91–100 of 343 posts
Jerr Thorpe had an app that gave you your power back and tracked your phone info in a way you could have yourself for awhile but it became abandonware and started eating battery life so I took it off my phone. OpenPaths, that was it's name. https://www.jerthorp.com/openpaths
Many years ago, when everybody had Nokias with the Bluetooth on, I used to do a similar thing. I created a S60 python script that kept scanning Bluetooth mac addresses and link them with the cell tower I was connected to (no GPS yet on mobiles).Then later processed the logs to see if I encountered the same people in different locations and times. And yes, I re-encountered a bunch of Bluetooth mac addresses in differe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They know when your sleeping, they know when your awake. They know when you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake! Seriously, they know every time you pick up your phone. Where you shop, how much you spend, if you miss a stop in the highway, if you text your parents happy birthday, if your heart rate increases when you’re around a particular phone. They quite literally may know your gay before you do.
What is their current definition of "be good" so that I can comply? Is there any changelog? Perhaps some future plan introducing new parts of "good" and deprecating some as well?
> It makes me feel very philosophical. Likely we had walked past each other every other week for three years with our heads down, or in the clouds, paying very little notice to the people around us. Past Channon had not the foggiest clue what impact an unnoticed stranger would come to have on her. Since learning this I can’t help but look at the passers-by in my day-to-day life in a different light. And no shame in g…
That idea has always fascinated me as well — imagining each of us tracing out some kind of space-time path on a map. And with other's paths crossing ours. I want to be able to rewind time and watch the paths of ex-girlfriends I have lost touch with to see if we crossed paths again, perhaps in an airport, unaware of each other. Perhaps it would all be more depressing than that though, exposing the small, repetitive wo…
Many years ago, when everybody had Nokias with the Bluetooth on, I used to do a similar thing. I created a S60 python script that kept scanning Bluetooth mac addresses and link them with the cell tower I was connected to (no GPS yet on mobiles).Then later processed the logs to see if I encountered the same people in different locations and times. And yes, I re-encountered a bunch of Bluetooth mac addresses in differe…
It'll scan for bluetooth trackers in the background (and airpods and iphones) and can give you a per-device history.
Many years ago, when everybody had Nokias with the Bluetooth on, I used to do a similar thing. I created a S60 python script that kept scanning Bluetooth mac addresses and link them with the cell tower I was connected to (no GPS yet on mobiles).Then later processed the logs to see if I encountered the same people in different locations and times. And yes, I re-encountered a bunch of Bluetooth mac addresses in differe…
That’s pretty cool; you ran Python on one of those Nokias?!
This was before the Iphone was launched IIRC and I think it only worked with the Nokia N series.
And this friends is why "third party" entities collecting your meta data and such is a concern. A lot (read: enough) can be learned about you *and who you associate* without actually listening to your calls, etc. On the surface, this article is cute. After that it's a red flag for all of us.
I'd argue the opposite. People already know what Google can do, this is how you reap some benefits for yourself with the data that's already there.
I was reluctant to mention this kind of story in such a sweet context but a few comments have already touched on privacy, so I want to add my two cents. At some point in the past I had the surreal experience of opening a news website and seeing a familiar face on the front page. Not a celebrity, rather a man whose face had been in some small subfolder of my brain for several years. The man had been convicted of seria…
I took the pragmatic approach and said to myself "look, if Google really wants to know where I am the only way to avoid it is to go into the woods without my phone, so why not?" Then one day the Toronto Transit Commission police thought I was re-using someone elses streetcar fare because of how old it was. I just prefer the streetcar to subways, so I took a longer route. As soon as I pulled out my phone with my locat…
Small "crimes" like stealing streetcar fare are sought out not because of the crime itself but because the more contact points people have with police the more people are arrested. There is probably an overlap of people who steal streetcar fare and people who are harboring small amounts of narcotics etc etc.
Just like in America we're pulled over on the road for the most benign things just so there's contact with the police, which leads to a higher rate of convictions.
I was doing self-checkout at Walmart and the dumb machine thought I stole something I had already scanned, lo and behold an officer appears out of the shadows with a general attitude at me as if I was trying to pull off the grand-heist of stealing GREEN ONIONS.
I personally think law-abiding people have a right to limited contact with police.
And this friends is why "third party" entities collecting your meta data and such is a concern. A lot (read: enough) can be learned about you *and who you associate* without actually listening to your calls, etc. On the surface, this article is cute. After that it's a red flag for all of us.
All depends on your threat model. A company openly collecting your data by your say so seems significantly less threatening (to me, to many others) than all the actors who are doing it without your knowledge or consent.
Finally, per "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" (and others) these minor privacy infringements add up and is used against us.
There's no such thing as no threat.