Expert explains why turning your phone off every day could protect you from getting hacked

Heather Wake
Wed, 26 Feb 2025 18:48:23 +0000
Ronan farrow, Ronan farrow daily show, Surveilled hbo, Daily show, Phone privacy, Malware, Spyware, Phone hacking, Community

There are just so many ways for important information held on your phone to be swiped—from subscription based apps that secretly send private customer data to Facebook to fake accounts that get your friends to invest in some kind of fake crypto.

And of course—this is more than a modern day inconvenience. It poses real threats to democracy and global human rights, which is why so many are calling for more regulations and safeguards. Of course, as with most regulations, change isn’t coming fast. Which isn’t good news, considering how rapidly technology evolves.

However, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Ronan Farrow has an incredibly simple tip for preventing our phones from being hacked: Turn them off more often.

While appearing on the Daily Show to promote his new documentary, Surveilled, Farrow told correspondent Desi Lydic that we as a society should be "freaking out" more about the lack of government restraints about spyware technology, saying that it could turn the country “into an Orwellian surveillance state,” affecting anyone who uses a device, essentially—not just political dissidents.

But, as Farrow noted, turning your phone off and on every day is an easy way to protect yourself, since most current forms of spyware “will be foiled by a reboot.” And even if you aren’t, say, a journalist of political activity (i.e. common targets for malware), you’re thwarting apps from monitoring your activity or collecting your data. And better still, you’re making it more difficult for hackers to steal information from your phone. Privacy protection aside, it’s a great way of just keeping your device healthy. Basically, it seems like the age-old solution for virtually all tech issues still holds up.

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There are a few other things worth turning off now and then, such as bluetooth and location devices when you’re not using them, according to the NSA. In addition, Farrow also suggested keeping devices updated, and perhaps most important of all, actually writing to your representative about the issue.

However, when it comes to wrapping devices in tinfoil as a makeshift Faraday cage…that might not be the best use of one’s aluminum.

“Experts vary on exactly how effective that approach is,” Farrow told Lydic, just before quipping, “we need better policies. Not just better tinfoil.”

Expanding on Farrow’s 2022 New Yorker investigative exposé on the notorious spyware Pegasus, Surveilled delves into the multibillion-dollar industry of commercial spyware and its potential threats, making it evidently clear that this is not an issue for the elite few, or one to ignore until the future.

Surveilled is available on Max now.

This story originally appeared last year.