Is it true that a microwave oven can act as a Faraday box to prevent your CELLPHONE from transmitting? Why isn't this more widely known?

I have yet to hear that one, but I’m not so sure it’s true. The door isn’t exactly wired to the casing, and the window has enough holes in the metal mesh that I’m skeptical. Now, it would definitely dampen the signal, but I’m not sure about stopping it completely.

It is a poor man’s Faraday box. You can test it of course. Put a phone in it and try to call it. Or if you want to see if it blocks the Gps tracking you can check from a computer or other phone. Just DONT turn it on. Lol.

@cazzie

Ha ha. Yeah, Zachary did stress that point but good to mention it for anyone reading.

@jerv

Zachary mentioned that this is what Snowden did so I guess I figure that if anyone would know, it would likely be Snowden.

I have never tried it but a microwave is a radio transmitter and it works in the 2.4Ghz band. Cell service is near 2Ghz. The shielding will probably block all cell signals.

I hope someone knows these answers.
Does the microwave have to be plugged in? Could you just have a cheap little microwave in your car and pop the phone in?

No, certainly does not have to be plugged in.

How to construct your own Faraday Cage using commonly found materials

You could put this on or under your car seat.

I just put my cell phone in the microwave and called it from the land line, 2 feet away.
The cell phone rang as usual.

^^you must have a crappy microwave either that or an apple phone

I have a Moto Razr and a GE Sensor Microwave oven.

It will block my wifi if I’m set up too close to mine while it’s running, but I don’t know about blocking cell phones.

@ibstubro maybe the secret is in @Espiritus_Corvus’ post ”….while it’s running,” Try turning the oven on.

~~~~~JK!!! Pls don’t do this!~~~~~~

Thanks
@rojo

Now I’m going to have to see if this works. My little cave gets bad cellphone coverage anyway because it is built like a hobbit hole with no back door.

Actually, removing (replacing) the battery in an iPhone isn’t nearly a complicated as one might think.

It does require the correct tools, rare but not Apple specific, a clean and well lit workspace and probably a lighted magnifier.

That said, I have seen some of the custom Apple tools and machines used for more specific repairs. They are beautiful and brilliant.

Why not replace the brake pads on your Porsche 911 with iPhones?

I mean, just for kicks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYXTmKuJKp8

Well, you should be able to turn of the GPS tracker, anyway.

@Dutchess_III Not with E911 being a thing. Long story short, if someone on a cellphone calling 911 cannot have their location tracked to within 300m in 6 minutes, that person’s carrier will have some explaining to do to (among others) the FCC.

Or are you assuming that only authorized users (like the owner of the phone) would have access to that switch and/or that it would only be used for legitimate purposes?

See this.

Any one who has the phone in their hands can disable it for any reason they might want to.

E911 is independent of your phone’s gps. It’s done by cell tower pings. You can’t disable it easily.

@Dutchess_III That really. That may stop certain apps from working, but it won’t stop the phone from transmitting a cell signal if for no reason other than to tell the cellular network which tower(s) to route your call through. Also, signal strength to the nearest tower is used to determine how powerful the phone needs to transmit; as higher transmission power drains the battery fast, phones prefer to use the lowest power necessary. As an aside, my old phone lasted 18 hours in rural NH but 3–4 days in urban Seattle with it’s better cell coverage.

I stand corrected y’all.

I don’t know how far back you’re referring, @jerv, but rural areas originally ran analog, not digital. Digital was used in the cities long before it came to the country. The difference may be attributed to that.

Well, I’m laughing because being tracked indicates movement and hauling a microwave around seem burdensome.

If you have a basic phone there is no tracking as long as its turned off. I don’t think the same is true with a smart phone, but not sure.

@Molly

This was in reference to part of a conversation about the upcoming movie about Edward Snowden (who was apparently hiding out or conducting interviews in hotel rooms, presumably with a microwave in them)

But after reading the article linked as well as comments, I’m starting to think that Snowden was a bit full of shit about this.

If he was really all that obsessed about them tracking him, there are better methods to ensure that his phone would be secure. The microwave is a rather imperfect solution at best, as @jerv points out due to leaking.

Snowden could have just gone to any grocery store and bought a few boxes of heavy duty foil as well as three or so paper bags.

Then just triple wrap the phone in alternating layers of bag, foil, and bag and that would have been far more secure.

Yes, it would take a minute or two more than just parking it in the microwave, but if one is really really obsessed with security and not being tracked, then it seems to me that it would be a few extra minutes well spent.

Fortunately, I have no such need but it was an interesting discussion nonetheless :)

@Dutchess_III How far back? Well, if you knew a little about NH, you’d know how irrelevant that question is. As of 2009, DSL and cable were utterly unavailable where I was (as well as most of the city ~15 miles away), dialup was limited to 28k (old telephone switches), and the only ways to get TV was either rabbit ears or hoping you had a spot in your yard that actually had a clear enough view for satellite to work.

Then again, the terrain there is such that even state troopers are often unable to use the radios in their cruisers, and sometimes it was easier to pick out a TV/radio station from Boston (~90 miles) than from anything more local (within ~25 miles), so it’s not like I lived somewhere that most people would consider “normal”.

@Buttonstc ~If only we had cellphones cheap enough to be considered disposable.

My cell phone rings in microwaves, and it’s considerably more primitive than Snowden’s, being circa 2008 or so @Buttonstc.

Original ‘thick’ RAZR model.

Yeah, I think Snowdrn was a bit in love with his own myth :)

Too bad Adam and Jamie aren’t testing stuff like this anymore.

But we are!

@jerv I was referring to 1998 – 2002, when I was in the industry. I’ve had my phone since then. Don’t really know much about the industry after that, and I know absolutely nothing about NH. No need to be sarcastic.

@Dutchess_III No sarcasm intended. Where I lived until about 2009 really was not very different from an telecommunications standpoint than San Diego was in 1994.

The tri-city area in the SE corner of the state near Boston was/is a bit more modern, but it was many years before they decided to even run a T1 line westward to the fifth largest city in the state. And 2 bars of cell coverage was the best signal I ever saw even in town; coverage was bad enough that calling 911 from the scene of a car accident was just not an option in many places. (There were a few times where I came across an accident scene to find people trying (often in vain) to get a signal, so that’s no exaggeration.)

Even within that city, if you weren’t within ~2 miles of the city’s center, DSL was not an option because they wouldn’t spring for a DSLAM to allow for coverage to extend to the residential areas. Then again, Fairpoint buying the NH, VT and Maine landlines in ‘08 only to wind up in Chapter 11 by late-‘09 didn’t help the infrastructure any.

So when you said, “Digital was used in the cities long before it came to the country. The difference may be attributed to that.”, you kind of overlooked the fact that there are still places like that, or at least were up until over a decade after you left the industry. All I meant was to correct that oversight by pointing out things that you, not living anywhere near NH in the early-2000s, were unaware of.