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After reading the article, I didn't feel like any of these were particularly nefarious intrusions as they largely involved the student knowingly using Brown's s
by darkwizard42 6y ago
After reading the article, I didn't feel like any of these were particularly nefarious intrusions as they largely involved the student knowingly using Brown's services (buildings, wifi, access management system IPs, physical presence on campus). The article was pretty well-written and informative in general on how a number of services we take for granted can be used to locate you.
I do take issue with Brown's extremely harsh language in one of the linked articles where they threatened students with suspension...all for being in the local Providence area?!
- alisonkisk 6y agoIs it an intrusion when Google/Android does the same thing when you access their servers?
- canofbars 6y agoThe difference is you usually don't directly access their servers. You just walk in to a store and your phone grabs your location, sends it to google and then asks if you want to leave a review of the store.
- alisonkisk 6y agoYou turned on location services.
- canofbars 6y agoI should not have to choose between giving Google a free for all access to my location data or having no location functionality on my device. This is one of the primary reasons I won't use Android. They always bundle critical features in with privacy violations.
- d3nj4l 6y agoIf you turn off location history, you shouldn't get the notifications to review stores and the like, IME. I've had location history off but location services on (damn you, uber!) for ages, and I don't get those any more.
- canofbars 6y agoThey still lock features out if you do. You can't set your home location in google maps unless you allow them to track and store your location 24/7. Meanwhile ios manages perfectly fine keeping that data on your phones local storage.
- netsharc 6y agoAs sibling comment wrote, the "do you want to review $location?" prompts come from you enabling location history, which is a Maps feature they offer to users who want to keep track where they've been. You can enable location services (needed for apps like Maps, Lyft, Tinder, Find My Device) without enabling location history. Whether they still record your history, who knows.
- sneak 6y ago> I should not have to choose between giving Google a free for all access to my location data or having no location functionality on my device. Location indoors is made possible by sending a list of visible WiFi AP MAC addresses and relative signal strengths to a web service. WiFi MAC addresses are globally unique serial numbers, and Google/Apple maintain huge MAC-to-location databases. Enabling location doesn't just turn on GPS, it sends your location to Apple/Google constantly to retrieve the lat/lon from visible WiFi triangulation. The only way to keep your mobile location halfway private (your carrier still gets it, and leaks it to your national military) is to keep all location services disabled on the device. Otherwise, simply enabling location access at all gives Google and Apple the aforementioned "free for all access". I agree that it shouldn't be this way, but it is today.
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoIt used to be much easier for Android users to be able to choose which location service they wanted to use, for example Mozilla’s location service downloaded from F-Droid. However, Google made a change to AOSP that requires third-party location services to now be installed as a system app, not a regular app. (Only a tiny amount of people will have the skills to use the Android shell to move the package to the right place.) It is hard to not see this as a way for Google to lock Android users into using only its service and giving it all their location data.
- kevas 6y agoA company selling a product to a few isn’t an issue, yet one who controls the market is. It’s all about the scale
- alisonkisk 6y agoWhat company? It an issue if Google runs ads against your location history and lets you delete it whenever you request, but not an issue that Flashlight App sells your permanent location history forever to brokers to aggregate and resell to anyone who asks for it?
- Talanes 6y agoThese students have paid a non-trivial amount of money to attend this school, and passed up the chance to attend others. They are a market that Brown has almost complete control over. What meaningful choice could a student make to avoid being tracked in the login they use to take classes is what tracks them?
- notsureaboutpg 6y agoYeah, sounds like if you don't physically access the buildings, don't log onto the campus wifi (which requires authentication to use), and use a VPN (on computer and phone, for 2 factor auth) to access all your online course materials they can't really know where you are... Not too surprising, still good to know!
- morpheuskafka 6y agoIf they simply logged all MACs that passed by their routers, that would be a little concerning given the urban setting. If these people didn't turn off their WiFi autojoin and their devices were actively connecting, then that's on them.
- Retric 6y agoIt’s easy to fall into the trap of confusing how the system behaves with what your actually allowed to do. Legally computers can’t give consent even if it seems like they do so. This is why people can be convicted of hacking for going to public URL’s etc. Presumably, the same rules apply in the reverse where if people are unaware that’s what’s happening then it should be illegal to track them like this. If anything it’s legally ok because as a student they may have unknowingly agreed to such somewhere.
- wenc 6y agoI'm surprised tracking MACs would be that reliable. Most phones and phone OSes > 2017 have had MAC randomization built in. Retail wifi points used to track MACs in order to profile foot traffic, but this technique hasn't been effective since 2017. https://blog.elevensoftware.com/how-mac-address-randomization-can-affect-the-wifi-experience https://blog.elevensoftware.com/how-mac-address-randomizatio...
- ev1 6y agoThese are presumably students that have signed into the wifi, not just passerby
- maxerickson 6y agoThe students have agreed to follow certain rules related to Covid. Why is it shocking that the university is evaluating whether they are following the rules and doing some enforcement?
- jswrenn 6y agoTo provide a little more context... Students faced a ternary choice prior to the Fall semester: 1. enroll as an on-campus (and thus live in a dorm), or 2. enroll as a remote student (and thus live at home), or 3. take a leave of absence (and thus live wherever) Only students in that second bin were subject to the requirement stay out of Providence. A cynical take on this is that Brown has always had strict residency requirements for its students, and residency fees are far above the market rate in Providence. If students could simply mark themselves as "remote" to get out of paying dorm fees, I'm sure many would. The other key bit of context is just how poor of a job Brown did at geolocating students. Dozens of students (some international!) received baseless notices of reprimand. The most compelling theory I've seen is that these students were using Brown's VPN, and were identified as on campus via IP geolocation.
- smarx007 6y agoThanks for the context! Could you please explain to me as a European what's wrong with a student commuting to the university (if we put COVID aside, of course)? In Europe, university accommodation is usually below the market rate and is hard to get and many students end up subletting a room in a regular apartment.
- jswrenn 6y ago(Again, this is a rather cynical take, but...) Brown's monopoly on undergraduate housing is an essential source of revenue. Brown generates twice the $/ft² in revenue as private landlords in the area, but pays only a fraction of their running costs (Brown pays no income tax on this revenue, nor property tax on its dorms). There's nothing wrong with students commuting, per se, but for a University that's come to rely on residency fees, ditching the residency requirement is no easy financial feat.
- judge2020 6y agoMy criticism is with how likes like these are bolded, almost like it's trying to say "beware! they're logging everything, don't get on the administration's bad side!" > The C•CURE 9000 lets administrators view the complete historical building access history of a person. > Combined, these logs paint a very accurate picture of your location on campus at any time. But I did see the author's comments elsewhere in this thread[0], so there's no ill intent. This is an overall educational article. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25319883 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25319883
- jswrenn 6y agoThis article was aimed at non-technical members of Brown community, who were very surprised that Brown has any geolocating capacity like this. When they think of security and privacy, they think of the campus's guards and surveillance cameras — not the course materials portal or their email!
- judge2020 6y agoSorry if my edit caught you off guard - Thanks for the informative article, even if it is seen as obvious/reasonable for most of the HN crowd!
- Spooky23 6y agoA friend does work at a state university for an early intervention program for at risk students in their opportunity program. If you are buying snacks or sodas at 3am, don’t utilize your card keys over the weekend or do some other things, you’ll get flagged as a risk and your advisor get notified.