111–120 of 648 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can one prevent this and still carry a cell phone? Would keeping one's phone in a faraday bag defeat this constant tracking?
Yes. But switching off location will probably do it too.
The most obvious use of the data appears to be by credit card companies to detect fraudulent use of a card and decline those transactions. This is something I'm relatively comfortable with, though it's plainly in the interests of the bank and I only indirectly benefit from the tracking.
The most obvious use is insurance companies looking for excuses to deny claims.
But really every use of this information is highly assymetrical. If they're using it to trade stocks, while regular people are using traditional means, it's an advantage we don't have access to. This is basically the virtual castle walls keeping us peasants out in the fields. Modern feudalism.
What if I as an European visit the states? Am I protected by through some agreements with my local provider or even GDPR?
This is part of how US mass surveillance works. We record everything and if it turns out to be a citizen, we're supposed to throw it out. Of course in reality, it goes to the Parallel Construction Department who uses the information to build a case against someone through other means, knowing the answer in advance.
The worst part is there isn't any possible way I know of to defend yourself against this other than not having a phone.
A simple example of limiting the invasiveness using this approach, would be to have your phone on only at work & home, or similar. In absence of phone snooping, someone can already easily locate you at those two standard destinations, and can easily discover when you'd typically be at those places (ie you're not giving them much by using your phone there under normal circumstances).
The most obvious use of the data appears to be by credit card companies to detect fraudulent use of a card and decline those transactions. This is something I'm relatively comfortable with, though it's plainly in the interests of the bank and I only indirectly benefit from the tracking.
Throwaway account. I work in location / mapping / geo. Some of us have been waiting for this to blow (which it hasn't yet). The public has zero idea how much personal location data is available. It's not just your cell carrier. Your cell phone chip manufacturer, GPS chip manufacturer, phone manufacturer and then pretty much anyone on the installed OS (android crapware) is getting a copy of your location data. Usually…
And how can I buy this realtime data? Also > Hedge funds or services who analyze it for hedge funds is the big one. It's normal to track hundreds of millions of people a day and trade stocks based on where they go. Any articles/webpages about this one? Or a company name who is doing it?
It is an open standard:
https://www.iab.com/guidelines/real-time-bidding-rtb-project...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Qualcomm IZat location services did a quick check, it's not on my phone (SD 820 SoC). >other location-based trustzone applets remain running even on custom ROMs. I have no doubt some proprietary blobs still remain on custom ROMs, but do those actually send back location data to the OEM?
You have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820? Oh yes, IZat is definitively there, along with other interesting trustzone applets :) It is running under QSEE (Qualcomm) and/or MobiCore (Trustonic) OS, which is separate from your Android OS. It is left untouched by custom ROMs.
https://www.qualcomm.com/products/izat
Scroll down to "Cloud-Based Assistance" and "Built Right In."
Throwaway account. I work in location / mapping / geo. Some of us have been waiting for this to blow (which it hasn't yet). The public has zero idea how much personal location data is available. It's not just your cell carrier. Your cell phone chip manufacturer, GPS chip manufacturer, phone manufacturer and then pretty much anyone on the installed OS (android crapware) is getting a copy of your location data. Usually…
For those who want to try out LocationSmart, you can use it here: https://www.locationsmart.com/try/ They were about two blocks off, and located me by cell tower. Apparently they don't have (or at least don't admit to having) A-GPS level data for me.