13 ms·

Indeed! Unless this is a part of Google Maps, Waze, Uber, or Lyft, some extremely popular app on our phones is doing location and activity monitoring no one was

Indeed! Unless this is a part of Google Maps, Waze, Uber, or Lyft, some extremely popular app on our phones is doing location and activity monitoring no one was aware of. It's especially frightening because this data could be used to deny people reasonable insurance rates in the future and they weren't even aware they were being logged. I'm curious how they know a person is definitely driving and not a passenger.

lostphilosopher 7y ago
My wife and I have different phones and have consistently found the map experience better on mine. When we travel I drive and she uses my phone to navigate...
- stcredzero 7y ago
  It would be easy to cross-correlate this sort of relationship. (The passenger seat navigator.)
jlarocco 7y ago
> It's especially frightening because this data could be used to deny people reasonable insurance rates in the future and they weren't even aware they were being logged. More expensive insurance is getting off easy. After getting caught two or three times people should lose their license over it, IMO. It's as dangerous as drunk driving. That said, it is concerning how they're collecting this information.
- stcredzero 7y ago
  Does the state of California believe that people have "a reasonable expectation of privacy" inside their cars while driving on the road?
  - jlarocco 7y ago
    No idea, I don't live in California.
  - jfk13 7y ago
    In terms of driving behavior? I should hope not. If I'm driving down the road with a phone held to my ear, a giant soda in the other hand, and steering with my knees, and I happen to pass a police officer, I hope they'd be allowed to stop me. I shouldn't be able to hide behind "I was in my private car, you had no right to look in on me and observe my behavior there."
    - stcredzero 7y ago
      If I'm driving down the road with a phone held to my ear, a giant soda in the other hand, and steering with my knees, and I happen to pass a police officer, I hope they'd be allowed to stop me Some expectation of privacy probably applies to conversations inside the car. Also, there might be a different way to think about the entire record of behavior of where one drives. Neither of those would interfere with policing of the behavior you cite.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    No. Anything that isn't in a locked trunk is in public view. Driving is a privilege, not a right.
rz2k 7y ago
There should be a lot of signals to perceive where the user is sitting. If the phone is resting in the center console, the accelerometers can tell whether it is being lifted up to the right or to the left of the car whenever it is being used. It could tell whether it is resting in the center console or the left or right side of the car depending on the shape of arc, distance travelled, centrifugal forces whenever the car follows the road around a left vs. a right turn. If they care about accuracy to put in the engineering investment, it could be right a very high percentage of the time.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  My phone sometimes insists I'm driving on water. I don't believe you can tell the difference between drivers and passengers seats without in car sensors.
  - rubyfan 7y ago
    They can tell by which way you enter the car. This is problematic since women commonly put their purse in the passenger seat sometimes via the passenger door.
    - michaelmrose 7y ago
      You can easily be off by meters or even 10s of meters in terms of the position of the phone. You have no way to know the position of the car in relation. You would need car sensors and per car interior data and even then it would likely confuse a driver holding a phone in their right hand and a passenger holding it in their left. You talk about the phone keeping track of where the phone not only is but was historically in order to guess if you are driving and texting and I hear you want to design a broken system that is not even deterministically broken. It also fails to account for people passing a phone around to someone else in the car. I wouldn't be able to give my phone to a passenger because it would already have decided it is a a driver's phone. Your users will only be able to use your phone if they can reverse engineer what their phone thinks they are doing. Anyone who does not charge their phone will see car travel destroy their battery life. One can trivially avoid such a feature by disabling GPS but most people won't have to worry about it because they just won't pay hundreds of dollars more for a phone that randomly doesn't work even in the passenger seat because it's incorrectly second guessing you.
rubyfan 7y ago
As a matter of practicality using this data adversely against customers is unlikely. 1. This is literally almost everyone on the road (that should frighten you more than insurance companies having this data) 2. Insurance is a highly regulated industry. Each state has a department of insurance that regulates how insurers apply rate and underwriting. 3. There are many voluntary opt-in programs out there that reward good behavior and marginally penalize bad behavior. Those programs focus on a few behaviors, none of which are distraction at the moment and they are all opt-in. Full disclosure - I work at a large insurance company and am also an EFF donor. This is near and dear.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  > As a matter of practicality using this data adversely against customers is unlikely. People are not perfectly spherical insurance customers operating in a vacuum. In light of that, what non-adversely uses does this data have with respect to the people whom are the target of this data collection?
  - rubyfan 7y ago
    Helping them and everyone else find behavioral solutions to avoid using their phone while driving, for example rewarding good behavior with discount, gift cards, etc. There are a number of insurance companies literally trying to help adjust behavior in order to save lives of those distracted and the innocent bystanders and other drivers on the road.
    - loeg 7y ago
      This is literally using the data adversely to the "badly behaved" customers.
- drb91 7y ago
  Honestly they could start by building voice controls that people want to use rather than the voice assistant bullshit. Idk what the google one is like, but siri is a toy.
southerntofu 7y ago
> Unless this is a part of Google Maps, Waze, Uber, or Lyft Litterally all the apps you mentioned have trackers builtin. See https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/search/ https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/search/ to find out about them (through static analysis). I remember the time when SOME commercial software was not bundled with spyware. These days are long gone and only free software can be trusted because the only reason not to share your code is to harm users without them knowing. For Android, you should try setting up LineageOS (free Android distro with the binary firmware) without Google Play Services, and use F-Droid as an app store. https://f-droid.org https://f-droid.org contains only free-software applications that do not spy on users (and apps anti-features are advertized, not hidden away).

lostphilosopher 7y ago

My wife and I have different phones and have consistently found the map experience better on mine. When we travel I drive and she uses my phone to navigate...

stcredzero 7y ago
It would be easy to cross-correlate this sort of relationship. (The passenger seat navigator.)

jlarocco 7y ago

> It's especially frightening because this data could be used to deny people reasonable insurance rates in the future and they weren't even aware they were being logged. More expensive insurance is getting off easy. After getting caught two or three times people should lose their license over it, IMO. It's as dangerous as drunk driving. That said, it is concerning how they're collecting this information.

stcredzero 7y ago
Does the state of California believe that people have "a reasonable expectation of privacy" inside their cars while driving on the road?
- jlarocco 7y ago
  No idea, I don't live in California.
- jfk13 7y ago
  In terms of driving behavior? I should hope not. If I'm driving down the road with a phone held to my ear, a giant soda in the other hand, and steering with my knees, and I happen to pass a police officer, I hope they'd be allowed to stop me. I shouldn't be able to hide behind "I was in my private car, you had no right to look in on me and observe my behavior there."
  - stcredzero 7y ago
    If I'm driving down the road with a phone held to my ear, a giant soda in the other hand, and steering with my knees, and I happen to pass a police officer, I hope they'd be allowed to stop me Some expectation of privacy probably applies to conversations inside the car. Also, there might be a different way to think about the entire record of behavior of where one drives. Neither of those would interfere with policing of the behavior you cite.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  No. Anything that isn't in a locked trunk is in public view. Driving is a privilege, not a right.

rz2k 7y ago

There should be a lot of signals to perceive where the user is sitting. If the phone is resting in the center console, the accelerometers can tell whether it is being lifted up to the right or to the left of the car whenever it is being used. It could tell whether it is resting in the center console or the left or right side of the car depending on the shape of arc, distance travelled, centrifugal forces whenever the car follows the road around a left vs. a right turn. If they care about accuracy to put in the engineering investment, it could be right a very high percentage of the time.

michaelmrose 7y ago
My phone sometimes insists I'm driving on water. I don't believe you can tell the difference between drivers and passengers seats without in car sensors.
- rubyfan 7y ago
  They can tell by which way you enter the car. This is problematic since women commonly put their purse in the passenger seat sometimes via the passenger door.
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    You can easily be off by meters or even 10s of meters in terms of the position of the phone. You have no way to know the position of the car in relation. You would need car sensors and per car interior data and even then it would likely confuse a driver holding a phone in their right hand and a passenger holding it in their left. You talk about the phone keeping track of where the phone not only is but was historically in order to guess if you are driving and texting and I hear you want to design a broken system that is not even deterministically broken. It also fails to account for people passing a phone around to someone else in the car. I wouldn't be able to give my phone to a passenger because it would already have decided it is a a driver's phone. Your users will only be able to use your phone if they can reverse engineer what their phone thinks they are doing. Anyone who does not charge their phone will see car travel destroy their battery life. One can trivially avoid such a feature by disabling GPS but most people won't have to worry about it because they just won't pay hundreds of dollars more for a phone that randomly doesn't work even in the passenger seat because it's incorrectly second guessing you.

rubyfan 7y ago

As a matter of practicality using this data adversely against customers is unlikely. 1. This is literally almost everyone on the road (that should frighten you more than insurance companies having this data) 2. Insurance is a highly regulated industry. Each state has a department of insurance that regulates how insurers apply rate and underwriting. 3. There are many voluntary opt-in programs out there that reward good behavior and marginally penalize bad behavior. Those programs focus on a few behaviors, none of which are distraction at the moment and they are all opt-in. Full disclosure - I work at a large insurance company and am also an EFF donor. This is near and dear.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
> As a matter of practicality using this data adversely against customers is unlikely. People are not perfectly spherical insurance customers operating in a vacuum. In light of that, what non-adversely uses does this data have with respect to the people whom are the target of this data collection?
- rubyfan 7y ago
  Helping them and everyone else find behavioral solutions to avoid using their phone while driving, for example rewarding good behavior with discount, gift cards, etc. There are a number of insurance companies literally trying to help adjust behavior in order to save lives of those distracted and the innocent bystanders and other drivers on the road.
  - loeg 7y ago
    This is literally using the data adversely to the "badly behaved" customers.
drb91 7y ago
Honestly they could start by building voice controls that people want to use rather than the voice assistant bullshit. Idk what the google one is like, but siri is a toy.

southerntofu 7y ago

> Unless this is a part of Google Maps, Waze, Uber, or Lyft Litterally all the apps you mentioned have trackers builtin. See https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/search/ https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/search/ to find out about them (through static analysis). I remember the time when SOME commercial software was not bundled with spyware. These days are long gone and only free software can be trusted because the only reason not to share your code is to harm users without them knowing. For Android, you should try setting up LineageOS (free Android distro with the binary firmware) without Google Play Services, and use F-Droid as an app store. https://f-droid.org https://f-droid.org contains only free-software applications that do not spy on users (and apps anti-features are advertized, not hidden away).