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How are smartphones used to spy on you? Edward Snowden answers!

Everyone suspects that smartphones are watching us all the time. What if we told you that Edward Snowden, that same one, can show you how it happens? Well The former CIA and NSA member recorded a video detailing this procedure.
He noted that the biggest change in the way the government conducts surveillance is that the approach is now the "mobile-first" approach due to the high number of smartphones. He also said that carriers are able to track his device and thus discover his identity through cell towers. Snowden also adds that the physical movement of his phone and yours as an individual is the same, and of course, this facilitates the spying process.
"This means that whenever you carry a phone, whenever it is switched on, there is a record of your on-site presence that is created by the companies. It does not need to be kept forever and, in fact, there is no good argument for that. be kept forever, but these companies see it as valuable information, ”explains Snowden.
He also said that all this data is stored as part of a mass collection or surveillance, regardless of whether you did something wrong. Snowden also says that turning off the phone works in a way, but wondered how you would know that your modern, tightly sealed smartphone is actually turned off. “When I was in Geneva, for example, working for the CIA, we all used phones as if they were drug dealers. Old phones where you can remove the battery, ”he explains.
In other words, you can buy a LG V20 or Nokia 2.2 if you want some peace of mind as these are two of the few phones with removable batteries at the moment.
Do you know what your smartphone does?
While we know this is no doubt new, Snowden says the central issue around using modern smartphones is that we don't know what the device is doing and what it is connecting to. "Apple and iOS, unfortunately, make it impossible to see what kind of network connections are constantly being made on the device and therefore makes it difficult to broker them," he explained. "If there was a button on the phone that said 'do what I want but don't spy on me' you would press that button," Snowden says, noting that, among the largest companies, Apple is better at it than Google.
This, however, may be changing. Google has raised the bar for security and privacy with the release of Android 10 as Google now offers more detailed location controls, the ability to disable ad personalization, background activity restrictions, and restrictions on apps accessing your hardware identifiers.

Source: Android Authority