US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by emodendroket » Wed, May 16, 2018, 1:35 PM UTC

RubenSandwich wrote: post #21

stevehawk wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahaha what? There's no myth that we won it alone. Elementary school texts on the subject lay it out fairly clearly that we did it with the French.

They may talk slightly about the French help but none talk about The Spanish[1] also England was having trouble recruiting for the unpopular war so much so that about ~1/3 of the British fighting forces were mercenaries[2]. The Revolutionary war was won basically because the British Empire was starting to show it's cracks and other countries jumped at the chance to speed up it's demise. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w…

Until the levee en masse in France pretty much all European armies consisted of mercenaries, criminals, and various other people considered the dregs of society, rather than patriotic citizens devoted to the cause.

Also the British Empire lasted significantly longer and a big factor in pulling out was protecting the Caribbean possessions from the French.

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

#42

Post by itchyjunk » Wed, May 16, 2018, 1:36 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #37

itchyjunk wrote: post #36

I am starting to wonder what all have I consented to? Every week I learn I have consented to this and that because of a news article as I never read those contracts or TOS. I wonder if there will be a way to phrase long contracts into bullet list of ideas for someone simple minded like me in the near future.

Is that possible ? Yes, but it's not in their interest to do.

Maybe by some 3rd party then? Maybe an application of all the fancy natural language processing or some other ML. I visit the site, paste the TOS or maybe there is a list of TOS that has been translated and i get a nice gist.

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

#43

Post by emodendroket » Wed, May 16, 2018, 1:38 PM UTC

itchyjunk wrote: post #42

emodendroket wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that possible ? Yes, but it's not in their interest to do.

Maybe by some 3rd party then? Maybe an application of all the fancy natural language processing or some other ML. I visit the site, paste the TOS or maybe there is a list of TOS that has been translated and i get a nice gist.

I think a more realistic option is Congress imposing a requirement on them, the way the terms of a loan have to be presented in a standard form.

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

#44

Post by random6547545 » Wed, May 16, 2018, 1:38 PM UTC

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 not in software but by contract, one gives gps data to all the others as part of the bill of materials.

This is then usually (but not always) "anonymized" by cutting it in to ~5 second chunks. It's easy to put it back together again. We can figure out everything about your day from when you wake up to where you go to when you sleep.

This data is sold to whoever wants it. 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. This isn't fantasy, it's what happens every day.

Almost every web/smartphone mapping company is doing it, so is almost everyone that tracks you for some service - "turn the lights on when I get home". The web mapping companies and those that provide SDKs for "free". It's a monetization model for apps which don't need location. That's why Apple is trying hard to restrict it without scaring off consumers.

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

#45

Post by emodendroket » Wed, May 16, 2018, 1:41 PM UTC

stevehawk wrote: post #12

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.

Ahaha what? There's no myth that we won it alone. Elementary school texts on the subject lay it out fairly clearly that we did it with the French.

Probably a bigger myth is that farmers hid out in trees and picked off stuffy Englishmen foolishly clinging to warfare in lines (so why was von Steuben important, then?), which only comes close to describing reality in places like Kentucky where a bunch of partisans were participating in what we might today call guerilla warfare. But even in that case it was less picking off soldiers and more killing your loyalist or patriot neighbors. Warfare in lines was completely logical given the weapons available at the time.

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

#46

Post by emodendroket » Wed, May 16, 2018, 1:41 PM UTC

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)

Don't use a cell phone, I guess.

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

#47

Post by malvosenior » Wed, May 16, 2018, 1:41 PM UTC

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.

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.

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

#48

Post by tekstar » Wed, May 16, 2018, 1:42 PM UTC

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…

Is this happening with iPhone as well, or primarily android due to the third party nature of the hardware?

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

#49

Post by John_KZ » Wed, May 16, 2018, 1:42 PM UTC

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)

There's no way to do this without using your own antenna network. Even then, you need encryption just to anonymize your calls, but if you end up talking to people subscribed to the same carriers you're trying to avoid, you can trivially be de-anonymized by timing attacks. So there's no good solution, unless you're willing to turn your calls to voice mail.

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

#50

Post by emodendroket » Wed, May 16, 2018, 1:42 PM UTC

baxtr wrote: post #17

What if I as an European visit the states? Am I protected by through some agreements with my local provider or even GDPR?

I doubt you get extraterritorial protection.