An Investigation Into the Smartphone Tracking Industry (nytimes.com) 52
Every minute of every day, everywhere on the planet, dozens of companies -- largely unregulated, little scrutinized -- are logging the movements of tens of millions of people with mobile phones and storing the information in gigantic data files. The Times Privacy Project obtained one such file, by far the largest and most sensitive ever to be reviewed by journalists. It holds more than 50 billion location pings from the phones of more than 12 million Americans as they moved through several major cities, including Washington, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The New York Times: Each piece of information in this file represents the precise location of a single smartphone over a period of several months in 2016 and 2017. The data was provided to Times Opinion by sources who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to share it and could face severe penalties for doing so. The sources of the information said they had grown alarmed about how it might be abused and urgently wanted to inform the public and lawmakers. After spending months sifting through the data, tracking the movements of people across the country and speaking with dozens of data companies, technologists, lawyers and academics who study this field, we feel the same sense of alarm. In the cities that the data file covers, it tracks people from nearly every neighborhood and block, whether they live in mobile homes in Alexandria, Va., or luxury towers in Manhattan.
One search turned up more than a dozen people visiting the Playboy Mansion, some overnight. Without much effort we spotted visitors to the estates of Johnny Depp, Tiger Woods and Arnold Schwarzenegger, connecting the devices' owners to the residences indefinitely. If you lived in one of the cities the dataset covers and use apps that share your location -- anything from weather apps to local news apps to coupon savers -- you could be in there, too. If you could see the full trove, you might never use your phone the same way again.
One search turned up more than a dozen people visiting the Playboy Mansion, some overnight. Without much effort we spotted visitors to the estates of Johnny Depp, Tiger Woods and Arnold Schwarzenegger, connecting the devices' owners to the residences indefinitely. If you lived in one of the cities the dataset covers and use apps that share your location -- anything from weather apps to local news apps to coupon savers -- you could be in there, too. If you could see the full trove, you might never use your phone the same way again.
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The filter is still there, but if you add enough real text to it, it's no longer considered "lame."
TracPhone (Score:5, Funny)
So when I bought a TracPhone I didn't realize they meant it literally. I read the internal code word for google's next phone is "peeping tom", and it has an always on camera.
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I don't visit Johnny Depp (Score:2)
So no one cares about me. I wish I was interesting enough to warrant paranoia.
Because (Score:4)
Now we can quibble about who gets the logs, but it's pretty simple - if you want your whereabouts to be a secret, you do not want to be carrying or especially using a cell or smartphone.
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To most reporters technology is magic. Next they will be shocked that their ISP and Google is keeping logs about every website and page they visit.
Re: Because (Score:1)
I used to like having a phone mounted on the wall. Anybody who was home would answer it. When I was away from home I just wasn't available to talk on the phone. Quaint, I know.
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When I was a kid, my girlfriend's parents actually were on a party line. That made life interesting.
That was a source of entertainment and gossip for a lot of housewives back in the day. Unscrew the microphone, and listen in on other people's conversations.
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I used to like having a phone mounted on the wall. Anybody who was home would answer it. When I was away from home I just wasn't available to talk on the phone. Quaint, I know.
We have one too. It only gets spam calls though.
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The carrier needs to know. But e.g. Google Play Services does not need to know, and definitely doesn't need to block turning off its location access, block disabling it from auto-updating, and block being uninstalled. Rooting your phone isn't a realistic option for most people.
The carrier needs to know, on occasion Law enforcement needs to know. And if you are paranoid at all, how do you know what processes are not known to you. Rooted or not.
It's simply not a secure and secret process. Anyone needing or demanding secrecy as to their wherabouts must understand that.
If I for some reason I did not want my whereabouts known, I would simply not take a cellular phone with me. Or turn it off and place it in a metal box. Don't leave it turned on in the box, because it will run down
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The carrier needs to know, on occasion Law enforcement needs to know.
That should read, "on occasion law enforcement wants to know." Not the same thing at all.
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You can recognize that some entity needs to have some information but still not think absolutely everyone should have it and make it publicly available. Your bank needs to know your account details, does that mean it would be ok if absolutely every app on your phone could access that information?
I care not about what should be, but what is.
Is it okay that it is trivial to track you? No. But it does. And that isn't going to change.
It goes beyond "the cell tower knows" (Score:4, Informative)
That's how cell phones work. It's inherent in the process.
The article's major topic was that apps collect information they don't need and keep it longer than they need to, and that sometimes third parties will pay app developers to include tracking code that's not really needed for the app to do what it needs to do for the end user.
Back to your point: Yes, the cell phone company needs to know what cell tower you are near and which one you are actively connected to. Yes, CERTAIN apps like mapping apps need to know where you are, but they don't need to keep that data for more than a short time. The NYT article focused on when apps collect or keep more data that is needed for them to do what they need to do for the end user.
The article is part of a series. Part 2, which has suggestions for people to enable privacy features, is now out. There's nothing new in there for most Slashdot readers. We will know by the weekend if the rest of the series has anything in it the general public isn't aware of.
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Part 2, which has suggestions for people to enable privacy features, is now out. There's nothing new in there for most Slashdot readers. We will know by the weekend if the rest of the series has anything in it the general public isn't aware of.
Here is how you ensure that your cellular phone is tracking you to the least extent possible.
Only turn it on when you need to make a call or check your voicemail, texts, or email. Then turn it off. and put it in a metal container to act as a Faraday shield.
Any other tactic exposes your location, and anyone trusting that any "law" or investigation will in any way stop anyone that for some reason wants to track them, is naivety of the highest order.
I don't turn my phone off because I don't really care
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The cops have access to the location data.
You do not. Good luck with that alibi.
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The cops have access to the location data.
You do not. Good luck with that alibi.
As do the courts, and lawyers with subpoenas..
These phone and security cam and CC purchases and Toll booth records are used all the time in courts, and to set up alibis or to prove guilt or innocence.
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>That's how cell phones work. It's inherent in the process.
No it's not. It's inherent that Verizon, AT&T, etc., know the location of your phone for the purposes of provide cell service. It's not inherent that anybody else tracks your location. It's not inherent to insert trackers silently into apps.
Playboy Mansion visitor (Score:2)
"One nation tracked" (Score:1)
It took them months? (Score:2)
Did they spend all that time taking udemy classes or something? It should take them a few days/weeks at most.
This is 10 years old... (Score:2)
"you might never use your [cell] phone ..." (Score:5, Insightful)
We have a copper wire, twisted-pair, land-line phone at home and that is the one I use. As a phone, it sends nothing but our voices and our "calling number" to people we know or choose to talk with. The phone may be old but it is reliable and it does not betray our privacy.
If you want to talk with me while I am on the road, well
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Pretty sure my wife would divorce me before that plan ever got rolled out, but it does sound nice. Not the divorce but your phone usage. I miss not being bothered all the time.
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I now never turn it on except to call someone while travelling (not often). I know, wait for it, wait for it, to boot up. But at least it isn't secretly sending a constant stream of my private information to only-God-knows-who third parties ....
Better pull the battery between uses if you want to be almost certain of this.
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Better pull the battery between uses if you want to be almost certain of this.
In most - but probably not all - phones, "off" means "off, except for the button that turns it on, unless it's in 'stolen phone recovery mode' or "government-backdoor tracking/snooping mode'" or some similar "fake off" mode. In the USA I would expect any "government backdoor" mode to only be used under court order, but in countries like China, well, that's a topic for another day.
After all, since most customers expect a phone that is "off" to have very little battery drain and if it is fully charged, still
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As a phone, it sends nothing but our voices and our "calling number" to people we know or choose to talk with
The phone company knows who you call, who calls you, when these calls start, when they end, and if they bothered to record it, little details like the timing of when you push the buttons on your phone, which likely correlate to things like arthritis and other health issues marketers would love to have.
We have a copper wire, twisted-pair, land-line phone at home and that is the one I use.
After "Superstorm Sandy" hit the northeast earlier this century and flooded a lot of the phone infrastructure, the phone companies were clamoring to "not replace" it and leave people without POTS service. I p
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shut em all down!!! NOW!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Being data conscious in a sea of indifference (Score:2)
I got the impression from the article that these particular logs were from apps, not the telco or the phone radio per se.
This is also why my personal phone is a Blackberry classic. The work phone has minimal apps and almost always has mobile data turned off. People laugh when they see the blackberry and it is inconvenient when looking up restaurant reviews, calling Uber, getting directions, etc.
Of course it's not always negative. One time I was in a strip club in West Virginia around 1:00 a.m. I took my
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Stripper - You can't take pictures in here. Me - Ma'am I assure you I couldn't take pictures in here if I wanted to, this is a Blackberry.
I was willing to believe you until you called the stripper "Ma'am".
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Stripper - You can't take pictures in here.
Me - Ma'am I assure you I couldn't take pictures in here if I wanted to, this is a Blackberry.
I was willing to believe you until you called the stripper "Ma'am".
True story, honest injun!
This was an unfamiliar part of West Virginia out in the damn woods at 1:00 on a cold-ass November morning. I wasn't inclined to get kicked out. That will motive one to move a notch or two up the stripper respect-o-meter.
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I have a 7 year old "feature phone" and I'm increasingly finding interstate highways and other major roads where I can't even get a 911/emergency-only signal.
My phone does support G3 but only for data not for voice or text which means no G2 tower nearby = no 911 calls.
I like my phone but lack of 911 coverage means it's time to retire it.
Yea, I have had some of those problems too. Eventually I had to go to a Blackberry that supports LTE. Finding one that runs Blackberry OS and not Android with a supported network is getting harder.
Govt cant do this... (Score:2)
... but it can buy it.
Used to work in the internet marketing industry. Your tax dollars support these businesses via govt purchases of data.
Nifty end run on the 4th dont you agree ?
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Re: Govt cant do this... (Score:2)
Pretty simple equation is weak governments will fall and be replaced by strong ones. If govt is blind but foreign corporations can spy on everything, a shadow state will emerge far more fearsome than the overt state, and it will eventually become the overt state. Privacy needs to be built in, or govt needs to be top spy.
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Really?
My government just orders businesses to give them the data.
Such as 5 years of insurance data for aircraft, boats and cars, then compares those possessions with the declared income of the owners and if that income isn't enough to afford such items, audits the owners.
Also ride sharing services give my govt the data on all their drivers, so my govt can ensure that those drivers are declaring all their income.
There is more, obviously, like share and property transactions. All requested by my govt and sup
Does Anyone Really Care? Honestly? (Score:1)
"If you could see the full trove, you might never use your phone the same way again."
Let's be real.... this isn't the case at all. No matter how many times Big Tech gets exposed for intruding on our privacy or leaking our personal data- we'll still bend over and let them rape us with modern technology.
The harsh reality is that they can get away with unregulated mass surveillance because the average consumer couldn't care less about privacy/security. Big Tech has been slowly sliding their hand up our metapho
Tracking (Score:2)
The Tyrant King George III would have effortlessly used this "non-content metadata" to round up the founding fathers, and so they would have intended it to be included behind the need for a warrant.
Same for every manner of panopticon piece, facial recognition, vehicle tracking. Are you happy with a live database where they can ask where's Waldo? He's in a vehicle on the highway between the mile markers with camera X and camera Y. Or he's at home. Wifi and bluetooth absorbtion vs. an empty house suggest
NYT so helpful (Score:1)
If you could see the full trove, you might never use your phone the same way again.
And for that reason we will not disclose that information to our readers.
Turn on Google Tracking for a while (Score:3)
Google tracks you anyway (as do all of your apps). But at least Google shows you where you have been. It is quite spooky to realize that it knows where you were on a day 6 months ago. And where I was every day on a recent trip to Europe -- even though data was off except for wifi ($1000/gig roaming charges).
But millenials expect this and consider it a feature.
What the Google tracking does not show is the analysis. E.g. who you were with at different times.
I think you will find that it is the Chinese that are the world's experts on this. And they can insist that you always carry your phone with you -- an on-line identity cared would be a good reason, no need to carry plastic any more. And they can check that it is actually you that has the phone using biometrics -- won't be long before Facebook et. al. also do that ... for security.
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Obviously no-one here would use the Facebook app, when the website does all that you need, including (if you tell your phone's browser to use the desktop site) messenger.
And you can close the tab when done, too.