I want to leave my phone at home or not have it on me most of the time. Most calls I get are meaningless spam and I rarely need to answer my phone for real calls outside my home (though it does happen on ocassion). One thing I do want and am accustomed to is having music, however.

I was looking at Amazon and Aliexpress for devices that can play mp3/mp4s, some can do that and even have ebook readers which is great. I don’t see any connectivity on them or microphones save for the one that is included on the earbuds or Bluetooth.

And that is one question I have: can Bluetooth compromised your privacy? I know Bluetooth hacking is real but how bad is it?

I guess if it has a microphone it is ok if I dont have any connectivity. What do you guys recommend?

  • ArmchairAce1944@lemmy.caOP
    2·
    19 hours ago

    I have an ancient but functional Galaxy Ace 2. It a 2012 vintage. Would that be able to track me or would I be safe? It is a 3G max and is not 4g or LTE capable.

    • dmention7@midwest.social
      3·
      19 hours ago

      I’m not going to claim to be a privacy/security expert here, but I think the question is “safe from who/what?” Privacy is a sliding scale with diminishing returns, so you need to set your expectations according to the level of effort you are willing to put in.

      If you just want to not be tracked/profiled by commercial big data or standard governmental operations, then an old phone with no sim, wifi/bluetooth turned off, and using wired headphones removes you from a couple tiers of lowest-hanging fruit.

      But if you think someone is specifically and actively tracking you in particular, that is a whole other question.

    • solrize@lemmy.ml
      2·
      19 hours ago

      Airplane mode might be enough to shut off the radios in a phone that old. Also the 3G network is basically shut down now. So it’s a matter of just how careful you want to be. You might be able to use some kind of field strength meter to tell if the phone is still sending any radio signals.