Documentation · Operation

Radios, SIM, and location

What the cellular radio, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and location still reveal.

Contents

Encryption hides content. Radios still announce presence. Treating those as the same problem is how a careful device gets identified anyway.

Cellular

A SIM has an identity the carrier, and anyone impersonating the carrier, can request. If the SIM was purchased against a passport or a card in your name, the radio is a named presence whenever it attaches. For work where presence matters, use a SIM that is not registered to the person, or leave the cellular radio off and use the tunnel over another network you have already decided to trust. Do not put the same SIM in the Theta handset and in a personal phone. That correlates the two radios immediately.

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

Both probe for things they have remembered. A saved home network, a watch, a car, or a headset from a personal device is an identifier, even when the traffic that follows is encrypted. Forget networks and peers that belong to another identity. Turn the radio off when you are not using it. Do not let the handset auto-join a network you did not choose in that moment.

Location

The platform does not need location services. Leave them off unless a specific task requires them, and turn them off again after. Photographs and shared files can carry coordinates in their metadata after the radio that took them is quiet. Strip location from a file before it leaves the device, or do not attach it. A calendar invite, a document author field, and a message signature can identify you with no help from the baseband.

The baseband is a computer you do not control. Do not store the only copy of a secret on a handset whose cellular radio you also leave on in a place you need to keep private.