Before Edward Snowden hit the news, most people didn’t give much notion to government spying on average people. During a recent interview, the former spy agent revealed that the NSA has the ability to leech on your smart phone, even if it’s turned off.
So if you are wondering if NSA can listen to your conversation, yes it can. Furthermore, they can see you through your own camera even if it’s shut off. You might think it’s impossible but it is actually happening today.
How is that possible?
Ever heard of invisible spying applications? Spying apps aren’t anything new; everyone from corporations to professionals to hackers to jealous wives exploit them. This sneaky spying app doesn’t just whip your text messages, surfing history, and photos. It also allows full access of your phone’s camera and microphone. NSA then acquires all the information of your whereabouts and what bouts and basically everything going on around you with your bug phone. All your conversations, embarrassing or not, will be recorded.
What’s more annoying is that even if you turned your phone off to be safe, it wouldn’t really be off. The invisible app makes you believe that your phone is off. What it deliberately does is it only turns off the screen, ignores incoming calls and doesn’t react to button presse yet the spying goes on.
How to clean the bugs
An alternative solution to making your sensitive conversation private is to totally remove the battery. But then again, some phones don’t have removable batteries, like the iPhone.
To strictly turn off an iPhone you have to be aware how to use the “device firmware upgrade” or DFU, mode. It is used by Apple and other developers to install iOS updates unlock a SIM card or jailbreak a phone. But no worries, you don’t need to do any of that since you only want to really turn off your iPhone. Getting started with the DFU mode; you’ll need an iPhone, USB cord and a computer with iTunes installed.
You will need to carefully follow the following steps:
First, using the USB cord, connect the iPhone to your computer and start iTunes. Once iTunes is running, go to your iPhone and hold down the Power button for three seconds, then press the Home button. Hold both buttons and count to 10 seconds.
The phone’s screen will go black, but keep holding the buttons. After the 10 seconds, let go of the Power button, but keep the Home button pressed still.
Hold the Home button for another 10 to 15 seconds. When you see a pop-up message in iTunes, you know you’re successfully in DFU mode.
When you’re ready to get out of DFU mode, hold the Home button and Power button until the Apple logo appears. Let the phone start like it usually would.
Obviously, this turning on and off procedure could completely get on your nerves. So you might just think that it’s better to keep the NSA or anyone else from successfully putting the spy app on your phone in the first place.
The NSA or anybody else who might be after you could skid a spy app on your phone masked as another legitimate app.
This is much easier on Android phones for the reason that they can download apps from third-party sites. Google Play’s review policy is very relaxed.
Apple gadgets can only download from the Apple App Store, and the despicable is you would have to get the app past Apple’s reviewers. That’s harder, but still isn’t impossible.
Another concern is that the NSA knows undetermined bugs in operating systems and common programs that lets it collect data without anyone knowledge. It turns out the NSA was exploiting the Heart bleed bug to spy on people, so it isn’t that mind-boggling. And it’s just about impossible for you to impede.
