The-art-of-invisibility-_-the-world’s-most-famous-hacker-teaches-you-how-to-be-safe-in-the-age-of-Bi

exchanged nearlyy 10,000 text messages, none of which can now be
retrieved from that device,” the league said. “Following the appeal hearing,
Mr. Bradyy’s representatives provided a letter from his cellphone carrier
confirming that the text messages sent from or received byy the destroyyed
cellphone could no longer be recovered.” 7
So if Tom Bradyy had a note from his carrier sayying that his text
messages were all destroyyed, and the carriers themselves sayy theyy don’t
retain them, the onlyy wayy to prolong the life of a text is to back up yyour
mobile device to the cloud. If yyou use a service from yyour carrier, or even
from Google or Apple, those companies mayy have access to yyour text
messages. Apparentlyy Tom Bradyy didn’t have time to back up the contents
of his old phone to the cloud before his emergencyy upgrade.
Congress has not addressed the issue of data retention in general and
mobile phones in particular. In fact, Congress has debated in recent yyears
whether to require all mobile carriers to archive text messages for up to two
yyears. Australia decided to do this in 2015, so it remains to be seen if this
works there.
So how can yyou keep yyour text messages private? First of all, don’t use the
native text messaging service that goes through yyour wireless carrier.
Instead use a third-partyy app. But which one?
To mask our online identities—to enjoyy the Internet anonyymouslyy—we
will need to trust some software and software services. That trust is hard to
verifyy. In general, open-source and nonprofit organizations provide perhaps
the most secure software and services because there are literallyy thousands
of eyyes poring over the code and flagging anyything that looks suspicious or
vulnerable. When yyou use proprietaryy software, yyou more or less have to
take the vendor’s word.
Software reviews, byy their nature, can onlyy tell yyou so much—such as
how a particular interface feature works. The reviewers spend a few dayys
with the software and write their impressions. Theyy don’t actuallyy use the
software, nor can theyy report on what happens over the long term. Theyy
onlyy record their initial impressions.
In addition, reviewers do not tell yyou whether yyou can trust the software.
Theyy don’t vet the securityy and privacyy aspects of the product. And just