Privacy and dockless bikes/scooters

[Chuckanut]

In case you did not have enough to worry about, here is a story about the location information gathered about people when they use the dockless bikes and scooters that are popping up in many cities.

It seems that your city fathers and mother will know quite a bit about where citizens come and go from on a daily basis. Worse, if that data is compromised (does anybody believe it is not at risk?) a bad guy could get his hands on the information might be able to pinpoint your home, work location, and patterns of travel rather easily.

https://www.politico.com/states/cal...ers-become-the-next-data-privacy-fight-883121

While Los Angeles says the law does not apply to data schema managed by government, the parallel developments demonstrate how data privacy is becoming a paramount consideration for policymakers — particularly the large and growing pool of information on where people are going in a world of increasingly sophisticated and connected transit.


“If you know where people work and pray and play you know a whole lot about them,” Jerome said. “Our concern is [Los Angeles] is asking for a whole lot of data — more frequent and rigorous real-time data than companies collect and provide at the moment.”

 

[DFDubb]

a bad guy could get his hands on the information might be able to pinpoint your home, work location, and patterns of travel rather easily.

A bad guy can his hands on that info (and more) by searching your name on mylife.

 

[ERD50]

A bad guy can his hands on that info (and more) by searching your name on mylife.

Or just observing you.

I don't understand all the excitement over this stuff. we heard it about 'smart power meters' too. Like some bad guy could figure when I'm home or not by monitoring by power usage? Or, just watch when I leave.

-ERD50

 

[NYEXPAT]

I think the thieves are more interested in the information Tesla owners provide.
I saw the system they have in China where they monitor every EV real time, pretty amazing.

 

[MichaelL]

If they get this information on me they will find that I ride around in circles in many different cities.

 

[Koolau]

I know Ive said it before (and I'll say it again). See my tag line - but YMMV.

 

[donheff]

All this stuff involves tradeoffs. I regularly use bike share for short trips across town and in the neighborhood. I suspect the odds of being stalked by bike share or scooter hackers is pretty small. I have occasionally posted here or on Facebook that I am traveling. That is a bigger risk.