The right to assemble and protest is enshrined in American law, but it can still be dangerous to hit the streets to make your voice heard. Your devices are a treasure trove of information about you, and you may not always know who’s collecting that data. Take a few minutes before you go to assess your digital and physical safety. Even if you have nothing to hide, you don’t want to accidentally give law enforcement officials any information you didn’t intend to share. Follow these tips to lock down your phone before a protest or other peaceful assembly.
A VPN does not stop location data for your physical device when looking at cellular data from the carrier. Your location can and is always triangulated using cell towers. VPNs only ever protect your IP address from being geolocated and encrypting the data downloaded and uploaded while connected. Bit streams are still sent and received from a physical place in the world before the VPN hides your traffic and that is recorded by the cell provider.