As we continue to receive reports about the hostile political climate in our country, we would like to raise awareness to our supported SHASS Community about the vulnerable state of your personal data, its availability, and how it could be used against you, not only by bad actors like scammers and phishers but also by governments and hostile political entities foreign and domestic.

Earlier this year, Eliza Orlins, a career public defender in Manhattan, gave a Ted Talk about all the ways data purchased from data brokers have been used against her clients. What she revealed in her talk was an alarming trend by government and police to weaponize this data against New Yorkers. This data includes but is not limited to everything you’ve ever said on social media, your search history on Google, data gathered from you when you make purchases, private messages on any social media platform, and location data from your computer and/or the GPS data from your phone that is mandated by the government to be always on. What’s worse is if any of this data was purchased by government from data brokers, a warrant is not required for the use of this data against defendants.  4^th Amendment protections do not apply on the grounds that users voluntarily surrendered this information when they used the services and applications that mined or scraped this data from user cell devices.

Eliza’s Talk can be found on YouTube here:

Universal surveillance is here—how do we fight back?
Eliza Orlins, public defender Manhattan

Because of the current state of affairs, we are recommending anyone in the SHASS Community who has a high public profile, and/or studies politically sensitive adversary nations including but not limited to Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, or any countries in the Middle East, and anyone who conducts research on any topic that may be at odds politically or opposed by current political power brokers take the following steps:

1) Stop using the default text messaging app on your personal smart phone. You and all of your collaborators need to start using private messaging with Signal where the data is properly encrypted and cannot be surrendered by a corporate or service entity.

Meredith Whittaker, the President of Signal gave a great talk about security at South By Southwest in early 2025 and also talks about what makes Signal (a non-profit corporate entity) different from the profit driven Whatsapp and Telegram.

o  The State of Personal Online Security and Confidentiality from SXSW in Texas, early 2025 Featuring Meredith Whittaker, President of Signal. Guy Kawasaki, tech evangelist and host.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyH7zoP-JOg

Signal can be downloaded from here:
https://signal.org/download/


2) Be mindful of how you are posting on social media. To get around algorithms and censors that may block your post or suspend your account, whenever possible, use a more indirect strategy of reposting articles from established reputable news organizations and/or publications that agrees with your ideological position instead of outright saying what your position is. If someone challenges your post for any reason, the AI algorithm will see the source and shift the onus on the source article and not on you.

3) Scrub your data from the Internet and out of the hands of data brokers so it can’t be purchased by any entities, private or public. Consider the possibility of paying for a service like Erase Me, Incogni, or Surfshark to have your data permanently scrubbed from data brokers on the Internet. The costs for such a service to remove your data from the Internet are often between $100-$200 annually.

o Cybernews, The Best Data Removal Services
https://us.cybernews.com/lp/best-data-removal-services/

4) Make sure all your cell-enabled devices are 5G capable. At this point, devices that only run 4G and lower can be easily hacked or have both voice and texts easily Stingrayed/eavesdropped and stolen by private entities and governments.

5) Consider placing any personal cell-enabled devices into a Faraday Bag to suppress the GPS signal and suppress all incoming and outgoing cellphone and WiFi signals. By law, all phones in the US are required to have a working GPS module broadcasting your location at all times. Users who do not wish their location data to be collected during times when they don’t plan to be using their phones anyway, should place them in Faraday Bags to prevent data about your location from being collected. Users who wish to preserve their device’s battery can shut off the devices before placing them in the bags.

These Faraday bags can be found in different shapes and sizes on Amazon.com. Make sure you purchase the appropriate bag for the size for your device and the highest customer reviews. If you have any questions about which ones to get, please email us and ask.

6) Weigh borrowing IS&T offered travel phones or personal burner phones when traveling to adversary nations or locations where you are concerned your devices may be targets for hacking or cyberattack. For many of the loaner devices, like the ones offered by IS&T, users need to also make sure they give IS&T a list of apps they want to appear on the device as well as any specific functions on the device that they would like enabled. This includes but is not limited to services like MIT or 3^rd party VPN or hotspot functionality.

For travelers to countries where both cell and internet infrastructure are tenuous or slow, you should plan to acquire the loaner early so IS&T can push the apps and settings before you leave MIT’s campus. We have confirmed that even phone setting modifications requested after travel has begun, do not achieve enough of a minimum secure bandwidth in places like Asia, to activate. Therefore it is critical that users make sure everything is working on their loaner devices before they leave for their trip.

By using cell-enabled devices that are not tied to your digital identity when you travel, the data the device produces is not associated with you and therefore rendered meaningless in the hands of databrokers.

Information about IS&T’s travel loaner program can be found here:
https://ist.mit.edu/loaner-equipment

Please be aware that when you receive the verification email LNR ticket from the IS&T loaner program, you MUST reply to that SPECIFIC email LNR ticket as your primary lifeline and fastest way to contact the equipment loaner team. Do not send emails to the IS&T Help Desk with inquiries or requests about the loaner.

As always, please contact us if anyone has any questions or concerns about any of the topics discussed in this News Article.