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The government uses targeted advertising to track your location

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Re: The government uses targeted advertising to track your location

#51

Post by kelnos »

ux266478 wrote: post #40
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This confuses a technology used for the purpose of optimizing the performance of a technology with tracking for the purposes of selling you crap or keeping tabs on your location for unwarranted reasons. Huge difference. The former does not entail the latter.

Actually it is physically impossible to have any wireless comms at all without giving away a unique identity that can be tracked. Not unless you're going to replace your phone's radio every time you send some data. Every single transmitter has a unique fingerprint that can be identified relatively easily. It's called Specific Emitter Identification. If at any point a fingerprint is associated with your identity, it's…

You're confusing a technical limitation with a policy decision. Just because the cell tower (as currently designed) needs to know your fairly-precise location at all times, it doesn't mean that location needs to be stored indefinitely or used against you.

We could live in a world where we have strictly-enforced privacy laws. We don't, and that sucks, and if anything, we're moving further away from that state of affairs very day. But we could.

Re: The government uses targeted advertising to track your location

#52

Post by wizzwizz4 »

Retric wrote: post #44
ux266478 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it is physically impossible to have any wireless comms at all without giving away a unique identity that can be tracked. Not unless you're going to replace your phone's radio every time you send some data. Every single transmitter has a unique fingerprint that can be identified relatively easily. It's called Specific Emitter Identification. If at any point a fingerprint is associated with your identity, it's…

How things are aren’t the only way things could be. A receiver could use a new random ID to call “collect” to a secure third party network which agrees to pay for the base stations bandwidth for every connection. The station then responds to the base station yep ID X’s bandwidth will be paid by vert tel. Obviously, this doesn’t eliminate the possibility of tracking as you’d want the cell to have multiple connections…

GP is referring to manufacturing variance in the radio equipment, not the deliberately-inserted tracking identifiers. See, for example, doi:10.1016/j.dsp.2025.105201 and doi:10.3390/rs17152659 for relatively cheap approaches.

The solution to this is just to make it illegal to store and process the results of such analysis applied to radio signals, without consent of the data subject (GDPR jurisdictions have that already), and to enforce that law.

Re: The government uses targeted advertising to track your location

#53

Post by kelnos »

pocksuppet wrote: post #48
johnnyanmac wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democratic ones do. But for 95% of causes it's hard to become so loud that they are forced to respond. That's exactly why orgs like EFF exist. Most laws also aren't passed because of overwhelming consumer feedback. It's lobbied by special interests. Which sadly took a negative connotation over the last few decades, but lobbies can be for the people too.

Studies show if 0% of the American population support a bill, it's 30% likely to be passed, and if 100% of the American population support it, it's 30% likely to be passed. Is America democratic?

I'm getting to the point where I believe representative democracy on the scale of hundreds of millions of people just doesn't work all that well. I've never been one of those "states' rights" people, but these days I am becoming convinced that the US should have a much smaller federal government, and states, counties, cities, and towns should have more autonomy in deciding their fates.

This is not an easy problem to solve. Certainly I want more things at the federal level than the authors of the constitution envisioned (currency, international diplomacy, military, etc.): some things really need to be done at the national level (like environmental regulation).

Anyway. Sure, those figures may be true for the US Congress (or not, I haven't verified), but I bet you those figures aren't even close to true for town and city councils and county government. And perhaps not even state government as well.

Re: The government uses targeted advertising to track your location

#54

Post by kelnos »

everdrive wrote: post #11
JohnMakin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be unimaginable to have the urge to look something up, It's not popular because this is very reductive and dismissive of the problem almost to the point of dishonesty. Many modern functions need an application and there is little or no alternative. Some examples: QR codes - lots of restaurants don't have a physical menu and need a QR code scan. This behavior extends well beyond restaurants as well. Keys -…

>QR codes Those restaurants are worthless >Keys Carrying your car key does not count as inconvenient >Banking Agreed, and this is a problem, but you can just do your banking at home without carrying around your smart phone. This is a case where the industry is forcing a choice on consumers. I'm considering joining a local credit union for this reason. > Navigation How did people manage this prior to 2007?

> How did people manage this prior to 2007?

Paper maps. Or even (in the earlier 00s) looking up directions on MapQuest or whatever, and then printing those directions out. I don't want to keep printing out directions; what a huge waste of paper that would be. Paper maps are doable, but awkward to use, and can easily become out of date. You need to have addresses (or at least nearby landmarks or cross-streets) for everywhere you want to go, because paper maps have a very limited set of points-of-interest on them.

> Those restaurants are worthless

That's just, like, your opinion, man. Your criticisms seem to mostly amount to "people should just abandon the various conveniences and niceties that smartphones provide, because there are alternatives, even in cases where those alternatives are incredibly inconvenient".

Yes, it's idiotic that we're subjected to so much tracking when we carry our phones around. But the response shouldn't be "let's just become a luddite and not take advantage of modern technology". It should be "wow, this makes me fucking angry; we need to fix our laws so this sort of thing doesn't happen".

Re: The government uses targeted advertising to track your location

#55

Post by shimman »

Lammy wrote: post #23
js8 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a false dichotomy. Citizens can have useful smartphones while not being tracked by unwanted actors.

Not with modern cellular and Wi-Fi tech we can't. Base stations literally “steer the beam” to follow you. Precise location spying is essential to the way they achieve such high throughput.

Of course we can, these are all non physical properties of the universe. We can design things to not enable tracking or advertising, we just don't because the public isn't allowed to provide public solutions so we're forced to use malware by corporations that profit off of the malware.

Do people seriously forget that humans design with an explicit purpose? That purpose can change you know...

edit: needs to be stated that the last data privacy law the US passed was regarding video rentals in the 80s.

Re: The government uses targeted advertising to track your location

#56

Post by kelnos »

everdrive wrote: post #20
JohnMakin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is goalpost shifting and ignored much of the point of my post. this same thinking can be applied recursively to “well, if you cant do that, it’s just dumb anyway.” And you’re flat out wrong about banking, there are things and situations that require you physically entering one. And yes it is a situation where society is forcing the decision, that’s my entire point - I as an individual cannot apply the non remedy…

I appreciate the response, and I would argue that in at least some cases “well, if you cant do that, it’s just dumb anyway.” is totally valid. With regard to the job, and the banking, I agree. I need to have OTP on my phone and I haven't tried to bank in person for a while. We have two young kids, and once things calm down I'm going to see if we can swap to a local credit union. The decision will be predicated on whe…

> The decision will be predicated on whether I can do everything in person.

I don't want to do everything in person. It's frankly amazing that I can deposit a check on my phone, from my home, and don't have to go to a bank branch to deposit it anymore. For close to 20 years now, my primary banking has been through banks that don't have a physical presence at all, let alone in my city. And I don't mind it that way at all; in fact I like it, because these banks focus harder on making things more convenient for me.

Your attitude here seems to be that if other people's preferred method for doing something doesn't conform to your preferred method, then the other people must be wrong somehow. That's not a reasonable way to be looking at this.

Re: The government uses targeted advertising to track your location

#57

Post by salawat »

Lammy wrote: post #30
throawayonthe wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we can't have privacy for mail contents. the post network literally "routes the package" via the address on the box. digging through your mail is essential to the way they achieve such delivery rates

Unfortunately also correct: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-ma... “Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States” We Await Silent Tristero's Empire

That's different. That's only tracking to a granularity of a postally recognized address. News flash, that address isn't you. It's somewhere you probably are at some point, but it isn't you. Cellular network tracking and surveillance on the other hand... You can't really get around that problem without everything being designed with store & forward in mind.

Re: The government uses targeted advertising to track your location

#58

Post by JKCalhoun »

everdrive wrote: post #3

It's never popular when I post this, but I'm just going to do it again: "No matter the risk, I must carry my smartphone everywhere and install every app. It would be unimaginable to have the urge to look something up, but then wait to do it later until I'm using a real computer. No negative outcome will EVER shake my deep, permanent need to carry a smartphone all the time and use it for as much as possible." We've do…

I have access ALL THE TIME…

…to a Field Notes book in my wallet (and a pen).

Re: The government uses targeted advertising to track your location

#59

Post by nancyminusone »

everdrive wrote: post #3

It's never popular when I post this, but I'm just going to do it again: "No matter the risk, I must carry my smartphone everywhere and install every app. It would be unimaginable to have the urge to look something up, but then wait to do it later until I'm using a real computer. No negative outcome will EVER shake my deep, permanent need to carry a smartphone all the time and use it for as much as possible." We've do…

For whom are you speaking? It certainly isn't me. My phone plan shares 3 lines on a single 2gb of data/month. I'd have to pay more for even the current base plan, but I don't feel like it. This is because the mobile experience is worse in almost every way.

But that's a moot point, because advertisers will still track you on any device you use.

Re: The government uses targeted advertising to track your location

#60

Post by Defletter »

nancyminusone wrote: post #59
everdrive wrote: post #3

It's never popular when I post this, but I'm just going to do it again: "No matter the risk, I must carry my smartphone everywhere and install every app. It would be unimaginable to have the urge to look something up, but then wait to do it later until I'm using a real computer. No negative outcome will EVER shake my deep, permanent need to carry a smartphone all the time and use it for as much as possible." We've do…

For whom are you speaking? It certainly isn't me. My phone plan shares 3 lines on a single 2gb of data/month. I'd have to pay more for even the current base plan, but I don't feel like it. This is because the mobile experience is worse in almost every way. But that's a moot point, because advertisers will still track you on any device you use.

Fun fact, generalisations can still exist even if they don't 100% apply to literally everybody.
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