101–110 of 114 posts
I did a talk on privacy topics from a user's perspective at a small 'tech fair' this weekend and I was delighted to see this tweet showing a map of the venue showing everyone's precise location: https://twitter.com/johnebridge/status/662984007370612736 I was able to add it to the slide deck just in time and people were genuinely surprised by it. It's a good thing that the company were transparent about it and shared…
Properly phrased title: "London Garden Bridge Trust will track mobile phone signals of bridge users"
That's why Richard Stallman correctly described mobile phones as tracking and surveillance devices: > https://stallman.org/rms-lifestyle.html "Cell phones are tracking and surveillance devices. They all enable the phone system to record where the user goes, and many (perhaps all) can be remotely converted into listening devices."
The small educational centre where I teach has recently provided free wifi to users of the building. It is a good connection. You have to give a mobile phone number once to use the system. This morning, I went in with my old Thinkpad on which I have replaced Xubuntu with Slackware/MLED including a complete reformat and encryption of the SSD. The wifi recognised the machine and greeted me by name. I can only assume th…
I encountered this problem in Dublin airport a few years ago, before they switched to a different wifi provider.
The authentication code to join the wifi network would be sent by SMS. Which seems clever, until you realise that many people transiting Dublin won't have international roaming ( I didn't ) so can't receive the SMS.
I did a talk on privacy topics from a user's perspective at a small 'tech fair' this weekend and I was delighted to see this tweet showing a map of the venue showing everyone's precise location: https://twitter.com/johnebridge/status/662984007370612736 I was able to add it to the slide deck just in time and people were genuinely surprised by it. It's a good thing that the company were transparent about it and shared…
Can you share more around how that map was generated?
The service was provided by JT Global (website here: http://www.jtglobal.com/jersey/) and Purple WiFi (http://www.purplewifi.net/) so you might try following up with them? I don't know any of the people involved, I just showed up for my talk and left soon after.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The small educational centre where I teach has recently provided free wifi to users of the building. It is a good connection. You have to give a mobile phone number once to use the system. This morning, I went in with my old Thinkpad on which I have replaced Xubuntu with Slackware/MLED including a complete reformat and encryption of the SSD. The wifi recognised the machine and greeted me by name. I can only assume th…
Why do machines broadcast MAC addresses to networks? to identify themselves? Is it easy to randomize your MAC?
I did a talk on privacy topics from a user's perspective at a small 'tech fair' this weekend and I was delighted to see this tweet showing a map of the venue showing everyone's precise location: https://twitter.com/johnebridge/status/662984007370612736 I was able to add it to the slide deck just in time and people were genuinely surprised by it. It's a good thing that the company were transparent about it and shared…
Can you share more around how that map was generated?
The company I used to work for did something similar[2] at a conference over the course of three days. (You can drag on the map to highlight individual devices.) It's really cool and really quite creepy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you share more around how that map was generated?
Not the original poster, but when you sign into a Wi-Fi network, the router needs to know where to send the packets, so it needs to have a way to identify your device. That's why all devices that can connect to a network have what's called a MAC address[1] – a very long number that is unique to your device. Your device also broadcasts that address when it scans for networks, so just about all the time. When you contr…
Is disabling wifi when you are not connected sufficient to stop this sort of tracking?
That's why Richard Stallman correctly described mobile phones as tracking and surveillance devices: > https://stallman.org/rms-lifestyle.html "Cell phones are tracking and surveillance devices. They all enable the phone system to record where the user goes, and many (perhaps all) can be remotely converted into listening devices."
The small educational centre where I teach has recently provided free wifi to users of the building. It is a good connection. You have to give a mobile phone number once to use the system. This morning, I went in with my old Thinkpad on which I have replaced Xubuntu with Slackware/MLED including a complete reformat and encryption of the SSD. The wifi recognised the machine and greeted me by name. I can only assume th…
When toll-free phone number services started providing number identification to the service in the 1980s, American Express had their system look up the customer's record from the phone number, and their operators started greeting customers by name. Some customers saw this as "creepy", and American Express stopped such greetings, although the customer's record was still looked up.
Today, everybody has caller ID and name lookup.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The small educational centre where I teach has recently provided free wifi to users of the building. It is a good connection. You have to give a mobile phone number once to use the system. This morning, I went in with my old Thinkpad on which I have replaced Xubuntu with Slackware/MLED including a complete reformat and encryption of the SSD. The wifi recognised the machine and greeted me by name. I can only assume th…
Why do machines broadcast MAC addresses to networks? to identify themselves? Is it easy to randomize your MAC?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not the original poster, but when you sign into a Wi-Fi network, the router needs to know where to send the packets, so it needs to have a way to identify your device. That's why all devices that can connect to a network have what's called a MAC address[1] – a very long number that is unique to your device. Your device also broadcasts that address when it scans for networks, so just about all the time. When you contr…
Really helpful, thanks for sharing. Is disabling wifi when you are not connected sufficient to stop this sort of tracking?