4 ms·

I've always had the habit of keeping Location services turned off while not in use, to conserve my phone's battery. Guess it's a privacy requisite now. I also

I've always had the habit of keeping Location services turned off while not in use, to conserve my phone's battery. Guess it's a privacy requisite now. I also remember having a habit of keeping mobile data off during the 3G days. Guess it's not feasible anymore.

izacus 5y ago
That does practically nothing for your privacy, because you're still connected to the base station tower which keeps logs of your phone roaming between base stations. And in more populated areas, the base stations are dense enough to be pretty accurate about where you were. Requests for cell tower log dumps are very common these days. The solution here is for governments to ban this kind of bulk data requests without warrant and not for you to fight a losing battle against your own police force.
- lrem 5y ago
  Disclaimer: I'm a Googler, but thankfully not dealing with any of this. Well, it won't stop the police. But the accuracy is lower, increasing the number of people that match the geofence. That changes the cost-benefit of asking for such a warrant.
  - izacus 5y ago
    It might be just my eastern european paranoia, but this just makes it easier for the authorities to put you into a place they want you to be, not harder.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Which is better depends on if your threat model is them targeting you specifically and then looking for pretexts or them deciding they want to target you specifically when looking through the contents of the dragnet.
    - jjoonathan 5y ago
      I'm sure they can think up an excuse to not let you use your own location data.
- StanislavPetrov 5y ago
  >The solution here is for governments to ban this kind of bulk data requests without warrant and not for you to fight a losing battle against your own police force. That and a faraday bag.
Syonyk 5y ago
> I also remember having a habit of keeping mobile data off during the 3G days. Guess it's not feasible anymore. The biggest problem I've found lately with cell data off is that group texting breaks in weird ways. Most group texting is apparently MMS based, which is "Here's a text telling the phone to go download something from somewhere." If you've got data off, those end up queued weirdly, and can make group messages appear radically out of order when you get a data connection again. Group texting is hard when you get into the weeds of it.

izacus 5y ago

That does practically nothing for your privacy, because you're still connected to the base station tower which keeps logs of your phone roaming between base stations. And in more populated areas, the base stations are dense enough to be pretty accurate about where you were. Requests for cell tower log dumps are very common these days. The solution here is for governments to ban this kind of bulk data requests without warrant and not for you to fight a losing battle against your own police force.

lrem 5y ago
Disclaimer: I'm a Googler, but thankfully not dealing with any of this. Well, it won't stop the police. But the accuracy is lower, increasing the number of people that match the geofence. That changes the cost-benefit of asking for such a warrant.
- izacus 5y ago
  It might be just my eastern european paranoia, but this just makes it easier for the authorities to put you into a place they want you to be, not harder.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Which is better depends on if your threat model is them targeting you specifically and then looking for pretexts or them deciding they want to target you specifically when looking through the contents of the dragnet.
  - jjoonathan 5y ago
    I'm sure they can think up an excuse to not let you use your own location data.
StanislavPetrov 5y ago
>The solution here is for governments to ban this kind of bulk data requests without warrant and not for you to fight a losing battle against your own police force. That and a faraday bag.

Syonyk 5y ago

> I also remember having a habit of keeping mobile data off during the 3G days. Guess it's not feasible anymore. The biggest problem I've found lately with cell data off is that group texting breaks in weird ways. Most group texting is apparently MMS based, which is "Here's a text telling the phone to go download something from somewhere." If you've got data off, those end up queued weirdly, and can make group messages appear radically out of order when you get a data connection again. Group texting is hard when you get into the weeds of it.