Got my first ever cell phone. One of these jobbies: https://www.speakout7eleven.ca/prepaid-cellphones/blu-advance-4.0l-black

Seems alright thus far (haven't given the phone much of a workout, but I've heard the mic is dodgy).

Hella faster than the nexus 7" tablet, which is a pleasant surprise.

For my next trick, I shall walk in front of a bus while browsing twitter pokeman something something.

I shouldn't laugh....
 
Fire it up and let's have a VGA selfie!

I'm going to tape over the front camera like I did the nexus (and it only has a front camera).  :-{)

Too slow, already hacked it and got a photo

That's my boss, and you just got me in trouble.

Tell him he needs to modernise with a tinfoil fedora

Reminds me, I need to find a faraday cage for the phone. I use an old metalized hdd bag for the nexus.

I guess it's a good way to avoid receiving calls.

 :-@

... which doesn't actually work I discovered this morning, when I dialed the cell number while it was in the bag, and it rang. So I might have to spend some real money.  :-((

I'm confused. Why not just switch it off and/or leave it at home if you don't want it to work.

GPS

https://www.justsecurity.org/31876/world-this-uk-government-hacking/

This is the main reason that has held me back from getting a cell.

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2w7d4u/why_is_an_antistatic_bag_is_not_a_faraday_cage/

You've not bunked up with 53North have you?

The reason he's been quiet so long could be due to traversing the northern polar regions on foot to get to Canada and set up his base in your fair country.

Given the vastness of Canada though, he's probably had to use your phone's GPS to track you down, thus rendering his tin foil hat machinations somewhat hypocritical.

OK, but I duct-taped the phone to a truck that's bound for Louisiana.

You want it to use GPS but not anything else? You might've been better just getting a GPS device!

Nope, I don't want to be GPS tracked everywhere I go, even when I'm not using it. Also camera and mic.

Where are you potentially going, and what might you potentially be saying that you wouldn't want to be recorded?

Of course, you potentially wouldn't want to tell me on here and potentially bring about any risk.

 

I'm back to being confused. Why don't you just turn it off, again? When you use it, all that stuff is back on unless you disable it (in which case if you're going to be paranoid properly, know that disabling it in settings won't disable it fully). So what difference does it make?

I don't want to be tracked by google, any 3d-party apps I might want to install, the NSA, local cops or anybody really. It just creeps me out. :-S

If you're fine with being tracked by all of the above, fine. It's the default.

As milko points out, disabling the features in settings and even turning the device off doesn't necessarily disable the features.