What's the Big Deal if Your Cell Phone Learns Stuff About You?

My phone pretty much lives on my desk at home, next to my computer. Its main function is to get the code for two-factor authentication. I otherwise almost never use it and I don't take it around with me. So I am unfamiliar with this wonderful tracking feature.
 
Obviously, I never said I believed anything one way or the other. I did ask for concrete examples of harm that can come to you if tech companies know your demographics.

If tech companies know your demographics the government could demand that they turn over that information and then use it against you. Any laws against such things could be changed or ignored.

"Never happen" or "Far-fetched," you say. Well, my friends father participated in the 1940 Census. Information was supposed to be private. Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued executive order 9066 and in 1942 my friend's father, a US Citizen, was thrown in a concentration camp along with others in his household. He was Japanese-American. The Census information was used to locate the Japanese-Americans.

Better that the information is not out there as it can be used in ways one may not expect in the future.
 
Obviously, I never said I believed anything one way or the other. I did ask for concrete examples of harm that can come to you if tech companies know your demographics.

Here ya go:

Fitbit revealed secret military outposts and outlines, and even the individual soldiers at the bases by showing where people were exercising.

I don't know if anyone died from it, but enemy combatants could have used it to range in targeting for attacks.

https://www.thevoid.uk/void-post/fitbit-exposes-secret-bases-in-antarctica/#:~:text=FitBit%20Exposes%20Secret%20Bases%20In%20Antarctica%2017%20June,how%20data%20collection%20can%20lead%20to%20unintended%20consequences.
 
My phone pretty much lives on my desk at home, next to my computer. Its main function is to get the code for two-factor authentication. I otherwise almost never use it and I don't take it around with me. So I am unfamiliar with this wonderful tracking feature.
Officially the feature is called google location services. This link explains in a very general way how it works. All phone iOS have a similar feature, and it's controllable by the end user.
https://policies.google.com/technologies/location-data?hl=en-US

There is a way to turn it off, but an app that requires your location to function will ask permission to turn it on. You can do this always, or just when using the app. So there is good control over the feature.

If you are driving with google maps on your display, then it needs location services to track you on the route, and bring up other information (like traffic info). The link above explains what they do with your data. There's always more to the story, though...

Another result of this feature could be that your photos have location data in the EXIF, if you haven't disabled it.

As with all tech, there is usefulness for the end user, and possible exploitation. There have been recent stories about abuses like this one: https://9to5mac.com/2022/05/02/airtag-alert-disney-world/

As big tech implements features, the potential for abuse grows and the company implements additional safeguards for privacy protection. As an end user the tendency is towards complacency, so we need to always be alert and consider legitimate reports about problems.
 
Then there are the apps that collection information including location without asking permission. Just recently I read of one or more apps doing that, that were kicked out of the app stores (thankfully) once some researcher proved they were doing this.

Unfortunately I cannot recall the app(s) as it meant nothing to me since I didn't have it.
 
By the way it's not just your phone that can track you.

I interviewed at a company and they track cars, since newer cars in the past 20 years give off all sorts of electronic information without any user intervention.

There are readers placed along major roads to pick up auto id's and so it can track individual vehicles.
 
I think that the value (or lack thereof) of privacy is cultural. Personally I am, and was brought up in, a "WASP" culture; my family and my people value privacy a great deal. This seems not to be true of all people and cultures.

To us, lack of privacy objectifies and degrades one, and puts one in the "less than human" category. So there's a concrete example of harmful things that can result from lack of respect for one's privacy.

For example, it's one thing if I am asked and volunteer to an invasion of privacy (such as stripping off my clothing); it's another if my privacy is wrenched from me without my consent ("Go to it, boys! Tear all her clothing off until she is naked as a jaybird.") This is also true for lesser violations of privacy, such as wresting personal information from someone without their consent.

I could go on, but I think that's probably unnecessary.


I'm with W2R on this, except I'm not of the WASP culture. I am a private person. I don't post on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. I'm not comfortable with my name, or my life being out there. I don't really have a reason besides that I am a private person. I don't need to justify that to anyone.

You folks here on ER.org probably know more about me than most other people because I'm comfortable here. It's the only place where I can talk about finances. If you tried you could probably figure out my identity. And my shoe purchases and my laundry equipment and which Arby's I bought that Waygu burger from.

I know that everything I post, search or read online is tracked, saved, stored and sold. Outside of not using the internet I don't think I can prevent that. It's part of our state of reality.
 
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By the way it's not just your phone that can track you.

I interviewed at a company and they track cars, since newer cars in the past 20 years give off all sorts of electronic information without any user intervention.

There are readers placed along major roads to pick up auto id's and so it can track individual vehicles.

These two statements are likely true, but unrelated. For example, as far as I know, there are not trackers along major roads that pick up all sorts of electronic information from your vehicle. The car manufacturers, through connections like GM's OnStar, Hyundai's BlueLink (I'm sure there are others) do collect data electronically. But roadside sensors--I don't think so.

As to "readers placed along major roads to pick up auto id's" I presume Sunset is referring to automatic license plate readers and/or automated radar systems that take photos of license plates.
 
From Canada: ‘A Mass Invasion of Privacy’ but No Penalties for Tim Hortons
A scathing report by four privacy commissioners found that the coffee and doughnut chain collected data on customers’ daily lives.

"The vector for Tim Hortons’ large-scale snooping, according to the report, was its mobile phone app, which was downloaded 10 million times in the three years following its introduction in 2017. At first, the app had typical retail functions involving payment, loyalty points and placing orders.
But the privacy commissioners found that in 2019, Tim Hortons slipped in a new feature. With the help of Radar, a geolocation software company based in the United States, it turned the GPS systems in customers’ phones into a corporate snooping tool"
 
Ve know where you worship, what religion you are,, who your friends are, what you buy, who you associate with, what clubs you belong to, where you go, your political alliances. 1938 Germany would’ve paid good money for "ze informations" we all now give away each day for free.
 
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My phone pretty much lives on my desk at home, next to my computer. Its main function is to get the code for two-factor authentication. I otherwise almost never use it and I don't take it around with me. So I am unfamiliar with this wonderful tracking feature.

When driving, using Maps in particular, it can be quite helpful. It will let you know if there is traffic on the route, suggest alternatives (or tell you, nope this is as good as it gets). It will alert you to speed traps, as it "knows" from other cars doing the same thing - it can tell they all slowed down all of a sudden on a highway, and will ask some of them to say y/n is that a trap.

It knows exactly where you are, what lane you are in even. It sends a monthly email "hey look where you went!" - or, where your phone went.

Sure, you can turn off location or have it only on when Maps are active. I turn off location on all apps except for maps, uber, etc., and even then enable them only when the app is in use.
 
Check out this site. It gives links to discover what Google knows about you including your daily travel.

https://medium.com/productivity-in-...-you-what-google-knows-about-you-f39b8af9decc.

Disclaimer: Despite this, I'm still a huge Google fan. (and as WASPY as they come)
Thanks for posting this. I just went into my Google account, found Web and App activity and turned on Auto Delete activity over 3 months old. This is supposed to erase all my Google searches, web site activity, news feed preference etc. that is older than 3 months and will continue to do so every day moving forward.

I also went into Chrome and erased cookies and browsing history.

Going forward it should be fun to see what ads show up, what news feed subjects show up based on my fresh searches and visits to web sites.
 
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My last two projects at Megacorp (now 6 years ago) were working on products used to store the data harvested from all sorts of inputs. Phones. Traffic cams. License Plate Readers (LPRs). Military (now Police) surveillance systems. Social Media. If it was digital, my product stored it, processed it for metadata ("data about the data") and then indexed the metadata. Exabytes of it. It's been 6 years since so it's probably orders of magnitude beyond that now.

Non-disclosure/confidentiality agreements are still in place under threat of clawing back my severance pay... (but then you can't get blood out of a turnip). There were several times after reviewing big brother like use cases for the product that I felt like I needed to take a shower after.


Add in the modern AI filters that have become available since I left MegaCorp and SkyNet becomes another future-scifi-becomes-todays-reality. When the CEO was asked if AI and these big-brother enabling products were ethical, her response was "if we don't build it somebody else will".



The TL/DR version: futuristic TV shows like Person of Interest and some aspects (omit the psychic aspects) of Minority Report are not fiction.


Some short examples of what is common place today:
* Its not just what Google or few other big name monitors from your device and web history. Install a browser add-on that shows the number of ad-trackers on a given webpage. (This e-r.org page I'm typing on now currently shows 41 different trackers). Law enforcement doesn't need to get a search warrant to obtain the data from Google, they can buy parts from any of these 3rd party trackers and glue it back together.
* People have been subject to police investigation because their phone data showed they were in the general vicinity of a crime scene. Research "geofence search warrant"

* A large metropolitan police department records all traffic cams and LPR data then keeps it on-line (immediately) accessible for 7 YEARS, after which it is moved to slower off-line storage such as tape or other archives. The metadata for each capture was larger than the image capture itself... date, time, location, plate data, color, driver description, passenger description... if it could be gleaned from a series of photos it was cataloged. When I say series of photos its not just 1 camera in one location. Data from multiple cameras from multiple intersections along the route the vehicle took are merged together.
* Existing stored data can be re-scanned for new keywords of interest, automatically, as frequently as you want. Yesterday's pancake syrup is tomorrows terrorist hate speech.

* voice data is converted to text (think youtube closed caption data, but government grade) and indexed for future search.
*A former friend of mine has an Amazon Alexa in their kitchen. You say "Alexa, X" and the device lights up and responds. However, it doesn't just activate on the word "Alexa". We were having a dinner conversation when I mentioned a now politically incorrect restaurant name (Sam_os) and the Alexa activated. We repeated the word a couple of times and the device triggered multiple times... Its listening ALL THE TIME.
* Google "zuckerburg laptop" (head of facebook) and there are images that he puts tape over the laptop camera... https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/...laptop-camera-you-should-consider-it-too.html
* MegaCorp bought the research project software that was being used by one of the secretive gov agencies to track terrorists and commercialized it for use by local police departments. I got a demo of it as part of a job interview... the capabilities TV show Person of Interest is available for purchase today.
* new cars have the more tech than your phone... so leaving your phone home doesn't do any good.

To get back to the specific question use case of your phone: It has robust sensor suite built in... GPS (rate of change in location = speed traveled), cameras, microphones, accelerometer, gyroscope, magentometer, ambient light sensors, and biometric sensors. LiDAR (room mapping) is on some tablets and expect to appear in iPhones. Are you really comfy with all of that data being accumulated?


I could go on but this is too long already. Extrapolate the current societal "I'm right and you're evil" out another 10 years or so and layer in a social credit score. To paraphrase Miranda: "Anything you say can be used against you".
 
Thank you, Spock, for your response. You gave an informative answer with concrete examples of possible abuses of data gathering from phones.

Other than covering up our laptop cameras what other countermeasures do you recommend?

BTW, I've been watching Person of Interest, am through season 4, and consider it mostly plausible except for the speed at which The Machine can stitch together various data feeds into a narrative.
 
My last two projects at Megacorp (now 6 years ago) were working on products used to store the data harvested from all sorts of inputs. Phones. Traffic cams. License Plate Readers (LPRs). Military (now Police) surveillance systems. Social Media. If it was digital, my product stored it, processed it for metadata ("data about the data") and then indexed the metadata. Exabytes of it. It's been 6 years since so it's probably orders of magnitude beyond that now.

Its a big and growing industry to market and sell information collected from smart phones, telematics, etc. Regulatory bodies continue to struggle with keeping up with evolving technology and the type of data that's being used against/for consumers.
 
Extrapolate the current societal "I'm right and you're evil" out another 10 years or so and layer in a social credit score.

Wow. I sort of knew all this, but yours was a stark reminder. One I think we all need.

Add in large dictator-style mob rallies chanting their glorious leader's slogans and for death to their opponents, and I'm glad I've already lived most of my life. I hope the next few generations figure out how to deal with this collision of technology and base human instincts.
 
yesterday's pancake syrup is tomorrows terrorist hate speech.

A former friend of mine has an amazon alexa in their kitchen. You say "alexa, x" and the device lights up and responds. However, it doesn't just activate on the word "alexa". We were having a dinner conversation when i mentioned a now politically incorrect restaurant name (sam_os) and the alexa activated. We repeated the word a couple of times and the device triggered multiple times... Its listening all the time.

Alexa Wiretap.jpg
 
*A former friend of mine has an Amazon Alexa in their kitchen. You say "Alexa, X" and the device lights up and responds. However, it doesn't just activate on the word "Alexa". We were having a dinner conversation when I mentioned a now politically incorrect restaurant name (Sam_os) and the Alexa activated. We repeated the word a couple of times and the device triggered multiple times... Its listening ALL THE TIME.
Of course it is, it has to "listen" to every word you say to pick up when you say "hey Alexa" - the same with every other voice assistant device. The question is what does it do with everything it hears? Even if it doesn't retain everything you say today, there's nothing to stop them from changing their data mining practices at any time. At one time Google wasn't as intrusive as they are today, but it's hard to keep growing without more and more personal data to sell. It's what happens with your data downstream, second and third parties, that's the major concern...

The data miners love people like the OP, free access to anything and everything they want to sell. Once they sell it to a second party, they don’t have any idea who else downstream gets your personal info.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccu...he-time-heres-how-to-stop-it/?sh=bb217c35e2d2
 
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These two statements are likely true, but unrelated. For example, as far as I know, there are not trackers along major roads that pick up all sorts of electronic information from your vehicle. The car manufacturers, through connections like GM's OnStar, Hyundai's BlueLink (I'm sure there are others) do collect data electronically. But roadside sensors--I don't think so.

As to "readers placed along major roads to pick up auto id's" I presume Sunset is referring to automatic license plate readers and/or automated radar systems that take photos of license plates.

It is true. I interviewed there to work on the software.

They do put receivers along the sides of highways, so they can pick up all sorts of transmissions given off the by auto's passing by.
It's not based on license plates readers.
One of the services they offer to City's , Gov't is highway traffic flow.

I was shown it working in the USA and Canada on lots of highways.
I thought it was strange they claimed to me it was being sold for monitoring traffic flow, as that seemed too obviously limiting.

I told them, they should market this to the FBI, etc as I could see it would be great for tracking a person without installing anything on the vehicle (avoid an illegal search claim).

Can track the auto's even if criminals leave their phones at home to go commit crime :cool:
 
That's one thing to like about my old truck. No radio transmitters!
 
....

Other than covering up our laptop cameras what other countermeasures do you recommend?

...
Using the internet and todays wrappered bloatware tech is kinda like having sex with somebody with multiple STDs.... short of only using burner phones your going to catch something eventually.

Some condom basics:
* use a more private browser ex. DuckDuckGo (which was in the news a couple of weeks ago for intentionally leaving a backdoor open for Microsoft). My former employer required us to use it when doing patent searches (Google will front run your research and file their own patent).
* use VPNs
* "If it's free, you are the product being sold"
* Use Linux based systems so you have access to turn off things (you either have to be a geek or are willing to buy one lunch to disable things for you)... next step is trying to go down the Dark Web rabbit hole.
* Most of the rest are just making it harder but the data can still be obtained in other ways: Turn off Location services on your phone unless using a Nav app. Turn off Wifi and bluetooth when not at home, better yet just leave the phone home... they'll leave a message. Go full Luddite. etc.
There is a looooooong list of companies that you can pester to have your info deleted... sort of like doing a credit freeze.
 
I used to be pretty cavalier about this. Then about a year ago, I turned off Web & App Activity as well as Location History in Google's data and privacy settings. I also deleted all my historical data. Google allows you to use their services without tracking everything you do. But the vast majority of people either don't know, or don't take the time to turn it off. And of course, some want it on...

While all Google services still work for me, they are not nearly as useful. For example, Google Maps no longer suggests places I regularly navigate to, like my home. And my Google Now newsfeed is full of celebrity gossip and other generic junk I would never read.

I also suspect it's working because ads I see when browsing are completely unrelated to me, like women's cosmetic products. Also, email confirmations from airlines no longer result in an automatic calendar appointment. And of course, when I go to Google Takeout to download or delete my data, there is nothing there. In the past I could see my activity in all it's gory detail.

The one setting I left 'on' is YouTube History. I use YouTube a lot. It's 90% of my TV viewing. So I like having "Recommended" videos that are in-sync with my interests and other YouTube channel subscriptions. That's how I discover interesting new content beyond my current subscriptions. YouTube knows my interests extremely well.

I know Google still has a lot of my personal data, like my CC numbers in Google Pay, Contacts, Calendar, and a copy of every digital photo I've ever taken. To name a few. But with all the tracking turned off, I feel a little less like "The Product."

At the same time, I also turned off data tracking in the Alexa app. Deactivated my Facebook account. Deleted unneeded apps on my phone. And reviewed all permissions on the apps I kept. Hopefully I'm a troublesome target.
 
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