Why do Apple and Google get a pass here? Who knows what apps are doing with your photos and contacts. Apple doesn't. Facebook was grilled for not aggressively shutting down an app that sold much less sensitive information.
Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
111–120 of 181 posts
Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think 'pause' is a better word than 'off'. The reason is that a person is more likely to think that turning 'off' location history deletes the old location history, which it does not. 'Pause' makes this differences clearer to the user who might not be as familiar with technology.
> 'Pause' makes this differences clearer to the user who might not be as familiar with technology. I'd love for the Googles of this world to really make things easier for people not as familiar with technology. For instance lightswitches do not have a pause button.
To be fair, nor do they have a history. Though simplification can make things easier, it can also result in obfuscation, and it's often not obvious which is the better bargain in general.
Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 'Pause' makes this differences clearer to the user who might not be as familiar with technology. I'd love for the Googles of this world to really make things easier for people not as familiar with technology. For instance lightswitches do not have a pause button.
To be fair, nor do they have a history. Though simplification can make things easier, it can also result in obfuscation, and it's often not obvious which is the better bargain in general.
Historically they didn't have a history, but there are "smart grid" electric meters that track energy usage on a smaller time scale, and privacy is an issue for those.
If the lights in your living room total up to 85.5W, someone with access to fine grained power consumption logs can infer when you turned that light switch on or off.
Similarly, there's going to be a telltale power consumption profile for when you're in the shower, when you run your washing machine, when you turn on your television, etc.
This isn't widespread, but it's something to look out for going forward.
Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
#114Freakonomics did an episode not too long ago with the new CEO of Ford. The guy was practically salivating at the mouth about all the data new vehicles will be collecting and how Ford could potentially monetize it all. Scary times ahead.
Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also because GPS is unreliable in cities with tall buildings that obscure the satellites. This is important in the case of needing to make a 911 call. I don't know what the laws are around mobile phones needing to be able to place a 911 call (I know you shouldn't have to guess a passcode to do it, or at least that used to be the case), but it's possible that some of these 'location-on' things are to comply with the l…
Indeed. When I visited New York and Chicago I was surprised to find that GPS is totally unreliable. I would find myself walking several street corners without getting a signal. I'm used to European cities, crowded, but without skyscrapers and in my city GPS is very reliable, but I realized that's only because we don't have tall buildings.
Luckily WiFi based location is usually shockingly accurate.
Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
#116What is the correct way to regulate this? The problem is that, from small business to mammoth company, there is no codified, unified, agreed upon manifesto when it comes to handling data at any level. A "Constitution" of sorts that explains the rights and / or wrongs of the data usage of the average user. Somewhere where a user can look at a document, see which company falls where on the spectrum, decide if they are…
The way to do it is to push for new data formats where the inherent value of even “leaked” information is going to be limited by the format (e.g. expires in some form, and/or must always be combined with some new recently-refreshes data to be considered valid). Unfortunately, something of that magnitude in this age would probably require the cooperation of large entities like Google and Facebook. Guess who profits fr…
Apple in some ways is like a quasi data privacy regulator because they have control of the App Store. They can use App Store policy to forbid these third party frameworks being included in apps.
But that's not a scalable solution. Privacy legislation is required to raise the bar for everyone. Apple's not going to be able to sue or fine companies nor can they police companies about how they use data they've managed to collect.
Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
#117Any gap in the market for a privacy phone? i.e. Android customised to block all telemetry by default.
LineageOS gives you Android without google, and fine-grain app permission control.
Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
#118Why do Apple and Google get a pass here? Who knows what apps are doing with your photos and contacts. Apple doesn't. Facebook was grilled for not aggressively shutting down an app that sold much less sensitive information.
FB didn't explicitly give you the ability to shut the offending app down.
Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
#119Freakonomics did an episode not too long ago with the new CEO of Ford. The guy was practically salivating at the mouth about all the data new vehicles will be collecting and how Ford could potentially monetize it all. Scary times ahead.
I submitted that article on HN but it didn't get any attraction.
It seems Ford CEO thinks they can collect and monetize drivers data: -- So the case I would make is that we have as much data in the future coming from vehicles, or from users in those vehicles, or from cities talking to those vehicles, as the other competitors that you and I would be talking about that have monetizable attraction.
--The issue in the vehicle, see, is: we already know and have data on our customers. By the way, we protect this securely; they trust us. We know what people make. How do we know that? It’s because they borrow money from us. And when you ask somebody what they make, we know where they work; we know if they’re married. We know how long they’ve lived in their house, because these are all on the credit applications. We’ve never ever been challenged on how we use that. And that’s the leverage we’ve got here with the data.
Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
#120Are people reading this article surprised that your devices know your locations? We are constantly getting "helpful" notifications that should make it VERY clear that's happening: "Parked car location updated" "It's 8am, are you on your way to work?" "Can you share feedback about that restaurant you were at but didn't check in at?" If people don't already know, then good for the Times for making sure everyone is checking their settings and paying attention.