I worked closely to some of this. There were strict policies in place to never monitor US Citizens. That said i was focused in more kinetic warfare domains and not sure what would've extended past the borders by local law enforcements (DHS typically dictated no-us-soil policies). But, this is a money-hungry data pipeline of resellers and aggregators and they were always eager to sell more.
CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements
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Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements
#22I work with Ad Data a lot in my job, and there's a lot of misconceptions about what this data that journalists love to propogate: The location data in these networks is very inaccurate. Your OS and browser actually do a pretty good job of locking down your location data unless you give explicit permission. It's in the ad network's interests to lie about the quality of their data - so a lot of the "location" data is g…
Neither the government nor an ad agency needs to know where I am, no matter how "rough" the data is. It's none of their business.
At this point, your device is not giving anyone your location without explicit permission. So it really just comes down to your IP Address, which services do need.
Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements
#23I can't help but wonder how much is being spent.
Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements
#24I can’t respond directly to octoclaw’s dead comment (edit: embarrassingly this was an LLM), but I will just say I agree, it is ridiculous both how cheap this data is and how many people aren’t aware of it. It’s not just governments who can get access, either. This is another reason why you should not be carrying a phone everywhere except for times where you absolutely need one.
From my experience this data is not cheap from an average consumer perspective.
Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements
#25I worked closely to some of this. There were strict policies in place to never monitor US Citizens. That said i was focused in more kinetic warfare domains and not sure what would've extended past the borders by local law enforcements (DHS typically dictated no-us-soil policies). But, this is a money-hungry data pipeline of resellers and aggregators and they were always eager to sell more.
How do they determine if the person is a US citizen? I've sometimes wondered if my Google account is caught up in mass surveillance of non-Americans because I created my main email address while living in Australia, though I am a US citizen and only a US citizen. I haven't checked in a while, but I know that even in the US, checking my email on the web it would show that it was connecting to an Australian domain.
Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Turn off the phone entirely.
Most have internal batteries and are still "on" to a certain extent unless the battery is completely discharged.
If you cover your phone with an antielectrostatic bag it can't communicate; that is a Faraday cage.
Since people around you will think you are also wearing a tinfoil hard, you had better stick to the phones with hardware switches as sibling comment mentions
Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements
#27So they say to turn of location permissions and stuff, but what about the network carrier? Any privacy focused cell services that are reasonably priced?
Turn off the phone entirely.
I get that anything emitting can be tracked and stuff. I'm looking to take a baby step where I'm at least not having every possible detail recorded and sold. That Phreeli recommendation from another user seems like exactly what I want (paired with other things like a VPN of course).
Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements
#28We can not trust many "governments". The financial incentives are just too powerful. There are cases of people becoming millionaires after they left politics. Post-retirement payback and kickbacks.
After they left? Try 6 months in.
Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements
#29I can’t respond directly to octoclaw’s dead comment (edit: embarrassingly this was an LLM), but I will just say I agree, it is ridiculous both how cheap this data is and how many people aren’t aware of it. It’s not just governments who can get access, either. This is another reason why you should not be carrying a phone everywhere except for times where you absolutely need one.
From my experience this data is not cheap from an average consumer perspective.
Not for consumers but cheap for the people (mis)using it in bulk.
Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements
#30I worked closely to some of this. There were strict policies in place to never monitor US Citizens. That said i was focused in more kinetic warfare domains and not sure what would've extended past the borders by local law enforcements (DHS typically dictated no-us-soil policies). But, this is a money-hungry data pipeline of resellers and aggregators and they were always eager to sell more.
How do they determine if the person is a US citizen? I've sometimes wondered if my Google account is caught up in mass surveillance of non-Americans because I created my main email address while living in Australia, though I am a US citizen and only a US citizen. I haven't checked in a while, but I know that even in the US, checking my email on the web it would show that it was connecting to an Australian domain.
It was typically isolated in procurement, only buying data from "outside of the border" - data was packaged by geo regions typically