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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 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 4y 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 4y ago
  good thing telecoms & phone manufacturers aren't trying to roll out such a network or anything like that
Bud 4y 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 4y ago
  You and I could make such vows all day long without changing anything about the world we live in.
kergonath 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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.
  - kergonath 4y ago
    Sure, and lock your door when you leave home, that’s common sense. But it is not a reason to argue against outlawing burglary. I am not against taking precautions, though no precautions are foolproof and I have been mugged on a bus in bright daylight. But I am against this edgy cynical idea that there is no point deciding rules because someone will circumvent them. Or that you are a naive idealist if you want better. Instead, what we do is we punish burglary, and it becomes rarer and rarer, and everyone lives better, even if one day you happen to forget to lock your door. Same thing for PII, and personal data in general. We should punish companies that are reckless with their data, and strictly limit the information access providers can log. This is not magical thinking, and is completely uncontroversial for medical or financial information. So why the phone cynicism (not from you, but from a large number of technophiles who ought to know better)?
barathr 4y 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 4y ago
  This is not a tech problem, tech won't fix it.
Arrath 4y 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 4y 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..."

throwaway0a5e 4y 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 4y ago
good thing telecoms & phone manufacturers aren't trying to roll out such a network or anything like that

Bud 4y 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 4y ago
You and I could make such vows all day long without changing anything about the world we live in.

kergonath 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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.
- kergonath 4y ago
  Sure, and lock your door when you leave home, that’s common sense. But it is not a reason to argue against outlawing burglary. I am not against taking precautions, though no precautions are foolproof and I have been mugged on a bus in bright daylight. But I am against this edgy cynical idea that there is no point deciding rules because someone will circumvent them. Or that you are a naive idealist if you want better. Instead, what we do is we punish burglary, and it becomes rarer and rarer, and everyone lives better, even if one day you happen to forget to lock your door. Same thing for PII, and personal data in general. We should punish companies that are reckless with their data, and strictly limit the information access providers can log. This is not magical thinking, and is completely uncontroversial for medical or financial information. So why the phone cynicism (not from you, but from a large number of technophiles who ought to know better)?

barathr 4y 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 4y ago
This is not a tech problem, tech won't fix it.

Arrath 4y 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 4y 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..."