moths attacked. I started looking for RFID blocking wallets, $$$. I will probably buy another nylon unit, take it apart and line it with foil as well.
Metal band aid boxes are gone but I figure it’s ok because kid’s band aids now have cartoon characters and that’s awesome. Ya win some and ya’ lose some.
I’m not sure about RFID logistics. If you fold tinfoil around a card (as in a wallet) the card is 90% covered but there’s a little opening where you slide the card (and money) into the wallet. That might be enough for the signal to get through. I don’t have any RFID cards… so far they’re easy enough to avoid. (P.S. Many ‘merican passports now have RFID.) As far as I know RFID is pretty weak… you’d have to be within several feet of the RFID interrogator.
Some of us still have a “Curity Curad flexible fabric bandages” metal box that we use to carry band aids and Neosporin with us as part of our toiletries kit when OTR…
And while you might not be “within several feet of the RFID interrogator” while out in flyover country, if you ever go to the hives, you most likely could easily be scanned. Or do you think you would be able to detect someone with one of these in a purse or handbag:
http://gaorfid.com/devices/rfid-readers-frequency/
???
Just because I’m paranoid (and weird and prone to building stuff out of duct tape) doesn’t mean they aren’t tapping phones: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/01/16/phone-database-justice/21868063/
If I happen to have an empty old metal toolbox, won’t it cover the same need?
Yep. Enclosure in metal should do it.
Don’t take my word for it. Test it out. Put the tool box on a table, put the cell phone on the same table, and call your cell phone from some other phone. When it rings you know you’ve got signal. Then toss the phone in the box and close it. Dial again. If it doesn’t ring you’ve got empirical evidence that the metal box is doing it’s job. If it does ring you’ve got empirical evidence that either the laws of physics have been rescinded or the box has an opening somewhere that lets in radio waves (I’m using “radio” here for simplicity and not implying cell phones are FM stations).
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