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US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data

zdnet.com

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Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data

#121

Post by rectang »

RubenSandwich wrote: post #10
gpvos wrote: post #5

> the Electronic Communications Privacy Act only restricts telecom companies from disclosing data to the government. It doesn't restrict disclosure to other companies Clearly the US has their priorities completely the wrong way.

Part of the American mythology is that government involvement is always bad. It's hard for me to know if this developed because of the myths of the America Revolution, that a small colony won it alone and not because of external factors, and how much is due to people preaching small government politics. Regardless a distrust of the government seems to be ingrained in the American psyche IMO.

It's reasonable and wise to distrust government. What is unreasonable is American blind faith in private industry.

This tracking is a great example of the threat posed by industry to individual citizens.

Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data

#122

Post by whatshisface »

wmeredith wrote: post #73
yosito wrote: post #39

Has anyone suggested a practical way that people can avoid being tracked? (Aside from Airplane Mode or keeping your phone in a Faraday Cage)

If it's happening at the carrier level (triangulation via towers) there's zero you can do at the client (your phone) besides stop transmission by turning it off or placing it in a faraday cage.

It sounds like GPS units are also involved: tower triangulation is inaccurate so by carrying a phone that has no GPS you would be able to claw back a few meters.

Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data

#123

Post by sevensor »

random6547545 wrote: post #61
avoutthere wrote: post #59

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.

Can we trust the GPS receiver to be powered down when we the OS tells us it's powered down? I know Android keeps listening for WiFi stations even if you tell it to turn off the antenna. Might it do the same thing with GPS?

Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data

#124

Post by wpietri »

ataturk wrote: post #2

It's so strange--I never would have expected the boot of tyranny to come from private corporations, but here we are. And what all this proves is that technology is value-neutral and can wipe us all out, or just make us incredibly miserable, if we let it. Hopefully there will be a way to opt out. Otherwise, I should start selling faraday bags for devices. Probably should anyways.

I think it depends a lot on the kind of capitalism you have. There's what I think of as small-business capitalism, where business owners in a community naturally take the community's interest into account because that's where they live.

I think that's distinct from American MBA capitalism, which is the increase-shareholder-value, up-and-to-the-right, maximize-short-term-cash-gains kind.

The former is positive-sum, the latter can easily be negative sum. And I think the latter, because it doesn't include any humanity in its calculus, is perfectly capable of profitable tyrrany.

Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data

#125

Post by tome »

dmichulke wrote: post #119
wpietri wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm somewhat weary. This might be the final missing piece to connect your mobile phone number to your mobile browser user agent, or even worse, your desktop browser agent.

*wary

Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data

#126

Post by checkyoursudo »

avoutthere wrote: post #59
random6547545 wrote: post #44

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…

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, electrostatic shielding will stop the signal, which will also prevent incoming calls/msgs/etc.

Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data

#127

Post by chillingeffect »

malvosenior wrote: post #47
RubenSandwich wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the American mythology is that government involvement is always bad. It's hard for me to know if this developed because of the myths of the America Revolution, that a small colony won it alone and not because of external factors, and how much is due to people preaching small government politics. Regardless a distrust of the government seems to be ingrained in the American psyche IMO.

You leave out another option: Americans distrust government because we see it fail us every day. Corruption, police brutality, inefficiency, politician sleaze baggery... In general corporations provide a much higher quality service than the government in the US.

You make a good point about the government, but I don't agree it extends to corporations. Corporations do much of the dirty work of the government.

Defense contractors and mining concerns operate hand-in-hand with the government, training police, researching weapons, running prisons, crunching data. Look at the story of this article: it's corporations doing the dirty work the government isn't technically allowed to do.

Furthermore corporations only submit to greatly reduced requirements for attending to those with special needs, like in wheelchairs, deaf, etc. There are some valuable services provided to them, like closed captioning, but only under passioned support from idealists and with profit incentive.

If we left it all to corporations, only the most able-bodied and well-off people would run the country for the most able-bodied and well-off, forming tight-knit circles to maintain their power and never perceiving the world as a place for living, only protecting power.

Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data

#128

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

malvosenior wrote: post #47
RubenSandwich wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the American mythology is that government involvement is always bad. It's hard for me to know if this developed because of the myths of the America Revolution, that a small colony won it alone and not because of external factors, and how much is due to people preaching small government politics. Regardless a distrust of the government seems to be ingrained in the American psyche IMO.

You leave out another option: Americans distrust government because we see it fail us every day. Corruption, police brutality, inefficiency, politician sleaze baggery... In general corporations provide a much higher quality service than the government in the US.

It always boggles my mind how 1/2 the people that realize and complain about those things go on to recommend more government and that only they should have effective guns.

Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data

#129

Post by goda90 »

Negative1 wrote: post #120

I've just started using Signal and was surprised by how good the call quality is. For those that aren't aware, Signal calls are encrypted, so you effectively give nothing to the cell carrier when you make a call through it (except that you used some data).

Unless I misunderstood, this has nothing to do with what apps you use to communicate. It has to do with connecting to the cellular network at all. I think the only way around this would be to run airplane mode with wifi only, and then taking lots of steps to keep your wifi use private too.

Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data

#130

Post by rectang »

ataturk wrote: post #2

It's so strange--I never would have expected the boot of tyranny to come from private corporations, but here we are. And what all this proves is that technology is value-neutral and can wipe us all out, or just make us incredibly miserable, if we let it. Hopefully there will be a way to opt out. Otherwise, I should start selling faraday bags for devices. Probably should anyways.

This tracking abomination is an emergent phenomenon of the merger of private industry and government in the US. See for example both legalized bribery (a.k.a. unlimited campaign contributions by corporations thanks to Citizens United) and outright bribery (Cohen) by telecoms like AT&T, ensuring that they will have the flexibility to perpetrate such garbage as this tracking data sale.

Why not distrust both government and industry? The rule "power corrupts" holds in either case.

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