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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

#61

Post by curt15 »

HerbManic wrote: post #39
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…

Im probably to last person to defend the entire stack that is the smart phone but this feels a little reductionist. I use mine as a phone, messaging, podcast player, camera, a banking device, a little email and occastionally the web. Thats it. Some convience is good, too much is very bad. No social media or whatever millions of apps they constantly try to push in your store of (enforced) choice. In someways we have d…

>For instance my bank has become entirely dependent of their app as the glue between all their functions and authorisation

That sounds horrible. What are users to do if their smartphone breaks?

Re: The government uses targeted advertising to track your location

#62

Post by Defletter »

kelnos wrote: post #50
Lammy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're missing the point. Just because it's possible for that tracking to happen, it doesn't mean it has to happen. We could have strong privacy laws. Mobile carriers (and anyone else) could be required to not store this data at all, or at the very least delete it after a short time. We could have mandated surprise audits to ensure this actually happens. We could have significant, company-ending fines for non-complia…

One problem is that such information can be useful for non surveillance purposes, for example: how they knew certain roads were congested before GPS was the mobile networks. I personally do not see anything nefarious about this, nor would I necessarily wish to see this kind of information as uncollectable. Such things are different from tracking specific individuals, yes, but it's not that different. It then becomes a matter of what, how much, and for what purposes the information can be collected, which can be somewhat moot since the government in all likelihood will give themselves an opt out anyway.

None of this is to say that we shouldn't try, or that it's futile, but rather that it's a daunting task: the only way to really defeat this is to not only regulate private entities but also the government itself. And the only way to do that is to make such surveillance political suicide. And the only way to do that is to get the people to care about privacy. Here in the UK, the public has more or less come to accept CCTV cameras being everywhere, with the government now introducing AI face-scanning cameras, which has not been met with much public resistance. And so I do have to echo what @everdrive said: "We've done this to ourselves". Whether it's about convenience or apathy or whatever, we've had the means to object to this and we haven't.

Re: The government uses targeted advertising to track your location

#63

Post by trinsic2 »

libraryatnight wrote: post #43
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…

This is funny because one of my major gripes with everyone having phones is they don't really use them for meaningful information seeking. They'll sit in conversation and speculate and invent nonsense, accept the smartest/most convenient sounding nonsense at the table, and move on as if they did not have the ability to look it up on the spot. Then later they quote the nonsense to someone else as if it were something…

Yeah this is a good point. It would probably be a good idea to have an elective in high school/collage class on the recommended using of mobile tech and why its a concern to to using it to doomscroll because the algorithms are gaming your attention and trying to steer your perception.

Re: The government uses targeted advertising to track your location

#64

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The government uses targeted advertising to track your location

#65

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The government uses targeted advertising to track your location

#66

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The government uses targeted advertising to track your location

#67

Post by PyWoody »

SoftTalker wrote: post #45
PyWoody wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How did people manage this prior to 2007? MapQuest? It sucked. Google Maps does allow you to download areas to your device that can be used offline, too.

Paper maps before that. If you were in AAA you could get a "trip map" that was a complete route with turn by turn directions and a spiral bound, printed map that you paged through as you traveled, but paper maps worked well. Not as convenient as a phone but not terrible either.

The AAA maps are pretty great. I keep one of their spiral bound maps of my region in my trunk just in case.

Re: The government uses targeted advertising to track your location

#68

Post by juris »

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?

> QR codes: haha agreed. those QR codes coincide with mandatory post covid tip rate and inflated prices; whenever I tip it's 15-18% cash, and direct to waiter. i don't eat at places that invest in insta (food for the eyes) instead of real food.

> keys + mfa: this one is a tricky one for me. thinking to go do web-only mfa fwiw and go full RMS with just a laptop and a hotspot. does he even use a hotspot? haha. as far as SMS MFA goes... maybe tailscale out an adb session to your real cellphone at home. feels brittle, but so is sms mfa. edit: actually i'll just forward SMS to myself via e-mail; this is what your financial advisor does, since SMS is heavily regulated in fintech

> nav: yeah when smartphones first came out i just hated every design aspect about them (stupidly fragile screens at the time), but the most compelling reason to switch at the time was navigation. i don't mind printing mapquest again or just using a dedicated gps.

it's the value prop of having "all the world's knowledge at your fingertips" versus:

stupid obsoletion practices + lithium mining, corpogovernment surveillance + tracking, eroding mental health, porn, gacha games, cellphone thumb + turtle neck, doom scrolling + time wasted, enshittified content, the reverse flynn-effect, infuriating typing ux on both ios and android, and people having near constant access to you at all times (remember when it was rude to call past 8p?)

does this thing really make you happy?

that i think it's time to just leave your phone at home...like in ye olde days with your landline and i'm an app developer. (you should keep the phone and gps on and at least pretend that you're a normie).

anyone in construction really like their ruggedized SIP phone and can recommend a good voip system (ie they trust their voip provider) with e2e encryption that I can connect a wifi 6 mobile router to? someone a few months ago on hn mentioned the mudi v2 and sim swapping with https://github.com/srlabs/blue-merle

Re: The government uses targeted advertising to track your location

#69

Post by drnick1 »

qsera wrote: post #29
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…

You are worried about THAT? How about we carry a device with multiple cameras, multiple microphones, and 24x7 connection to the internet that is running an operating system made by an Ad Company, to the most private of places?

It does not have to be that way however. There are plenty of phones out there running free/libre operating systems, including GrapheneOS, LineageOS, and various Linux options. I use GrapheneOS and wouldn't carry a phone running a proprietary OS.

Re: The government uses targeted advertising to track your location

#70

Post by juris »

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…

funny. i actually woke up this morning fairly early and bustling alive with ideas (oh you know, nonsense 5am ones like what i should do if the petrodollar collapses... trade eggs and make a fiat cryptocurrency internal to my company (not subject to oversight) based on favors? wax tokens melted after favors met... something or another.

and i noted that urge to check my phone to validate those (later midday: embarrassing) ideas. it occurred to me then that it's precisely that urge to check the phone that usually kills them. and if it isn't that, it's the missed smses and emails and the latest gripe on hn. i wondered how many good ideas were strangled with the mundanity/viciousness (depending on your algorithm) of this device

"is it really so bad to sit alone with my thoughts, without having an immediate answer to put them to rest?"

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