Ban the sale of precise geolocation • Hacker News Board

Re: Ban the sale of precise geolocation

#91

Post by gwerbin » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 5:06 PM UTC

jandrewrogers wrote: post #66

microtonal wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The compliance model is very simple. Do not collect data. Problem solved. If you need to collect data (e.g. because you are a webshop), only collect the minimum necessary. The problem is not the GDPR, the problem is the surveillance industry that wants to grab as much data as possible and try to do as much malicious compliance as possible.

Designing around GDPR compliance shows up all over the place in industrial data collection. It doesn't only affect surveillance webslop. The costs are often worse on industrial side because the data is so much larger and faster than web or mobile data.

What do you mean by "industrial" in this case?

Re: Ban the sale of precise geolocation

#92

Post by Cider9986 » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 5:09 PM UTC

lifestyleguru wrote: post #12

Smartphones, mobile apps, mobile networks, and WiFi stopped being your friends around 2015-2016. Now it's just a matter of how much data can be harvested from device sensors in real time until reaching a pain point which doesn't exist.

WiFi isn't that bad, we have mac address randomization[1] and VPNs. Cellular is obscenely bad, though.

[1] https://grapheneos.org/usage#wifi-privacy

Re: Ban the sale of precise geolocation

#93

Post by shevy-java » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 5:11 PM UTC

Soon Geolocation will be tied to Age! Then you can meet locals and congratulate them on their birthday. The movie Minority Report was way too timid in its prediction here. Age up everything! \o/

Re: Ban the sale of precise geolocation

#94

Post by teeray » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 5:12 PM UTC

Dwedit wrote: post #8

ch4s3 wrote: post #3

IMO we should ban gathering this data without a warrant or specific contractual agreement between the device owner and entity aggregating the data. As much as congress loves to claim the interstate commerce theory of everything, this seems like a slam dunk.

Contractual agreement? Nobody reads things like EULAs or terms of service. It's probably in there already.

Instead of “I accept”, you’re given a quiz

Re: Ban the sale of precise geolocation

#95

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 5:12 PM UTC

rockskon wrote: post #38

Johnbot wrote: post #9

A lot of geolocation data on the market is anonymized, following medium-lived unique IDs that aren't able to be mapped to other identifiers. The problem with that is that if you have precise locations, or enough samples that you can apply statistics to find precise locations, in many cases you can de-anonymize the IDs. You can purchase address and resident listings from a number of different data vendors, and by chec…

There is no such thing as anonymized location data when you have the location of something where and when they sleep and work. It's a rhetorical fiction the ad industry tells itself.

[deleted]

Re: Ban the sale of precise geolocation

#96

Post by Terr_ » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

rockskon wrote: post #38

Johnbot wrote: post #9

A lot of geolocation data on the market is anonymized, following medium-lived unique IDs that aren't able to be mapped to other identifiers. The problem with that is that if you have precise locations, or enough samples that you can apply statistics to find precise locations, in many cases you can de-anonymize the IDs. You can purchase address and resident listings from a number of different data vendors, and by chec…

There is no such thing as anonymized location data when you have the location of something where and when they sleep and work. It's a rhetorical fiction the ad industry tells itself.

Right, there's probably no other phone in the world that typically stops for hours within 1000 feet of my bed and typically stops on Monday-Friday within 1000 feet of my work-desk.

Re: Ban the sale of precise geolocation

#97

Post by GJim » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 5:16 PM UTC

wolvoleo wrote: post #6

Just ban the sale of any kind of adtracking. That way we can get rid of the cookiewalls too. Missed opportunity by the EU when they wrote GDPR.

> Missed opportunity by the EU when they wrote GDPR.

Not really.

There are legitimate reasons why I might wish to be tracked or give my personal data to a company. As long as I'm asked to give clear, opt-in informed consent, this is perfectly fine. This is the very essence of the GDPR!

Instead, direct your ire to the scummy adtech industry who are constantly asking to invade my privacy and smell my knickers trying to work out what I ate for lunch. Another law to ban the adtech industry would be welcome from me, though would meet fierce resistance from the likes of Google.

The GDPR is well written.

Re: Ban the sale of precise geolocation

#98

Post by GJim » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 5:19 PM UTC

em-bee wrote: post #63

SoftTalker wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the only reason the popups are needed is the adtech tracking cookies. You don't need a popup for cookies that are related to essential site functionality.

yes, so if ad tracking is forbidden outright then asking for permission to do it is invalid too.

We certainly do need another law to ban the adtech industry..... Though no doubt that would prompt a _shitstorm_ from Google, Elon and chums.

Re: Ban the sale of precise geolocation

#99

Post by jjk166 » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 5:24 PM UTC

romaniv wrote: post #41

The problem with all these discussions about banning stuff is that privacy is always on the back foot. It's by design. People who want to surveil and manipulate us are actively investigating new ways of doing it, they get paid for it and they risk nothing in the long run. All of these discussions about specifics are just reactions. They aren't even reactions to the surveillance itself, but rather to a discovery by so…

Yeah, abuse of privacy should be the crime, the same way theft is. How exactly the crime is committed shouldn't matter. Companies can have every right to make a compelling argument that what they did was not an abuse of privacy when they are defending themselves in court.

And critically, it is not someone becoming aware of private information that is the abuse of privacy, it is exploiting that private information which is the abuse. There may be countless legitimate technical reasons you need to collect data, but there can not possibly be a technical justification for selling it.

Re: Ban the sale of precise geolocation

#100

Post by jandrewrogers » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 5:34 PM UTC

gwerbin wrote: post #91

jandrewrogers wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Designing around GDPR compliance shows up all over the place in industrial data collection. It doesn't only affect surveillance webslop. The costs are often worse on industrial side because the data is so much larger and faster than web or mobile data.

What do you mean by "industrial" in this case?

Telemetry from machines and data from environmental sensors that is collected for operational purposes (safety, efficiency, reliability) in industrial applications. Old school engineering systems that in modern times have expansive network-connected sensors that may even have onboard classifiers to reduce the quantity of data.

The trouble started when lawyers correctly noticed that these are incidentally capable surveillance systems even though that isn't how we use them or what they were designed for.