Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

zdnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 648 posts

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

#411

Post by ThrustVectoring »

pathseeker wrote: post #400
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely is approximating number of miles driven and price discriminating based off that. More miles driven = more risk of an auto accident. Basically pay-per-mile car insurance, but hidden.

How do they know you are driving? Seems too error-prone to be useful.

They don't need to know you are driving to do price discrimination. They could just as well take the zip codes where you live and work and assume you're driving, and make a profit giving discounts to folks with a shorter commute regardless of whether or not they actually drive it.

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

#412

Post by fixermark »

OrganicMSG wrote: post #357
fixermark wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general public and repeatedly-reported-upon understanding of how data collection can be leveraged to find unexpected insights not obvious from the data, coupled with the Snowden leaks, coupled with the ever-increasing user count for cellphones, Facebook, Twitter, and the Internet in general. If people were deeply individually concerned about the risks vs. rewards of these technologies, they'd stop using them. Tha…

> "If people were deeply individually concerned about the risks vs. rewards of these technologies, they'd stop using them." Why do you think that? It clearly doesn't apply to stuff like oil, for instance. I could give up my phone, but I would be in deep shit if I did it tomorrow. It would take a lot of arrangement to do so and it would piss off my family and lose me work.

Actually, I'd argue that it does apply to stuff like oil.

People say they're concerned. But the actual number of people attempting to zero the amount of oil they use? Much lower than claimed concern.

Words are easy. Actions have costs that people would prefer not to take on.

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

#413

Post by fixermark »

jadedhacker wrote: post #348
fixermark wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

1) Users get no benefit from information resale. 2) COINTELPRO

Keep in mind: most users are not part of a domestic political organization targeted by the FBI, so again, when the rubber hits the road, they'd rather not be inconvenienced for a risk that applies to other people. They don't care about COINTELPRO (disregarding, of course, the percentage of the population that actually thinks the FBI digging into "subversive" groups is part of its job).

Users get no benefit from the information resale directly, but they also aren't generally harmed by it. And the benefit they get from having a ubiquitously-connected device in their pocket outweighs the (apparently calculated to be low) per-person cost to their information being resold. The fact that you or I may do the calculus differently for ourselves (because we have different risk sensitivity) doesn't impact those who don't reach the same conclusions.

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

#414

Post by dang »

tzahola wrote: post #390
jandrewrogers wrote: post #93

Earlier 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.

Thank you for your contributions in making the world a little more shitty! /s

This breaks the HN guidelines. Please read and follow them when commenting here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: you've repeatedly posted unsubstantive comments and we've asked you to stop before. We ban accounts that do this, so would you please not do it anymore?

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

#415

Post by fixermark »

gordyf wrote: post #336
fixermark wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can be upset about an aspect of a product, and seek to change that aspect, without abandoning use of the product. For example, 1.3 million people are killed by cars every year, and while we recognize the risk, we also constantly improve them through safety regulations, training and improved technology. Just because people use cell phones and apps today doesn't mean we're okay with the downsides and should stop tr…

It's an interesting example you've chosen, since one of the dimensions along which car safety improvement is being researched is ubiquitous GPS signalling to share data about road and traffic conditions (and since every self-driving car is basically a panopticon and recording device rolled into one).

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

#416

Post by knodi »

cascom wrote: post #96
knodi wrote: post #60

Carriers are also selling your billing records. They offer a service to return the carrier billing address/name based on the mobile number. Not only this but late last year all 4 of the major US carriers are offering APIs to convert mobile IP to a billing record (name/address/phone number).

This is even more disconcerting - just out of curiousirty what does this cost?

9c on the high end, under a 1c on the low end (with volume/long term commitment)

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

#417

Post by dang »

TechieKid wrote: post #322
fixermark wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Several recent HN stories have had this kind of comment (first noticed with the Securus submission) that's a weird mix of "You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide" and "They will never come for you, you're too unimportant." Is this a sustained campaign or just a way for folks who have contributed to these issues to feel good about themselves?

> Is this a sustained campaign

This breaks the site guidelines. Could you please read and follow them when commenting here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Insinuations of astroturfing or shilling without evidence (an opposing view does not count as evidence) are an internet toxin that turns out to be worse than the things it insinuates, because it's so widespread. I've written a ton about why we don't allow that here, if anyone wants to read more: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

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

#418

Post by rectang »

18pfsmt wrote: post #409
rectang wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you saying AT&T bribed Cohen in order to have the Justice Dept. sue AT&T over its acquisition with Time Warner?

I'm saying AT&T bribed Cohen, which is what we have evidence for so far. Perhaps there will be additional communiques exposed later which reveal specific requests.

They did not get the outcome they wanted with the acquisition, but there was also the matter of the administration wanting to punish CNN. Maybe AT&T should have paid more.

But AT&T has still done remarkably well vis a vis the FCC's selective deregulation of net neutrality, which makes it much easier for existing ISPs to leverage their quasi-monopolies and compete unfairly within other verticals.

The American system of legalized bribery needn't produce a bill of sale for regulatory capture.

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

#419

Post by pubutil »

TechieKid wrote: post #322
fixermark wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Several recent HN stories have had this kind of comment (first noticed with the Securus submission) that's a weird mix of "You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide" and "They will never come for you, you're too unimportant." Is this a sustained campaign or just a way for folks who have contributed to these issues to feel good about themselves?

Wilsonnb hit the nail on the head, it’s just how some people feel. Though I don’t doubt that some people involved in the creation of this phenomenon use the argument to justify their work.

I had a hard time understanding why people wouldn’t be more conscientious of their privacy, until I had discussions about the issue with people close to me.

My folks had a very similar sentiment to the typical “if you have nothing to hide, then why do you worry about it”. My girlfriend had the same thought, but took it a step further and asked why I cared so much about people uninvolved in my life knowing personal details about it, then said I was “the most paranoid person [she’d] ever met”

Once the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, they all understood my point. I think the majority of people who don’t work in tech don’t understand the massive implications that our lack of privacy has. They don’t know how cookies or backends or tracking pixels work, and may not even know they exist. They imagine an NSA agent sitting in a room looking for keywords, not companies that they entrust their digital lives to selling off every little piece of info about them. It’s so much more than your Facebook or Twitter posts being public, it’s data that we might not even know about ourselves being kept in the hands of unknown entities.

To sum up this rant, some people have to see it to believe it because this is outside their scope of knowledge

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

#420

Post by OldSchoolJohnny »

arca_vorago wrote: post #244

One of these days, most of you will finally understand just how right RMS was and is... It's just a shame so many can't see it, and worse, give those of us who do shit.

Yeah him and every tin foil hat guy have been ranting about this for years. Doesn't make it not true, but RMS? Really? That guys is a certifiable nut job and we would all do well to let him lapse into the dust of history.
Post reply on HN