Fiction
Chances are, no one’s actually watching you — but in a world full of cameras, phones, and digital breadcrumbs, it’s smart to know how to move with a little more privacy. Whether you’re heading to your favorite coffee shop or just want to practice slipping through the city unnoticed, this guide will help you stay low-profile without going full secret agent. It’s about blending in, being unpredictable, and keeping your personal movements personal — all without looking over your shoulder every five seconds. Staying aware doesn’t mean being paranoid — it just means being prepared (and maybe a little cooler than the average pedestrian).
This is meant to be a bit of fun, I have drawn diagrams before to help people think about signals they transmit and devices that might be recording you, from CCTV, mobile phones to car dash cams! There’s a lot of potential for surveillance tech, and that’s just if you want to get to a shop! So I tasked CHATGPT to create a guide for how you can move around like a spy! (sorry it’s too funny, I am of course making this fun, the world is not a James Bond film!)
So here goes:
Operational Guide: Moving from Home to a Coffee Shop Without Being Followed
Objective
Reach the coffee shop undetected and unmonitored, minimizing physical, vehicular, and digital surveillance.
Before Departure: Preparation Phase
- Leave Electronics Behind (or Harden Them): Power down your phone or use a Faraday bag. Use cash, avoid wearables.
- Dress to Blend In: Choose neutral, non-distinctive clothing. Avoid bright colors or flashy items.
- Select a Variable Route: Plan multiple paths, favor crowds and areas with minimal cameras.
- Mentally Prepare: Be ready to adapt if you notice you are being followed.
During Movement: Execution Phase
- Exit Indirectly: Avoid main entrances, stay clear of building cameras.
- Check for Immediate Surveillance: Perform a short loop near home and observe surroundings.
- Use Counter-Surveillance Tactics: Make sudden stops, use reflective surfaces, make multiple right turns.
- Change Appearance Mid-Way: Add/remove clothing layers or accessories to disrupt tracking.
- Ditch Digital Trails: Disable Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and avoid public networks.
Arrival: Infiltration Phase
- Pause Before Entering: Observe surroundings, wait and see if you are being shadowed.
- Enter Naturally: Act casually, pay with cash, and choose a seat with good visibility.
- Exfiltration Considerations: Leave by a different route than you arrived.
Key Principles Throughout
- Blend, don’t hide. Blending is less suspicious than hiding.
- Randomize patterns. Predictability is a weakness.
- Minimize digital footprints. Powered-on electronics can be tracked.
- Trust your instincts. A gut feeling often precedes actual detection.
Now… how realistic is this? avoid building cameras? haha good luck with that! But it goes to show, things that are said or written and reality are often different.
I’m going to add this in:
- Have a reason for being at the coffee shop (like the cake and coffee are good)
- Don’t act all shifty
- Going digital free sounds easy, but in a world of smart phones and smart watches that’s not so simple
- People often talk about faraday bags and graphene OS etc. but if you really were in a scenario where you were at risk, if someone finds you with special tech that is probably going to be a big red flag… so if you do care about that type of scenario… perhaps think about being able to not stand out, that will mean maybe using different techniques to operate in plain sight.
Hopefully this gets people thinking a bit, I try and leave my tin foil in the cupboard, the thought exercises for this are however a great exercise to think about RF signals, internet data and generally learning/practising threat modelling, and after all, who doesn’t like a good spy thriller! (even if the reality is, you are just going to get a bloody coffee and cake!)
