they talk about some great benefit for the passanger but they did not say what it actually is...
Transport for London plans to collect data from passengers' mobiles
31–40 of 118 posts
Re: Transport for London plans to collect data from passengers' mobiles
#32Surely this would be an automatic sanction when GDPR comes into effect, leaving your wifi on isn't exactly "explicit consent".
Is the Underground a private institution? Is it government? Does GDPR provide exemptions for government institutions? Do the police assist the Underground in performing searches and data collection? Can the police assume "consent" when they collect your Wi-fi MAC or your Bluetooth ID or any other data your mobile device voluntarily broadcasts?
Re: Transport for London plans to collect data from passengers' mobiles
#33This is why I switch my wifi radio off every time I leave home. Especially when going to travel via the tubes. And this is why the "50-shades of wifi off" of ios 11 is so idiotic. Don't have iOS 11 yet so don't actually know how many steps I need to take.
I’m not sure I see the issue with iOS11. 3D Touch Settings and select WiFi and toggle it off. It’s about as much work as opening control center. If you don’t have a 3D Touch phone you have to open Settings and Navigate to WiFi which is right at the top of the list with Bluetooth and Airplane Mode.
The issue is that Wi-fi isn't really off when you change that setting. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15382836
Re: Transport for London plans to collect data from passengers' mobiles
#34Why do they need to do this? They already track people with Oyster and contactless which gives them journey information. This is just a convenient data grab and profiteering. I'm going to sound old and curmudgeonly here, but I'm starting to miss the days when we bought paper tickets with cash.
Because they don't know where people go on the system. All they know where you entered and exited.
I don't quite believe this because they could have additional readers set up that can read at a distance.
Re: Transport for London plans to collect data from passengers' mobiles
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure I see the issue with iOS11. 3D Touch Settings and select WiFi and toggle it off. It’s about as much work as opening control center. If you don’t have a 3D Touch phone you have to open Settings and Navigate to WiFi which is right at the top of the list with Bluetooth and Airplane Mode.
The issue is that Wi-fi isn't really off when you change that setting. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15382836
The grandparent is describing the way to actually disable WiFi (i.e. not using Control Center)
Re: Transport for London plans to collect data from passengers' mobiles
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
>profiteering TfL is a not-for-profit.
So they profit, take their money, then they are not-for-profit.
You do realise this is a government body that runs public transport, right?
Public transport which is notoriously bad at making profits, all around the world.
Sorry, but this comes across as a bit of a silly conspiracy theory, by people who can't be bothered doing basic research.
Re: Transport for London plans to collect data from passengers' mobiles
#37They have already collected the data. The issue now is whether or not to make the data available to third parties, albeit anonymized.
Re: Transport for London plans to collect data from passengers' mobiles
#38Even here in Germany of which most think that we have good privacy protection laws, mobile phone providers are collecting and selling anonymized movement profiles of their customers. Public transport companies use these to improve their service, as well as companies offering navigation systems.
I would be surprised if tracking via the phone network was not common practice in other countries. In case of London, WiFi would of course enable tracking of people on the Tube, but in general using WiFi tracking should yield a more fine-grained movement profile, which would not be possible with phone networks only in a dense city center.
Re: Transport for London plans to collect data from passengers' mobiles
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because they don't know where people go on the system. All they know where you entered and exited.
I don't quite believe this because they could have additional readers set up that can read at a distance.
That’s nonsense and not how RFID readers should or realistically will work.
Re: Transport for London plans to collect data from passengers' mobiles
#40Why do they need to do this? They already track people with Oyster and contactless which gives them journey information. This is just a convenient data grab and profiteering. I'm going to sound old and curmudgeonly here, but I'm starting to miss the days when we bought paper tickets with cash.
> This is just a convenient data grab and profiteering. I know people working on this project, and that is absolutely not their motivation. They want to better understand the movement of people within the system, so they can design better stations, trains, and services. The traditional way of understanding such passenger movements is by parking students with clipboards and people-counters all around stations, doing p…
The point that this will be only used to improve services was denied in the article itself:
"What they told people at the time was we're going to use this data to improve services. But now thanks to [Sky News] investigative reporting, we find out that it's partly to improve the services, but also it's to exploit people's data for revenue, doing advertising."