Protect Your Mobile Privacy with RayHunter #shorts

Our Take

RayHunter is real and worth knowing about: EFF built it as free, open-source software that flashes onto a cheap Orbic hotspot and watches for the telltale signs of cell-site simulators (aka Stingrays) — the gear cops and sometimes shadier actors use to vacuum up phone identifiers and location data in bulk. STS Collective is now selling a plug-and-play version of that same open project. Nothing wrong with paying for convenience, but remember you can download and flash RayHunter yourself for the cost of a used hotspot — you don't need to buy it from anyone.

Why do we care on a site about license plate cameras? Because IMSI catchers and ALPR networks are cousins in the same surveillance family: both are designed to passively track ordinary people moving through public space, both have historically been deployed with little transparency, and both tend to expand quietly until someone builds a tool to make the invisible visible. RayHunter is a good example of the detection-and-disclosure model we want to see applied to license plate readers too — tools that let the public verify what's actually watching them instead of taking agencies' word for it.

If you're already thinking about your phone's exposure to rogue towers, don't stop there — check our map to see what ALPR cameras are logging your plate around town, and visit our take-action page for ways to push back on both forms of dragnet tracking.