4 ms·
I wager that coarse-grain location data is not so coarse these days. My carrier seems to know the instant I crossed a border for instance, sending me a text me
by liability 7y ago
I wager that coarse-grain location data is not so coarse these days. My carrier seems to know the instant I crossed a border for instance, sending me a text message about it within seconds. Years ago people used to get nailed with roaming charges simply because they were near a border and happened to accidentally get connected to a tower across the border, but that's not happening anymore. Their system knows enough about your location to know if you are across the border or just near it.
- pdkl95 7y agoCoarse-grain location data becomes very revealing when you have enough timestamped data points. The NSA's CO-TRAVELER[1] program only needs to watch which towers cell phones use to build a very accurate map of each phone's pattern-of-life (where does a phone regularly travel/idle) and social interaction network (e.g. which phones travel/idle together). [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/world/how-the-nsa-is-tracking-people-right-now/634/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/world/how-the-nsa...
- PeterisP 7y agoBy course-grained I mean 0.5-1 km; which is very inaccurate compared to GPS accuracy (and isn't sufficient to tell which shop you're visiting, which has commercial value in sale of location data) but is accurate enough to tell which side of the border you're on, or which mall you're visiting, or when you're home or at work and when somewhere else.