Surprising on the internet in the middle of 2024 seems complicated, but it’s not. A new trend is echoing among security and privacy enthusiasts: wrapping your mobile phone in aluminum foil. Aim? Create a sort of Faraday cage to prevent our phone from being tracked.

Our colleagues at Xataka Móvil debunked this myth at the beginning of the year, but it doesn’t hurt to remember the absurdity of this practice. Reason: Every phone has a button to achieve the same purpose.

The silver tinfoil hat meme has gone too far: some are wondering if covering your phone with the stuff could be useful in preventing it from being located.

According to theory, the app should be effective: a sufficiently thick layer of aluminum should block any electromagnetic waves coming from the phone, such as WiFi or Bluetooth.

Actually, the theory works. If we wrap the phone like this quite a few aluminum foil, the phone is no longer reachable. You can’t receive calls, you can’t connect to mobile networks or WiFi, and Bluetooth stops working. But while science may prevail, practice doesn’t make much sense for something so simple: airplane mode.

Image: Xataka Mobile.

To disable phone connections, simply press the airplane mode button on Android. If we don’t trust them to be disconnected, look for the specific WiFi, Bluetooth or mobile data setting to turn it off completely.

It’s a slightly more radical option, but much less so than wrapping the phone in aluminum foil. is to turn off the phone. It is true that some offerings, such as the iPhone, save a small portion of the energy so that the Search network can locate it. However, if we do not want such networks to find our phone, it is enough to not allow them.

Image | Xataka Mobile

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