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

zdnet.com

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

#551

Post by jadedhacker »

fixermark wrote: post #493
jadedhacker wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, dissent is a healthy thing and you'll get a better society that way. Once the capability for real dissent is eroded, the social controls of the society will be turned to the benefit of the victorious faction. This turns out poorly for everyone else. We should not be creating a mass surveillance state. The actual abuses domestically generally of minority populations, abroad, generally of non-NATO civilian p…

Does the UK encourage dissent? It doesn't seem to. And it seems to be doing fairly well.

All I have to say to that is that regardless of how you feel about them the US picked Trump and the UK picked Brexit. These were both events that demonstrated that elite opinion was so cloistered the rubes started throwing molotovs at the political system, in some cases just for the cheap laugh in the voting booth.

Yes, the UK absolutely needs additional dissent.

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

#552

Post by TangoTrotFox »

Another 'fun' implication of this are the increasingly large number of sites that try to obtain your phone number either through SMS messages during account setup, two factor authentication, or any other number of ways. The accounts you have on those sites link directly to your physical presence. Taking it one small step further, any accounts on other sites you have linked to those accounts are similarly effected. Taking it one step even your dynamic IP address at any given moment can end up working as a physical identifier.

The amount of information the NSA has on people is going to be phenomenal. It'd be interesting to be able to glimpse the data just to see how much we all give away. Here's to hoping we never once ever end up putting a 'bad' person in high office because the amount of targeted damage somebody could do with this information is just staggering to even consider.

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

#553

Post by entrypoint0 »

Two related stories:

I went to a recruiting event in 2013, or 14 perhaps, for a major telecom network in Canada. They were proudly showcasing their ability and interest to analyze people's data. I was shocked, so I spoke to the hiring manager:

"You should be concerned about google and Microsoft, they have much more data" he said. They do, but much less sensitive data. And I am paying you! And google gives me free excellent services. You are an expensive oligopoly with not the best customer protection track record.

2. I had a free modem from a major network that came with the internet. I used the modem at another location while I was away. I got charged for my usage! The modem was not just a modem, it was sensing more information to their system. That is how they tracked my usage, if that is the only thing they tracked. Their technical customer service avoided any form of discussion. Cancelled my internet line with them, and using VPN for trackable stuff ever since.

I am seriously considering cancelling my cell phone until their practices changes.

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

#554

Post by dredmorbius »

erw1 wrote: post #255
raesene9 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you want to get it to blow up then (based on past experience of what seems to catch regulator/legislator interest) I'd say that someone tracking the locations of a load of politicians for a while, finding things of interest about places they've visited and then publishing on a news outlet would do the job.

Will it blow up, even if the public is aware? When Snowden revealed the extent of NSA activities, it caused a momentary uproar but the people moved on pretty quickly after that. As far as I know (and let me know if I am wrong!!), there was no fallout for the government, and business continues as before. So I am not sure if people will care this time either.

We, and the media mainstream, are still discussing Snowden, five years on.

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

#555

Post by pbasista »

gowld wrote: post #524
Illniyar wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

Location data is what, maybe 1kB per sample, including lots of overhead? 100 samples/day is 3MB/month. It's not going to affect your mobile data budget.

Some people do not have a mobile data plan. Using mobile data in such case would typically be rather expensive. Unexplained mobile data charges, however small, would raise questions.

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

#556

Post by jakeogh »

sp332 wrote: post #334
jakeogh wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the current setup, sure, but that's by design. The cellular modem could stay off until you decided to take the call if there was a nationwide page circuit listening, the user would get the ring, see the number the page sent, and if desired, answer, which powers on the modem, hits a tower and connects to a backend system that sent the page which took the incoming call. Page messages are in-the clear, but that's f…

You want every single cell phone call in the world to send out a signal over every single cell tower?

/napkin overestimate using US 6B/calls/day with a nationwide 256B packet each, that's roughly a 100Mbps broadcast channel, which is ~5 digital TV channels, or one geostationary satellite's half-duplex bandwidth if it could see the entire US. As mdhardeman points out, it's easier than that, and there is plenty of room for re-transmission.

What is the passive bitrate of a tower->cell connection? LTE/GSM whatever.

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

#557

Post by nyolfen »

fixermark wrote: post #267
stef25 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> 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).

they absolutely had spies on the ground who were likely civilians, eg the doctor who got bin laden's family's dna under the cover of a vaccine program. the narrative that they were only using cell tower triangulation may have a seed of truth but it sounds a lot like counterintel meant to throw off the trail to me.

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

#558

Post by fapjacks »

reustle wrote: post #330
fapjacks wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a heads up: Twilio now offers a metric fuckton of services geared towards SIM-enabled IoT. You can order SIM cards by the pile and then bind them to a Twilio number by activating it in the UI (or via API). So now instead of (or in addition to) simply forwarding traffic from garbage numbers to your real number, you can get Twilio numbers that are registered on T-Mobile's network via an actual SIM card, making it…

Last time I checked the data price for twilio sim was not good for daily use. Far cheaper to use something like Google Fi and a data only sim.

Yes, but the whole reason for using Twilio is so you can hack your telephony just the way you like it. Google Fi does not also have a ton of cool services you can take advantage of. You get a phone number and that's that, you're subject to the same old POTS-like restrictions. I don't suggest people use their Twilio SIM card for data like you would on your regular phone, even though when you look at IoT data services offered by companies that aren't also enormous wireless providers, Twilio's prices are relatively pretty good. And also calling and texting is dirt cheap but again, not like with your regular phone. I have a phone with two SIM card slots, and so I've got my regular stupid phone provider's SIM card in one slot and the Twilio SIM in the other. New versions of Android give you tremendous granularity of control with multiple SIM cards, so I can be hyper-specific about which activities should be using which SIM cards. And this granularity is very well-designed from a UX perspective, making it almost effortless to override my preferences e.g. for making a single phone call or using one specific app for a short time.

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

#559

Post by PeterisP »

kalleboo wrote: post #535
sjs7007 wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just tried it and was pretty accurate for me as well. How is it even legal for our cell phone providers to sell this data...?

You agreed to it when you signed the terms of service

Laws can and should override terms of service. The question of why it's legal isn't about contracts, but about basic privacy rights enforced (or not) by the legal system.

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

#560

Post by tomaskafka »

mr_toad wrote: post #496
205guy wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original article seems to be saying that the carriers track and sell phone location by cell triangulation ("less accurate than using GPS, but cell tower data won't drain a phone battery"). This is less accurate, as seen by the example of "within a city block." The parent comment seems to be saying that the OS and apps use the internal GPS data to get a much more accurate location, which is then freely transmitted…

Or just turn off location services when you’re not using them. Turning off Google Now & location services will radically improve battery life on standby.

No. Search this thread for Qualcomm, QSEE or IZat.
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