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Why Is Location Data No Longer Private?
- flatfilefan 8y agoTL;DR anyone?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- the_seraphim 8y agoAll the mobile carriers in the US are shit at keeping your data secure, real time data has been leaked on one hand, comcast leaked home addresses and wifi router login details on the other, article is calling out Ajit Pai for trying to repeal 2015 privacy rules amongst said bullshit. and im her in europe basking under the protective blanket of the GDPR (which sounds too similar to the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik for my tastes))
- m-localhost 8y agoGerman Democratic Peoples Republic ;-)
- the_seraphim 8y agooh God, I knew I had heard it somewhere before
- mcrady 8y agoMobile carriers are selling your real time location to anyone willing to pay. The number of nefarious uses for real time location is immense And meanwhile, the press is worked up about cambridge analytica accessing your facebook friend network. It seems like someone ought to put a site with real time locations of our senators and congressmen. My guess is that will solve the problem quickly.
- mLuby 8y agoI want to see where lawmakers are spending their time (especially in their off hours). There's probably plenty of fun stuff to discover in the data.
- the_seraphim 8y agoYep, mostly FBI agents waiting to arrest you for felony wiretapping charges
- mcrady 8y agoAre you implying it's illegal to do that? It seems like the whole point of the article is that this is entirely legal. It sounds like congressmen and senators explicitly voted to prevent the FCC from making things like this illegal.
- travmatt 8y agoThat doesn’t mean they won’t carve out exceptions for themselves though. Congress passed laws to allow them to trade on inside information, for example.
- mehrdadn 8y agoThose were repealed, right? https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/04/16/177496734/how-congress-quietly-overhauled-its-insider-trading-law https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/04/16/17749...
- rgbrenner 8y agohere are a few updates after that (in order by date): https://theintercept.com/2015/05/07/congress-argues-cant-investigated-insider-trading/ https://theintercept.com/2015/05/07/congress-argues-cant-inv... https://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/14/congress-stock-trading-conflict-of-interest-rules-238033 https://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/14/congress-stock-tra... https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-truth-about-congress-and-financial-conflicts/2017/10/19/8ea8afd6-b382-11e7-9e58-e6288544af98_story.html?utm_term=.ce8b2ce870cd https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-truth-about-cong...
- just_observing 8y agoPlease use a responsive theme. It matters.
- hedora 8y agoOn iPhone, long press reader view, and click on the option to automatically use it for all sites. Problem solved.
- qrbLPHiKpiux 8y agoHoly shit! I love you!
- sametmax 8y agoOn firefox, click on the paper like icon in the url bar to turn on readability mode
- conradev 8y agoThe thing that scares me the most about the LocationSmart stuff is that I can't think of any workaround besides "don't use cellular data".
- voodootrucker 8y agoIt works as long as your phone is turned on and within range of at least one cell tower. Whether you have data turned on is irrelevant, along with phone type, OS, smart or dumb - This affects all cell users.
- bigiain 8y agoSo what if we had a pool of "shared" 3/4G wifi hotspots with burner SIMs - kind of like bookcrossing - where you use one for a while then send it on to another member - a "sharing economy" of hotspots, "like Uber, but for cellular data". Then you use them with a non-cellular equipped device (iPod Touch?) or perhaps trust airplane mode with Wi-Fi turned on - and use Signal/iMessage/Facetime/whatever... I wonder how hard it'd be to route incoming calls to my phone (as in, the one with a SIM registered in my name) to a vpn-ed non-cellular device? You could probably make a very plausible looking "Gets up, goes to work, stops at a bar on the way home some days, gets back home, goes to sleep." routine while still being connected while you phone is on the desk at work of the coffee table at home. (or perhaps on the Roomba at home, so it still moves around a little...)
- beagle3 8y agoOne of two things: 1) Someone uses it for nefarious purposes, everyone involved gets implicated and investigated (in no small part in an attempt to drive people away from this model), no one wants to use these things anymore. 2) It works reasonably well, becomes a business, and big business provides for a small fee (perhaps free except for watching ads and your location data....) those hotspots and decimate the critical mass needed for this into unusefulness. If you think that's far fetched, this has already happened: consider email - it used to be distributed. There is now a copy of ~90% of emails on a Google/Microsoft server because at least one of the senders/recipients uses a hosted account. You can't really win an infrastructure game against established player using their own infrastructure; And the barrier to entry is so huge it's unlikely you'll be able to set up your own.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- voodootrucker 8y agoGoogling for "phone location ss7" returns some interesting results that may or may not work given some protocol upgrades: http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1275167/skylock-product-description-2013.pdf http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1275167/skylock-produc... https://berlin.ccc.de/~tobias/25c3-locating-mobile-phones.pdf https://berlin.ccc.de/~tobias/25c3-locating-mobile-phones.pd... https://blog.c22.cc/2009/12/28/26c3-sccp-hacking-attacking-ss7-sigtran-applications/ https://blog.c22.cc/2009/12/28/26c3-sccp-hacking-attacking-s... A commercial provider for these services: https://www.pccwglobal.com/en/service-provider/products/mobilexchange/ipx-ip-exchange-network https://www.pccwglobal.com/en/service-provider/products/mobi... Wireshark screenshot of GSM packet with cell site info: https://resources.infosecinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/050416_2212_SS7protocol5.png https://resources.infosecinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/05...
- dannyw 8y agoLocartionSmart isn’t SS7. They get the feeds and triangulation directly from the carrier (they purchase it).
- voodootrucker 8y agoAgreed. I was merely posting this for informational purposes. It looks like anyone can locate anyone if they pay $5000ish to get on an IPX connection to the SS7 network. It also looks like there is a separate community run SS7 testnet. That could be an interesting thing to play around with...
- voodootrucker 8y agoI guess Wyden is a HN reader: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/05/nefarious-actors-may-have-abused-routing-protocol-to-spy-on-us-phone-users/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/05/nefar...
- WillPostForFood 8y agoLove Krebs, and there is an important point here about location privacy, and the scandalous selling of it, but it really gets lost in trying to tie it to net neutrality, which really is largely a separate issue.
- simion314 8y agoNet neutrality has in common with the selling of user data the same theme big company "rights" versus the customers/citizens rights, I don't thing "rights" is the best word there but I can't find other right now.
- rectang 8y agoIt's not tied because of Krebs. It's tied because Ajit Pai's FCC performed selective "deregulation" in the name of repealing "net neutrality" and further entrenched the telecom oligopoly by allowing them to abuse their market dominance in other verticals.
- ryanlol 8y agoWhen Was Location Data Private?
- Maarten88 8y agoWhen you were outside the US.
- bigiain 8y agoAustralia checking in here. Nope. Sorry... We're just as bad as the US.
- scottie_m 8y agoOutside of Five Eyes countries then.
- drdaeman 8y agoKirov^W Russia reporting. You're wrong, tovarishch. Seriously, our mobile telcos have location services as a consumer product providing similar functionality to Google Trusted Contacts but without need for a smartphone. E.g. Megafon has it branded as "Family Radar" - and they can locate other major networks' users, meaning that they all interoperate.
- Maarten88 8y agoSo is EU really the only place left where this intrusion is not happening / allowed? I'm sure EU networks also have this data, but selling it commercially would cause quite a scandal, and certainly is not allowed without opt-in under GDPR.
- pmiller2 8y agoFor all practical purposes, about 35 years ago, unless you were under targeted surveillance.
- 8y ago
- ikeboy 8y agoTrying to imply that this has anything to do with the NN law is incredibly dishonest. The post doesn't explicitly claim it would have prevented this but shifts back and forth between several topics to create a clear implication.
- afpx 8y agoIsn’t the problem more about users of technology blindly agreeing to contracts that very few actually read? In some cases, there are actual breeches that expose private data to misuse, but most location data is obtained from users who quickly scroll through a long EULA without understanding what they’re agreeing to.
- tropdrop 8y agoI would like to hear more from individuals that actually take the time to read every single EULA that gets thrown at them - and what their next course of action is after they do. For some EULAs, it is possible to abstain using the service once you find something egregious in that agreement. I can avoid downloading an app or taking an Uber. But when it comes to internet service providers - what are your options? Okay, you read through Comcast's EULA and found something alarming. So your next option is to... read AT&T's EULA and also be alarmed? Is the solution to forgo any cell/internet service?
- herbst 8y agoDon't get me wrong but the issue is the monopolistic market. I trust my Internet provider and have no issue with their ToS (which I read) however I can choose from 10+ providers. I also quote the Facebook TOS when people wonder why I am not there. Or pay more for my emailing to not have to deal with mailchimps ToS. IMO there is a market for more privacy oriented people. And some companies know and use that fact.
- takluyver 8y agoI know someone who used to read most Ts&Cs when signing up for services. It wasn't so much about the possibility of declining, but more about knowing what you're getting into. There's also an argument that if you make yourself do this, you end up with fewer accounts that you don't really need. Even if you do try to read them, they're generally written in vague legalese that I assume means "we can do whatever we like, and you have no right to complain". And if they haven't allowed something they later want to do, you'll get an email saying that they're "clarifying" their terms and conditions, and if you don't like it, you can stop using the service.
- exabrial 8y agoBecause Facebook and Google have been guided by the principal: if it's not illegal, it's ethical. Just take a look at the language in UIs lately, it's gotten passive aggressive; instead of a polite "No thanks", our choices are now: "Maybe later". I thought 'no means no'? Silicon valley had a serious ethics problem; as much as they try to ride the white horse on 'I don't want Google partnering with the DOD", watch their eyes light up when you give them access to a middle class single mom's phone with a click through EULA.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Just take a look at the language in UIs lately, it's gotten passive aggressive; instead of a polite "No thanks", our choices are now: "Maybe later". Since that's how the “No, thanks” option was usually treated in the past, it's just truth-in-UI.
- solarkraft 8y agoNot only "maybe later", no-buttons like "Instead of subscribing to this free and great newsletter I would like to continue my life uninformed and at a disadvantage for now (but I will definitely have a look later)" in in-page popups with that as the only way to close the modal have recently caught on. These things make me despise the website instantly and make me wish for a "fuck off"-button.
- makecheck 8y agoSuch a pet peeve of mine, weasel-worded buttons. I remember the first time something gave me the option to “Archive” a thing but not “Delete” it...I stopped using the service after that. Also, usually their least favorite options do not even look like options (random non-button-like text off to the side or whatever). Another atrocity is an alert with a “don’t ask again” check box, especially in something that is unnecessarily-modal (read: developer was lazy). Pro tip: if you think the user won’t want to see your message ever again then you need to redesign your system to keep the message from appearing even the first time.
- 8y ago
- codedokode 8y agoI might be wrong, but LocationSmart wouldn't be able to work under GDPR. So the correct title should be "Location data is no longer private in non-GDPR countries".
- djsumdog 8y agoThe article talks about Ajit Pai and how he was promoted by Trump. This is a bit misleading as Pai was appointed originally by Obama and served in high level roles in the FCC, although Trump did place him in his current position.
- telchar 8y agoThe FCC has to have two opposition party commissioners. If it weren't Pai it would be someone else from the party sound the same things. Everything Pai is doing is 100% on the Republicans. If they were opposed they could easily stop him.
- Volt 8y ago>The article talks about Ajit Pai and how he was promoted by Trump >Trump did place him in his current position So what's the misleading part?
- himom 8y agoPeople must demand privacy protections similar to HIPAA for their digital lives. And to have ownership over location and contact details. If not, the corporate stalking and creepy targeting will continue.
- mcovey 8y agoI spent a while not carrying a phone with me at all. It was kind of a pain. I went back to carrying the dumbphone, turned off. I turn it on during my breaks to check if I missed anything.