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Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

gizmodo.com

61–70 of 233 posts

Re: Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

#61
post #47
post #6

by comparing the accelerometer and gyroscope readings of each phone, the data could identify when people were facing each other or walking together. More evidence we need far more privacy controls in mobile operating systems.

I've always been floored that people leave their location services turned on by default. I have mine on for no more than a few minutes a month. I only turn it on when I'm in an unfamiliar location, don't have my bearings, and looking at the map alone isn't enough to help without GPS.

You are being downvoted for this thoroughly sensible comment. At times, HN voting patterns actually scare me.

My location too stays off unless I actively require it, mostly then for navigation. Yes, like just about any kind of countermeasure against anything, this one may sometimes introduce a measure of inconvenience. That's fine with me. No free lunch etc.

[Edit: As somewhat expected, this comment on downvotes is itself being heavily downvoted. Q.E.D.]

Re: Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

#62
post #47
post #6

by comparing the accelerometer and gyroscope readings of each phone, the data could identify when people were facing each other or walking together. More evidence we need far more privacy controls in mobile operating systems.

I've always been floored that people leave their location services turned on by default. I have mine on for no more than a few minutes a month. I only turn it on when I'm in an unfamiliar location, don't have my bearings, and looking at the map alone isn't enough to help without GPS.

What are you gaining in exchange for making your life harder?

Re: Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

#63
post #13

This is smart. Unethical, but smart.

Lots of that going around these days.

Always reminds me of part of the speech at the end of The Great Dictator.

"We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost."

Re: Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

#64

What's the news story here? Tech companies file innumerable number of patents without implementing them to cover the space in case they get sued so they can retaliate. Realistically this patent wouldn't actually be useful in practice for the proposed application but would be useful if written carefully enough to countersue for unrelated applications of the tech.

What? You're saying companies file patents on tech they don't intend on using so they don't get sued by patent trolls for their non-use of some other preexisting patent? That doesn't make sense on any level. And if you don't think such a thing would be useful to a company like this (if it could really be made to work) you aren't using your imagination properly.

> What? You're saying companies file patents on tech they don't intend on using so they don't get sued by patent trolls for their non-use of some other preexisting patent? That doesn't make sense on any level.

Why does that not make sense? This has been the case at every job I've worked withe patent filing incentives. You get a few thousand dollars for coming up with an idea and going through the motions of writing the technical parts of the patent. The patent doesn't have to have anything to do with the business, they just want it for defense, and to increase value of a potential sale of the company.

Re: Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

#65
post #6

by comparing the accelerometer and gyroscope readings of each phone, the data could identify when people were facing each other or walking together. More evidence we need far more privacy controls in mobile operating systems.

This is really easy to do. At a hackathon in 2012 our team in just a few hours built tech that would detect who you were standing next to or walking past, all while your phone is in your pocket - we were trying to build a tool that would replace exchanging business cards at conferences.

Have you heard of Bump? They were doing something similar until they were acquired by Google: https://www.theverge.com/2013/9/16/4736860/bump-acquired-by-...

Re: Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

#66
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been floored that people leave their location services turned on by default. I have mine on for no more than a few minutes a month. I only turn it on when I'm in an unfamiliar location, don't have my bearings, and looking at the map alone isn't enough to help without GPS.

What are you gaining in exchange for making your life harder?

Increased battery life for one. It used to be easier to toggle on older Android phones because there was a default shortcut in the slide-down menu, now it requires going through the settings at least on Google Android.

edit: Huh, turns out you can add a toggle. I can't believe I never noticed that, thanks!

Re: Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

#67
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been floored that people leave their location services turned on by default. I have mine on for no more than a few minutes a month. I only turn it on when I'm in an unfamiliar location, don't have my bearings, and looking at the map alone isn't enough to help without GPS.

You are being downvoted for this thoroughly sensible comment. At times, HN voting patterns actually scare me. My location too stays off unless I actively require it, mostly then for navigation. Yes, like just about any kind of countermeasure against anything, this one may sometimes introduce a measure of inconvenience. That's fine with me. No free lunch etc. [Edit: As somewhat expected, this comment on downvotes is i…

This is partially the same community that thought these violations would be a good idea in the first place, as long as we get a bit of hamfisted curated content and adtech monetization. Of course some of the invested individuals still want to defend it. Maybe just to maintain the cognitive dissonance and assure ourselves what we're doing to people is okay. Expect to be unpopular, but that's fine--popular is not the same as right.

People are willing to take some outrageous risks in exchange for a trivial amount of convenience. Ever see somebody cut across six lanes on the interstate to make an exit that's about twenty feet away at the very last second? Convenience and speed is everything, we don't give a damn about the consequences. And there are eventually going to be serious issues caused by our wild west data mining. Horrible damages have already happened. It's not just paranoia.

True, not every software company is abusing their default permissions and telemetry. But the fact that default-on is normalized and expected provides cover for many people who do abuse it. It's complicit. Anyone who cares about infosec knows that security has to be the default, not an obscure setting for power users or something that you have to reset and then it always clicks itself back on when you update or use a particular feature. That's wrong and it's very clear why it's wrong. But it's happening more and more often.

Also, security must be the default even if we don't currently see any way for a particular application to be abused, because later there will be attackers more creative than us and they will figure out a way to leverage it. This is like an ironclad law of nature. Pretty much anyone who has made networked software long enough in the past can attest that eventually there's attempts at exploitation that nobody was thinking about at the beginning. I'm sure some of y'all have stories. Every engineer must make it robust at the start, expecting that people will attack and misuse it resulting in damage to real people. Even if we don't see why that would ever happen at the time. We should all responsibly set software defaults to defend the helpless and ignorant, instead of depending on capable people to defend the software.

Re: Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

#68

Jokes on them, I have electrical tape on my camera lens. Something I learned from Facebook's CEO, ironically.

The image that's gathered when the camera is completely in the dark, is a unique fingerprint of the camera chip. This is something called "fixed pattern noise."

You learn some great things on HN!

2006: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/3455253_Digital_Cam...

Notes (by El Gamal of FPGA fame, not cryptography fame): http://isl.stanford.edu/~abbas/ee392b/lect07.pdf

Forensics: https://www.mobiledit.com/camera-ballistics

Anti-forensics (counter-measures/imitation): https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.07795v1 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305181626_Removing_...

Re: Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

#69
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been floored that people leave their location services turned on by default. I have mine on for no more than a few minutes a month. I only turn it on when I'm in an unfamiliar location, don't have my bearings, and looking at the map alone isn't enough to help without GPS.

What are you gaining in exchange for making your life harder?

Above user might not find it to be a hassle at all. I turn GPS off whenever I notice it on as well, but it's pretty far down the list of ux concerns when using my phone. Sometimes an app reminds me I need to turn it on before continuing, but that's all handled smoothly in-app these days. (unlike sibling comment my phone has gps toggle in the slide down menu)

In my case it's a longstanding habit from when I was told that GPS could drain battery faster :p (maybe it still? does, I don't know)

Re: Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

#70
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been floored that people leave their location services turned on by default. I have mine on for no more than a few minutes a month. I only turn it on when I'm in an unfamiliar location, don't have my bearings, and looking at the map alone isn't enough to help without GPS.

You are being downvoted for this thoroughly sensible comment. At times, HN voting patterns actually scare me. My location too stays off unless I actively require it, mostly then for navigation. Yes, like just about any kind of countermeasure against anything, this one may sometimes introduce a measure of inconvenience. That's fine with me. No free lunch etc. [Edit: As somewhat expected, this comment on downvotes is i…

I didn't downvote, but if I did it would be for the 'I'm floored that people do [common thing that most people do]', rather than the fact they turn of their location services.

As you said, there's no free lunch, but everyone is different and most people have decided that the benefits still outweigh the negatives.

It's like saying "I'm floored that people go to starbucks when they could save so much money making coffee at home and carry it around in a thermos - that's what I do and it is the only way it should be done"

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