How to protect your phone and privacy while attending protests in 2025

Learn how to secure your device, prevent tracking, and keep your personal data safe from surveillance.

'Labor Against Monopoly' by Paul Krafft, from Capital and Labor (1907), Public Domain Image Archive

[See update about Faraday pouches for blocking phones.]

"For most protesters, activists, and journalists, your smartphone is an essential tool you depend on for organizing with your peers, accessing and distributing information, and helping others. It also represents a great risk," writes Jonah Aragon in Privacy Guides' security guide for protesters.

Before attending a protest, Aragon recommends the following :

• Replace biometric locks with a strong alphanumeric passcode
• Disable all lock screen notifications
• Turn off AirDrop and location services
• Back up your device and remove any unnecessary data
• Write emergency contact numbers on paper as backup

Aragon also warns about "stingrays" — devices used by law enforcement that impersonate cell towers to track protesters. To combat this, keeping your phone in airplane mode when not needed can prevent tracking.

For essential communications, Signal stands out as the recommended messaging app. As Privacy Guides notes, "Signal has responded to 6 government requests since 2016, and in each case the only information they were able to provide was at most: whether the user was registered with Signal, when that user registered, and when that user last connected."

"If possible, bringing a separate device like a 'burner phone,' an old phone you can reset, or even a regular old-fashioned camera is a much better option than bringing your primary phone," writes Aragon. "Any data you don't bring with you can't be taken from you at the scene."