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Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
- shaki-dora 8y agoThe production value of these lavish spreads by the New York Times is impressive.
- addedlovely 8y agoAgree, that's some lovely parallax that normally stutters for me on other sites / implementations.
- 52-6F-62 8y agoIIRC Mike Bostock used to work for them and while there was responsible for D3js and more. They've taken the smart path in publishing and took the transition to digital seriously. https://bost.ocks.org/mike/ https://bost.ocks.org/mike/
- s369610 8y agohelps if your graphics editor also develops sveltejs, ractivejs and rollup
- rollulus 8y agoI like it how iOS displays this arrow when location services are or were used, and how one can see in "Privacy -> Location Services" a brief history of which app did what, and enable or disable location access at all per app.
- izacus 8y agoThat does nothing for IP based geo location though. Every rest request to modern cloud services gets geotagged and those tags can be surprisingly accurate in populated areas for people that use wifi.
- mariusmg 8y ago>That does nothing for IP based geo location though Of course, since ip "geolocation" is just ip data + location agregatted from ISPs. How can the OS maker "fight" this ?
- esc861 8y agoAndroid requires apps request location permissions in order to access Wi-Fi IP info.
- SalimoS 8y agoHe was talking about the server knowing your ip not your application requestion WiFi ip info
- gbear605 8y agoAren’t they able to get the ip just by connecting to any server?
- esc861 8y agoYes, although they won't get the whole Wi-Fi scan list, which means no fine grained triangulation, and also no BSSID, but it's definitely imperfect. It's also very frustrating if you are using the Wi-Fi APIs for legitimate purposes. Having to explain to a user why you need location permissions in order to set up a Wi-Fi peripheral isn't easy.
- izacus 8y agoThat doesn't matter at all if your request is being location stamped because it came from a Starbucks / your home WiFi IP.
- izacus 8y agoBy introducing VPN I guess (I think Google offers one on their Fi service) - I don't seen any other solution, especially since telcos sell your data as well. It's just worth noting that flipping a switch in your OS might not do much in terms of location tracking.
- devit 8y agoWhy is selling this data not illegal and harshly prosecuted? You'd expect to find this data being stolen by trojans and sold for bitcoin by anonymous actors on blackhat sites, not by registered companies with offices and employees.
- pjc50 8y agoIt hasn't yet been used to expose a congressman? The US lacks GDPR-style general privacy law, but there is a very specific one for video rental records passed specifically as a result of exposure of Robert Bork: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act
- shaki-dora 8y agoA more generous interpretation, that does not require buying into the generic, unactionable cynicism that everyone is corrupt, is simply that new laws require neat, easily comprehensible and emotional stories to be enacted. As examples I would cite federal hate crime legislation, enacted after a particularly abhorrent lynching of a gay teenager IIRC. Or the current change of approach to Saudi Arabia’s ruling sadists: of course their industrial slaughter and engineered starvation of children in Yemen is the far larger crime, but the smoking bone saw of Istanbul just grips us far more viscerally.
- pjc50 8y ago> the smoking bone saw of Istanbul just grips us far more viscerally. This is a brilliant, horrifying, piece of phrasing.
- shaki-dora 8y agoTo give credit where it's rarely due, I believe I stole that particular turn-of-phrase from Lindsey Graham.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- fouc 8y agoThat reminded me to check my privacy > location services settings and look for any apps that have "Always" and change them to "While Using" only
- llampx 8y agoI wish there was something similar on Android. I used to keep my Location services off but needed to switch it on for Google Maps and HERE maps so I got lazy and leave it always on. Its shameful that Android 2.3 let you have more control of your phone than Android 8.1.
- Iolaum 8y agoNot exactly android but if you buy a phone supported by LineageOS then you have that functionality from privacy guard. You can set various app permissions to always ask as well as other things such as (dis)allow an app to start at boot. As a bonus you can be confident those settings will remain the same after updates ;)
- velosol 8y agoYou can use Automate or other apps to enable/disable Location only when you have a specified app in the foreground. It's a bit clunky because it relies on enabling GPS each time you bring the app up (which also means you get a 'Can Google keep all your location data all the time?' prompt or two). It also relies on Accessibility services which might go away or be more heavily curtailed in the future.
- bad_user 8y agoiOS now forcing "While Using" option on all apps is the greatest thing ever. Before this, some apps where forcing the "Always" option on users. Uber and Waze come to mind. iOS also gives you a warning from time to time about apps using your location in the background. I think iOS right now has the best location management. --- People are surprised when seeing the Activity section in Google's account details, then freak out about Google tracking their location. At the very least Google is being transparent about it and gives you the option to turn that shit off. Also I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Google Maps now remembers searches you've made without location history or app activity tracking being active. This wasn't the case about a year ago, when I last tried it, a dark pattern of sorts. They probably changed the behavior being forced by the GDPR or something similar. So if you haven't done so, turn off "Location History" in your Google account: https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols (I turn everything off and I don't see a difference in usability) --- On the article, I love the maps and the animations. Visualization is the best way to make people understand the threat. On GDPR, I've seen people complaining about the high cost for implementing it, however for privacy it is a godsend.
- darren_ 8y ago> Also I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Google Maps now remembers searches you've made without location history or app activity tracking being active. This wasn't the case about a year ago, when I last tried it, a dark pattern of sorts. They probably changed the behavior being forced by the GDPR or something similar. Location history wasn't ever needed for remembering searches, FWIW.
- amaccuish 8y ago> Location history wasn't ever needed for remembering searches It absolutely was. When I tapped on the search bar, there were no results and it told me to turn on location history.
- wendigo 8y agoNonetheless, I actually don’t enjoy seeing my search history accumulate on my device. Half of my searches are just spell checks anyway, the next 40% are just wikipedia shortcuts. Probably less than one in ten searches are genuine queries, to scour for a real result. The number is small enough that I pretty much can directly remember the thing I was thinking about, and why I searched for it. I don’t even want my device saving my recent searches.
- askaboutit 8y agoIt’s going to take serious amounts of data leaking before something is done to combat this.
- vahji 8y agoThey don't, because I have an iPhone.
- gamesbrainiac 8y agoI keep Location Services on iOS and GPS off at all times, unless I really need them. Even on iOS, I make sure that the only app that can use it is google maps. This works great for privacy, but I have issues with compass calibration.
- code4tee 8y ago“We’re not doing anything not disclosed in our terms of service.” is rapidly becoming a no longer acceptable answer to consumers. Don’t tell me a weather app needs to know my location all the time to give me the best weather info then sell my location to the highest bidder. Don’t tell me that buried in some 20 pages of leagalese in your Ts&Cs is some vague references that make this “legal.”
- random878 8y agoI would respectfully disagree. It is not acceptable to roughly the amount of people (and I include myself) who make a deliberate and self conscious decision to oppose it. This is a small, small group. I have a phone with Replicant OS, which puts me within a niche group of an already niche group (those willing to install alternative OS and strip Google on their phone). In a wider computing sense - what percentage of HN use GNU/Linux? Of them, who runs as fully Free OS? What percentage of them are rocking a 12y.o. librebooted thinkpad? The general public are apathetic at best. Contrary to popular opinion, people are not ignorant to the behaviour of tech giants - they just don't care enough to stop. Clearly, it is still an acceptable answer to consumers. It's like claiming that people don't go vegetarian or vegan because they aren't aware of the suffering. Of course they are aware. It's just easier to keep eating hamburgers and live with the cognitive dissonance. It's the same with these apps.
- javajosh 8y agoHoly cow, you are using a phone without GPS? https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/ReplicantStatus https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Replica...
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoEveryone has their own use case. But, yeah, I am pretty sure I'd just go back to a feature phone if I couldn't have GPS.
- random878 8y agoI previously used a Galaxy S3 with Replicant OS. I also have a Sony phone with Lineage OS (with no Google). I now use a dumbphone as I don't particularly like smartphones. This decision is less driven by security and more a desire to ringfence time away from tech. Personally, I was never bothered by the lack of GPS. I'm fine with offline maps. I have a satnav in the car which is the only time I really need minute-by-minute navigation. I found the lack of WiFi to be a bigger issue. Mostly as I like podcasts. There is/was an option to use a WiFi adapter which works well if you plan in advance (i.e. use it when downloading a bunch of apps when setting up, or downloading a bunch of podcasts in one go). Replicant OS is a really neat project, and they deserve some praise.
- stabbles 8y agoAny tips for avoiding location sharing on Android?
- ForHackernews 8y agoFlash your device with a custom ROM that supports location spoofing?
- bootaccount 8y agoyou can start with getting NetGuard - a no-root firewall that can be used to prevent apps from connecting to unnecessary domains. It's from the same developer who made xPrivacy. If you can achieve root, you will have much greater controls over privacy. Unfortunately, it seems cellphone manufacturers are moving away from giving users control over their devices.
- cauldron 8y agoI believe as long as you connect to WIFIs that are already geolocated by other people's phones, you are in. Uncloaked WIFI probes also can expose you to stalker routers.
- Tsubasachan 8y agoDisable WiFi scanning and Bluetooth scanning. Search for "scan" in settings.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- shubb 8y agoAnyone know where to get the kind of dataset that the times has?
- shaki-dora 8y agoIf you use Google Maps to share your location with friends, you can find an URL (using the browser’s devtools) that is stable and gives you location data in JSON.
- throw2016 8y agoHere is an idea for online advertising. Use IP and text based contextual targeting. No stalking required. Stalking everyone and building increasingly creepy online profiles to target better is an abuse of basic human privacy, if you stop to think about it, and completely unethical and takes your hurtling down the path to a surveillance society. The only reason its even possible because of the lacuna in a new space and laws catching up, and when they do, it won't be possible. The idea that making money makes everything ok is a primitive and fundamentally antisocial ideology. And if everyone thought like that would end civilization as we know it.
- pookieinc 8y agoWhat is the correct way to regulate this? The problem is that, from small business to mammoth company, there is no codified, unified, agreed upon manifesto when it comes to handling data at any level. A "Constitution" of sorts that explains the rights and / or wrongs of the data usage of the average user. Somewhere where a user can look at a document, see which company falls where on the spectrum, decide if they are comfortable with the sharing of that, and actively signs off on it. As an addendum, it's also important to think, while my for example, email data might be shared, it will enable certain benefits that I sign off on like Google providing me flight details, etc., but it comes at what expense. You'd get a wide spectrum of those who couldn't care less to those who are tin-foiled, but no matter where you fall on this spectrum, you'd at least know which software does what. If that manifesto-like document is broken, consequences would be maintained.
- Vinnl 8y agoI think there's a lot to say for the EU's approach: the societal benefits of location-based tracking (more targeted and hence relevant advertising, for example, or apps that are free to use) is not considered to outweigh the societal downsides (e.g. undermining democracy), so it's simply not allowed at all unless the user explicitly and unambiguously agrees with their data being used for that purpose.
- makecheck 8y agoThe way to do it is to push for new data formats where the inherent value of even “leaked” information is going to be limited by the format (e.g. expires in some form, and/or must always be combined with some new recently-refreshes data to be considered valid). Unfortunately, something of that magnitude in this age would probably require the cooperation of large entities like Google and Facebook. Guess who profits from the current leaky model. Honestly, Apple may be just about the only one capable of shifting the tide. They’re big, they claim a privacy focus, and they’ve delivered some (e.g. Apple Pay, iMessage). If they could come up with more secure technological replacements for the things that are currently leaked by apps, we might have a chance. The “one time card” approach of Apple Pay seems like the basis for such a system. For example: stop giving apps “my location” tied specifically to me, instead give them “location of unspecified user” where that token goes away after one app transaction.
- matty_makes 8y agoSomeone should create an app that translates a companies T&C into layman terms with simple stuff like "they track your location", "sell your usage data", etc. Just need a team of lawyers to interpret them, and a nice web site. Call it something like AppSideEffects.com "Things that may be harmful when using these apps/web sites"
- lost_vegetable 8y agoTerms Of Service; Didn't Read is very close to what you're looking for. https://tosdr.org https://tosdr.org
- Vinnl 8y agoAnd more people who contribute reviews are always needed: https://edit.tosdr.org https://edit.tosdr.org (tool in beta, but functional)
- eximius 8y agoThink bigger: companies should be required to present their terms in plain English. Not all things need lawyers.
- matt4077 8y agoThat doesn't make much senser. As soon as you wrtite a legal document in "plain English", whatever that may mean, you would find out how bad plain language is at capturing the endless nuances of actual life that need to be captured in contractual language. I also don't actually find the current language of TOS prohibitively obfuscated, even though English isn't even my first language. The trouble is length far more than phrasing. What could possibly work is to codify certain recurring segments, i. e. specify them once in a (complicated) law, then represent them in an understandable format, such as a visualisation. The "Nutritional Informations" come to mind. Alternatively, a certification scheme grading different levels of data protection could work, such as it is currently used for organic food. Or, you know, just outlaw the stuff that no sane person would ever accept unless forced to by the market converging on one, very low, standard.
- Vinnl 8y ago> On Fysical’s map, a bright red box near the Capitol steps indicated the general location of President Trump and those around him, cellphones pinging away. My main worry is that these practices allow many people to doxx and subsequently bribe journalists, lawyers, politicians, etc. This feels like a judicial security hole. I wonder if something like responsible disclosure for software security issues could help, and what the moral issues are with that: doxx the people in charge of the laws, then contact them to say that you will make public how you obtained their personal data in <x time>, so they better make sure that the judicial hole is plugged before that time.
- kkarakk 8y agoi quite like when apps use my location info to do unique things like recommend places in the vicinity that are good(foursquare) or give me specific filters for a location(snapchat) phones should obfuscate the location provided in some way so that users can take advantage of location services without continuously sharing my movement to the backend
- afpx 8y agoHedge funds have been using location data to ‘predict’ corporate earnings for at least 5 years, that I know of. There’s also speculation that they use the data to identify locations of VIPs and where they’re going (by clustering activities of the VIP’s entourage). It’s unfortunate that news organizations as reputable and prominent as the NYT only get on these stories so late in the game. This information would have been more useful to the public back in 2013. What I don’t understand is why these types of activities by hedge funds aren’t considered insider trading.
- kasey_junk 8y agoBecause the hedge funds are by definition not insiders? They are literally not using non-public corporate data at all. Insider trading laws don’t exist to make sure there isn’t information assymetry, the market is all about that assymetry. Insider trading laws are about insiders stealing from other shareholders.
- afpx 8y agoWell, it is non-public data. I once spoke with a lawyer to see if I could legally use location data to do the same thing (for instance, it’s easy to correlate changes in activity at certain retailers with quarterly earnings), and I was told it’s risky.
- mentat 8y agoIt is not true in the United States, other countries differ: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-03/insider-trading-in-the-potato-trade https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-03/inside...
- froindt 8y agoNon-public and insider are two different concepts. I could send a satellite to space, take pictures of parking lots, count cars, and it'd be a pretty decent indicator to the relative success of a retailer. Add some other signals into the model and it'd probably be good. I don't need to give the public access to my satellite images. But if I wanted to make a subscription service for 100k/month, I could. It would be non-public, but not insider.
- djhworld 8y agoJust looking at location settings on my android phone, it says Google Play Services queried my location recently But on looking in the settings for Google Play Services there's no option to disable the Location permission in the permission settings, which means location is permanently on (if you keep the location sensors on)
- mlthoughts2018 8y agoThis seems hilariously sanctimonious and hypocritical from NYT. For example, consider some of the navel-gazing bullshit projects they spend time on: - https://investors.nytco.com/press/press-releases/press-release-details/2018/The-New-York-Times-Advertising--Marketing-Solutions-Group-Introduces-nytDEMO-A-Cross-Functional-Team-Focused-on-Bringing-Insights-and-Data-Solutions-to-Brands/default.aspx https://investors.nytco.com/press/press-releases/press-relea... Particular “Project Feels” - https://digiday.com/media/project-feels-usa-today-espn-new-york-times-targeting-ads-mood/ https://digiday.com/media/project-feels-usa-today-espn-new-y...
- lifeisstillgood 8y agoi want my location history - for me. i just don't want it sold to third parties. if google will store it foe me and map my walks etc, great- but i don't want them to sell it or even use it much. and i don't think that's a lot to ask. want me to pay for the 50cents storage costs ? sure.
- 20938ny9 8y agoYou're the product. If you want your location history, you should buy an inexpensive GPS unit and manually dump it onto your computer periodically. Why would you upload something into the cloud or allow some company to manage it for you and expect privacy in this day?
- bigpicture 8y agoThe next thing I want Apple to do: If an app will request location services, it must: 1. Have a specific publicly available URL that contains all "location data" terms, conditions, and privacy information. 2. Monitor that URL and reset the permission dialog if the URL ever changes. 3. Immediately disable location services for that app if the URL disappears.
- growlist 8y agoAny gap in the market for a privacy phone? i.e. Android customised to block all telemetry by default.
- berns 8y agoThe original title was much better: Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They’re Not Keeping It Secret.
- beau 8y agoWhy do Apple and Google get a pass here? Who knows what apps are doing with your photos and contacts. Apple doesn't. Facebook was grilled for not aggressively shutting down an app that sold much less sensitive information.
- bilbo0s 8y agoFB didn't explicitly give you the ability to shut the offending app down.
- ja1215 8y agoFreakonomics did an episode not too long ago with the new CEO of Ford. The guy was practically salivating at the mouth about all the data new vehicles will be collecting and how Ford could potentially monetize it all. Scary times ahead.
- wesd 8y agoI submitted that article on HN but it didn't get any attraction. It seems Ford CEO thinks they can collect and monetize drivers data: -- So the case I would make is that we have as much data in the future coming from vehicles, or from users in those vehicles, or from cities talking to those vehicles, as the other competitors that you and I would be talking about that have monetizable attraction. --The issue in the vehicle, see, is: we already know and have data on our customers. By the way, we protect this securely; they trust us. We know what people make. How do we know that? It’s because they borrow money from us. And when you ask somebody what they make, we know where they work; we know if they’re married. We know how long they’ve lived in their house, because these are all on the credit applications. We’ve never ever been challenged on how we use that. And that’s the leverage we’ve got here with the data.
- anitil 8y agoStruggling to find this article - could you link me to it?
- wesd 8y agoCan an Industrial Giant Become a Tech Darling? (Ep. 357) http://freakonomics.com/podcast/ford/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/ford/
- anitil 8y agoOk listened to it, finally. It really comes across that he doesn't understand what he's talking about around tech. "Transportation Operating System"? It's cargo-culted technobabble. But yes it did veer in to the creepy side there
- moneil971 8y agoAre people reading this article surprised that your devices know your locations? We are constantly getting "helpful" notifications that should make it VERY clear that's happening: "Parked car location updated" "It's 8am, are you on your way to work?" "Can you share feedback about that restaurant you were at but didn't check in at?" If people don't already know, then good for the Times for making sure everyone is checking their settings and paying attention.
- sitkack 8y agoI scanned the article, but this mostly sounds like they are painting this as an application behavior. It isn't true. There are tons of companies that use RAW location data that you cannot opt out of. https://airsage.com/ https://airsage.com/
- trendia 8y agoAirSage is very clearly offering non-anonymized (read: private) information about individuals. That is, they offer "insights like the home and work locations of people". > AirSage uses its massive source data and patented algorithms to understand the movement of population and trips start to finish, origin to destination every day for the entire country. It’s not just about the where and when. Through years of research and development, AirSage also knows the “why”, or purpose, of the more than a billion trips made in the United States every day. > Understanding populations as they relate to the physical world has been the core competency of AirSage since the beginning. For any physical point of interest in the United States, insights like the home and work locations of people seen in an area or duration of stay or frequency of visits are all characteristics that can provide a new level of understanding never before capable. > Brands and Marketers recognize that the world is not just about what takes place on the screen of a tv, computer or mobile phone. It’s about how technology helps enhance our real physical world. AirSage is a leader in providing insightful information about the audiences advertisers want to reach as they relate to the locations and places that people spend their time.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jasonhong 8y agoFolks here may be interested in knowing that our team has been working with many others on building out a Privacy-Enhanced Android, which seeks to offer new programming models, new isolation mechanisms, and new user interfaces to help improve the entire ecosystem of privacy. This is a DARPA-funded project. Some of our team's work (past and present) that may be of interest to folks here: - We analyzed the privacy of Android apps at <a href="http://privacygrade.org">http://privacygrade.org</a> http://privacygrade.org">http://privacygrade.org</a>. The basic idea is that we use crowdsourcing to generate a model of what people are concerned about, and then apply that to all the apps we crawled. We're working on an update of PrivacyGrade using network data too, to map out who knows what about us and why. - Perhaps one of the biggest findings from our team's research is that over 40% of apps that use sensitive data only do so because of third-party libraries (e.g. advertisers or analytics). We've mentioned this in talks to the FTC, Google, Apple, and others, that these third party libraries are the biggest point of leverage here if we want to solve the problem. See this paper: <a href="http://www.cmuchimps.org/publications/does_this_app_really_need_my_location_context-aware_privacy_management_for_smartphones_2017/pub_download">Does http://www.cmuchimps.org/publications/does_this_app_really_n... this App Really Need My Location? Context-Aware Privacy Management for Smartphones</a> (PDF). - <a href="https://privacyproxy.io/">https://privacyproxy.io/</a> https://privacyproxy.io/">https://privacyproxy.io/</a> (sorry, self-signed certificate is a bit out of date). This is a VPN that scans outgoing traffic for likely personally-identifiable information - <a href="http://www.android.protectmyprivacy.org/">http://www.android.protectmyprivacy.org/</a> http://www.android.protectmyprivacy.org/">http://www.android.... This requires rooted phones, intercepts calls to sensitive data on your phone, and aims to help you make better decisions by surfacing these calls and showing you how what the majority chose to share - <a href="https://privacystreams.github.io/">https://privacystreams.github.io/</a> https://privacystreams.github.io/">https://privacystreams.gi.... This is a new programming model that aims to make developers' lives easier, and improve privacy as a side effect by making accesses to sensitive data easier to analyze. A key observation is that most apps don't need fine-grained data, but currently apps require all-or-nothing access. For example, raw audio vs "just loudness", or exact GPS vs "what city". We offer stream-like processing that makes it easier for devs to get the granularity they want, which also makes the app much easier to analyze. So we can analyze an app and output "this app uses your microphone to get loudness" - <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/jas0nh0ng/fostering-an-ecosystem-for-smartphone-privacy">Fostering https://www.slideshare.net/jas0nh0ng/fostering-an-ecosystem-... an Ecosystem of Smartphone Privacy</a>, this is a talk I gave last month that summarizes a lot of our team's work on privacy Our DARPA PM has asked us to focus a lot more on tech transfer activities for our final year, so if any of you are interested, send me a mail. (This is tech transfer in terms of getting industry to adopt our ideas, not necessarily commercialization or licensing.)
- DaveWalk 8y agoWhere is the list of offending apps? How hard would it be to name and shame them and keep track? The NYT article cites the company MightySignal claiming 1,200 Android and 200 iOS offending apps. EDIT: The NYT outlines their reporters' testing, and the apps they used: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/technology/location-tracking-apps-privacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/technology/location-track...
- raphipsp 8y agoThe article says NYT was able to go through the users' location histories. How?
- kumarski 8y agoI've brokered terabytes of data over the last 10 years. It's worth paying attention to companies like https://alternativedata.org https://alternativedata.org
- rdruxn 8y agoI often have trouble explaining to people why this is problematic. I encounter the "I've got nothing to hide" or "Who cares if I get ads that I'm more interested in?" arguments. What do you say to those people?
- LeftTurnSignal 8y agoI try to relate to something they understand a bit more, usually a field their interested in. For example, my brother is not techy at all, but he's big into cars. I asked him if he would enjoy Ford sending everything he's doing in his car to the mothership, then selling that info to insurance companies, or used for "marketing." (immediately he understood the issues) Then I ask if he's comfortable with knowing that if he accidentally speeds, turns too fast, or breaks too often, he may have to pay more for insurance. This obviously won't work for everyone. I do have the "i have nothing to hide" friends, but i ask them what if someone DID have something to hide? Not everyone loves "showering with the windows open." It's fine if they don't care about their lives, but what about their childrens lives, or lives of someone they care about? Once it hits that point, they usually just mention that it isn't important and go off about something else to change the subject.
- Grangar 8y agoMonday's episode of the Daily did a pretty good job with this. It opens you up to a myriad of ways for blackmailing or other nasty things through correlation attacks. The data itself is for sale and anyone with the money for it can use it however they want. Hypothetically you could make it as extreme as you want, with what's available now the following could happen with just your location data correlated with your work or home address: Your insurance company will increase your premium if they see you're often out late at night. Your employer could see if you use a vacation day to, possibly, apply at a competitor without him knowing it. Workers at a nuclear powerplant might get approached by foreign actors intercepting their commute.
- catacombs 8y agoI would love for someone from The Times who worked on this story to share the source of their data. No one on Twitter nor in their interview on The Daily answered my main question: What was the source? Sure, they don't want to reveal private information about the people they highlighted, but what about the millions of dots they plotted on the map? That data came from somewhere. Did someone leak it? Did The Times buy it? Some transparency would be great.
- larrybud 8y agoThere needs to be a distinction at the api & permissions level between course and fine geolocation. My weather app doesn't need to know my exact address... location within a half mile or mile would be fine. Similarly with "gas station locator app". But my GPS navigation app DOES need fine location. If you could control this permission at the app level, many of the privacy issues brought out in the article would be mitigated.