Your phone
Looking…
Your clock and your languages
Looking…
Your settings
Looking…
Battery, network, cameras
Looking…
Your internet address
Looking…
The doors your name opens
We haven’t asked your name until now. Type it, and each of these doors opens on the real site, already searched for you.
Your name stays on this phone. It goes to a site only when you tap that site’s door, exactly as if you had typed it there yourself.
Put them together and a stranger knows where you live and who with, what the house cost, what your front door looks like, and where to find you on Saturday morning. Nothing was hacked. Most of it you, or a form you once filled in, put there.
Some doors can be closed. Opt out of the open electoral register through your council. Companies House will take a home address off older records if you apply. Strava can hide where your runs start and end.
Fonts and voices
Looking…
No cookie needed
All of the above, and the exact way your phone draws a picture and plays a silent sound, can be boiled down to one code.
Should we remember you?
We've been watching
Keep reading.
The profile
An app or an advertiser would not stop at facts. From what's above, a machine could reasonably guess:
These are guesses, made the way ad systems make them. Some will be wrong. They don't need to be right to be used.
The last thing we'll ask
Almost everything so far was taken without asking. This one needs your permission. Most apps ask once, and most people say yes.
Almost none of this left your phone. The exception was your internet address, which went to a lookup service so we could name your town.
On most websites far more leaves, to far more companies, before the page has finished loading.
Giving less away
- Clearing your cookies doesn't change the code in section 08. Private browsing mostly doesn't either.
- Safari and Firefox block much of this by default, and Brave scrambles it.
- Turn off precise location for your browser in your phone's settings.
- A VPN hides your internet address, and moves your town somewhere else.
- If an app asks for more than it needs, the answer can be no.
Bots & Prayers. London, 2027. How this page handles your data.