Subjecting a real problem to faintly ridiculous exaggeration and paranoia does not help. (I'm not sure whether to be surprised this made it into the New York Times or not.)

> Thanks to the explosion of GPS technology and smartphone apps, these devices are also taking note of what we buy, where and when we buy it, how much money we have in the bank, whom we text and e-mail, what Web sites we visit, how and where we travel, what time we go to sleep and wake up — and more. Much of that data is shared with companies that use it to offer us services they think we want.

I have never heard of purchase history, bank balance, alarm clock settings (??? perhaps it refers to carriers supposedly tracking waking hours based on usage? that would make more sense, but is no different from dumb phones), or website history being tracked by anyone through a smartphone. "Whom we text" is tracked, but "whom we email" is worth highlighting as an item that cannot be tracked by a carrier without installing malware onto your phone, assuming you use encrypted email. (The credit card company is tracking your purchases, and email providers may be tracking your email, depending on privacy policy, whether you're using a smartphone or not, but that's irrelevant. I guess if you count Gmail's algorithms reading email to offer services "they think we want"... I don't.)

> Scholars have called them minicomputers and robots. Everyone is struggling to find the right tag, because “cellphone” and “smartphone” are inadequate.

That "phone" doesn't adequately describe modern smartphones is a valid point, but has literally nothing to do with tracking.

> Eben Moglen, a law professor at Columbia University, argues that they are robots for which we — the proud owners — are merely the hands and feet. “They see everything, they’re aware of our position, our relationship to other human beings and other robots, they mediate an information stream around us,” he has said.

Colorful, but ridiculously vague. There are many different types of information and they are all stored differently. With the possible exception of Facebook, there is no entity that sits up high reading all your stuff without a court order, and if you want to have completely secure conversations through email or other means it's easy to do so.

> A recent survey by O2, a British cell carrier, showed that making calls is the fifth-most-popular activity for smartphones; more popular uses are Web browsing, checking social networks, playing games and listening to music. Smartphones are taking over the functions that laptops, cameras, credit cards and watches once performed for us.

Also irrelevant to tracking.

> Turning it off when you’re not using it will also help, because it will cease pinging your location to the cell company, but are you really going to do that? Shutting it down does not even guarantee it’s off — malware can keep it on without your realizing it. The only way to be sure is to take out the battery. Guess what? If you have an iPhone, you will need a tiny screwdriver to remove the back cover. Doing that will void your warranty.

If you are really concerned about malware preventing you from turning off your iPhone, you can hold down the home and power buttons to turn it off without going through software.

> “Don’t have a cellphone or just accept that you’re living in the Panopticon.”

A third alternative is to wear a tinfoil hat which will stop all the tracking???

> There is another option. People could call them trackers.

Okay but if hackers start hijacking peoples' sessions can we start calling them tracker-jackers?

Edit: Or more to the point - this is like calling all passerby "government agents" because they can be required to testify in court.