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As long as spying on people is for some reason legal this will continue to happen. Phones need to ban location access for anything that doesn’t need location to

by olliej 5y ago

As long as spying on people is for some reason legal this will continue to happen. Phones need to ban location access for anything that doesn’t need location to function. Given we have them, App Stores need to ban apps that are spy.

snarf21 5y ago
You are forgetting that phones are pinging every tower constantly. Turning off location services is almost meaningless. The carriers know far more about you. If you want privacy, leave your phone at home or put it in a cage.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  The carrier doesn't know if you're in the abortion clinic or the chinese buffet is shares the strip mall with. You need GPS (or a much denser network) to have high precision. Edit: and yes I know 5g increases the resolution, but it's still not that good since cell density correlates with "stuff" density"
  - adamrezich 5y ago
    good thing telecoms & phone manufacturers aren't trying to roll out such a network or anything like that
- Bud 5y ago
  Or, instead of just giving up on modern life and modern technology, we could express the appropriate level of outrage, and vow to make this kind of conduct a felony, and then vow to jail the people selling this data for 25 years or whenever their bodies reach room temperature, whichever comes first. That would be another choice we could make.
  - marssaxman 5y ago
    You and I could make such vows all day long without changing anything about the world we live in.
- kergonath 5y ago
  “We will never prevent murders, so making them illegal is meaningless. If you want to stay alive, stay at home”. At some point a line needs to be drawn.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    There's ideal and there's reality. Do you deserve to get robbed and assaulted if you walk down a dark alleyway alone at night? No. But it's something you can avoid if you think ahead. There are people who will call this "victim blaming" but they are living in a land of magical thinking, not reality. Turn your phone off if you don't want your provider and apps to know where you are going.
    - throwaway92394 5y ago
      > Turn your phone off if you don't want your provider and apps to know where you are going. Not to put words in their mouth but I think Kergonath's point is- * Turn your phone off if you don't want your provider to know where you are going. * Turn off your location services (and likely use a vpn, etc) if you don't want apps to know where you are going. Yes apps _can_ still figure this out if they're trying that hard. I don't think this is in most people's threat model. If we want to go down that road then I'll point out there's ALPR's that track cars, and people who track bluetooth mac addresses your car likely has. Keeping your phone off until necessary is not realistic for most people. What you're suggesting is the equivalent of saying they should wait until morning to go through the alley.
      - kergonath 5y ago
        > What you're suggesting is the equivalent of saying they should wait until morning to go through the alley. Exactly. And yes, it depends on your threat model and how much you personally value your privacy. If someone wants to avoid leaving any footprint, more power to them. This should not prevent other people from enjoying better baseline privacy. We can have both: decent privacy by default, and possibly much better if you want to.
    - 5y ago
- barathr 5y ago
  Edit: I realized describing the paths forward to dealing with this sort of challenge requires more context than can be given in a short comment, so I'll work on that and come back with more later.
  - mrguyorama 5y ago
    This is not a tech problem, tech won't fix it.
- Arrath 5y ago
  I'm about at the point of paying a teenager to buy me a pay-n-go phone from a convenience store with cash, in return I'll buy them the case of beer they always bug me for.
- snarf21 5y ago
  I should have phrased this differently. It wasn't meant as binary choice. Necessary but not sufficient. I was also just trying to say that I personally am more worried about the carrier than Apple. "Also, don't forget that phones are pinging every tower constantly..."
thatoneguy 5y ago
You don't even need location services to be on, wifi alone is enough to derive location if the app can tell what wifi networks you're near. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_Wireless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_Wireless
- olliej 5y ago
  Which immediately raises the question of why an app has access to that info?
car_analogy 5y ago
Well you see, because of a vague statement buried deep within a EULA, obfuscated with legal jargon, those people aren't being "spied on" - they are "knowingly and voluntarily sharing their data". And since more and more commercial activity is gated behind agreeing to one-sided, impenetrable legal tomes, what used to be felonies are now just a cost of living in modern society. Don't like it? Go live in the woods. What you should not do is lobby for placing strict limits to contracts of adhesion (or even all contracts).

by olliej 5y ago

snarf21 5y ago

You are forgetting that phones are pinging every tower constantly. Turning off location services is almost meaningless. The carriers know far more about you. If you want privacy, leave your phone at home or put it in a cage.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
The carrier doesn't know if you're in the abortion clinic or the chinese buffet is shares the strip mall with. You need GPS (or a much denser network) to have high precision. Edit: and yes I know 5g increases the resolution, but it's still not that good since cell density correlates with "stuff" density"
- adamrezich 5y ago
  good thing telecoms & phone manufacturers aren't trying to roll out such a network or anything like that
Bud 5y ago
Or, instead of just giving up on modern life and modern technology, we could express the appropriate level of outrage, and vow to make this kind of conduct a felony, and then vow to jail the people selling this data for 25 years or whenever their bodies reach room temperature, whichever comes first. That would be another choice we could make.
- marssaxman 5y ago
  You and I could make such vows all day long without changing anything about the world we live in.
kergonath 5y ago
“We will never prevent murders, so making them illegal is meaningless. If you want to stay alive, stay at home”. At some point a line needs to be drawn.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  There's ideal and there's reality. Do you deserve to get robbed and assaulted if you walk down a dark alleyway alone at night? No. But it's something you can avoid if you think ahead. There are people who will call this "victim blaming" but they are living in a land of magical thinking, not reality. Turn your phone off if you don't want your provider and apps to know where you are going.
  - throwaway92394 5y ago
    > Turn your phone off if you don't want your provider and apps to know where you are going. Not to put words in their mouth but I think Kergonath's point is- * Turn your phone off if you don't want your provider to know where you are going. * Turn off your location services (and likely use a vpn, etc) if you don't want apps to know where you are going. Yes apps _can_ still figure this out if they're trying that hard. I don't think this is in most people's threat model. If we want to go down that road then I'll point out there's ALPR's that track cars, and people who track bluetooth mac addresses your car likely has. Keeping your phone off until necessary is not realistic for most people. What you're suggesting is the equivalent of saying they should wait until morning to go through the alley.
    - kergonath 5y ago
      > What you're suggesting is the equivalent of saying they should wait until morning to go through the alley. Exactly. And yes, it depends on your threat model and how much you personally value your privacy. If someone wants to avoid leaving any footprint, more power to them. This should not prevent other people from enjoying better baseline privacy. We can have both: decent privacy by default, and possibly much better if you want to.
  - 5y ago
barathr 5y ago
Edit: I realized describing the paths forward to dealing with this sort of challenge requires more context than can be given in a short comment, so I'll work on that and come back with more later.
- mrguyorama 5y ago
  This is not a tech problem, tech won't fix it.
Arrath 5y ago
I'm about at the point of paying a teenager to buy me a pay-n-go phone from a convenience store with cash, in return I'll buy them the case of beer they always bug me for.
snarf21 5y ago
I should have phrased this differently. It wasn't meant as binary choice. Necessary but not sufficient. I was also just trying to say that I personally am more worried about the carrier than Apple. "Also, don't forget that phones are pinging every tower constantly..."

thatoneguy 5y ago

You don't even need location services to be on, wifi alone is enough to derive location if the app can tell what wifi networks you're near. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_Wireless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_Wireless

olliej 5y ago
Which immediately raises the question of why an app has access to that info?

car_analogy 5y ago

Well you see, because of a vague statement buried deep within a EULA, obfuscated with legal jargon, those people aren't being "spied on" - they are "knowingly and voluntarily sharing their data". And since more and more commercial activity is gated behind agreeing to one-sided, impenetrable legal tomes, what used to be felonies are now just a cost of living in modern society. Don't like it? Go live in the woods. What you should not do is lobby for placing strict limits to contracts of adhesion (or even all contracts).