I tried location smart website said location accuracy was up to 14 miles off. They were really 4 miles off. So not that accurate. If it was 2 blocks like other poster I'd be worried.
US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
261–270 of 648 posts
Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can confirm this is happening, I designed some of the analysis systems used. Contrary to what many people assume, this is not just a US thing. It is done throughout the industrialized world to varying degrees, including countries where most people believe privacy protections disallow such activity. Governments tacitly support it because they've found these capabilities immensely useful for their own purposes.
Do you feel guilt over creating them?
Should they? The vast quantity of users find it incredibly useful and have no reason to be concerned about governments or third parties being able to determine their geographic location, because governments or third parties don't generally care.
Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
Parralel construction. You pull the phone location records of everyone near a protest without a warrant (and no intention of using the location data in court) then you dig into them to find something unrelated to the protest you can nail them on. That way you take out key players without it looking like a political crackdown.
Based on the discussion in this thread doing such a thing seems relatively easy. Obligatory Orwell: “The most gifted of [the Proletariate], who might possibly become a nuclei of discontent, are simply marked down by the Thought Police and eliminated.”
Yep, that's on the simpler end of the spectrum, they can/could be far more insidious and subtle.
It's horrible but beyond supporting ORG, EFF and writing to my MP (I'm in the UK) not sure what else I can do, even if I protect myself from it my family and friends are still potentially fucked.
Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 not in software but by contract, one gives gps data to all the others as part of the bill of materials. so what's the flow here? is it something like this?: phone gps -> manufacturer installed…
some of crapware can be avoided by using custom ROMs, but not all of it. For example: Qualcomm IZat location services and other location-based trustzone applets remain running even on custom ROMs.
How is it sending the data though? if it's using mobile plans, wouldn't it be noticeable on the data usage plan? (or is it that manufacturers have agreements with carriers to not charge for it?)
Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an amateur radio operator, I would expect nothing less for carrying a highly networked radio transceiver with loads of sensors including geopositioning. Simply put: don't want to be tracked? Put your phone in a lead sealed box or leave it at home. Tracking only tracks the phone , not your person.
There's no need for lead sealed box, Faraday cage will do. :) I think they even sell phone casing Faraday cage nowadays.
Empty potato chip bag will also do:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/27/australian-sacke...
Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is once it's at the cell carrier level it doesn't even matter if you use a dumb phone. They know roughly where you are based on tower triangulation.
Not my area of knowledge at all, so perhaps someone who knows radio better could chime in: Would it be possible to fool the triangulation from the device, by arbitrary (or intelligently) delaying the mobile radio signals? Or are they too dependent on timings and such to work?
There are no available cellphone radio baseband computers/transceivers that allow you do do things with that. You would literally have to implement the entire cell baseband from scratch with a software defined radio. It would be a very non-trivial project.
And it'd be useless unless you had many of these custom transmitters faking your signal spread out over large physical distances.
Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is once it's at the cell carrier level it doesn't even matter if you use a dumb phone. They know roughly where you are based on tower triangulation.
That's always been common knowledge, the shocker is that it's being transmitted to "everyone and their dog" or even being sold. Afaik that was never the case with dumb phones.
A dumb phone can be localized by cell triangulation. The US military disclosed that it was using such a technique in Afghanistan to locate Al-Qaeda targets (they disclosed this because Al-Qaeda had gotten so paranoid about he accuracy of US military operations that they had assumed they had human spies on the ground feeding the US information and began killing civilians on suspicion of spying).
Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an amateur radio operator, I would expect nothing less for carrying a highly networked radio transceiver with loads of sensors including geopositioning. Simply put: don't want to be tracked? Put your phone in a lead sealed box or leave it at home. Tracking only tracks the phone , not your person.
So basically either give up your right for privacy or don't use any new technology? That doesn't look practical. A better idea would be to ban cell carriers (and anyone else) from using location data for anything except explicitly permitted by law, like help in emergencies or conducting investigations.
For communications technology: yes, that seems to be the norm.
Don't like the rules of the road, don't drive.
Don't like that your data goes over a third-party's network to get to its destination, don't put your data on a third-party's network.
Bans "by law" only work until the people making the law become people interested in your location and they change the law.
Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
#269The worst part is there isn't any possible way I know of to defend yourself against this other than not having a phone.
What about a decentralized networks over 802.11? It wouldn’t be a total solution, because access points get hacked, etc. but it would make the data a lot fuzzier.
The reason that cell phone networks actually work (they're effectively decentralized networks) is that they pay the big bucks to rent space on high towers, building roofs, etc.
The only thing that matters for radio communications is line of sight. The only thing that gives you line of sight is relative height. The only thing that gives you consistent height is money.
Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pinsight is a big one. But there are too many to name. In 2018, you should assume that any free service (Unroll.me), web/mobile SDK (Slice), email client (Airmail), personal finance tracker (Mint), integration API (Plaid), geolocator (Foursquare), etc is monetized by selling your data en masse for market research. It's not just location data. Dig into the TOS of free services you use. It's your receipts, your transac…
Assuming you’re talking about Airmail, the iOS and Mac mail client[1] (which is not a free app), do you have any reference to back up this claim? Their privacy statement states: > Airmail does not share your information with any third parties. We are not in the business of selling your data. However, we may disclose information if we determine that such disclosure is reasonably necessary to comply with the law. They…
Yes I think you're right, sorry. I'm thinking more of the email clients like Edison [1] and Astro[2]. It gets hard to keep all of these apps straight :)
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