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I think amongst the technically literate here on HN, probably 99% know what the switch does. But amongst the public at large there are ABSOLUTELY people that th
by advisedwang 3y ago
I think amongst the technically literate here on HN, probably 99% know what the switch does. But amongst the public at large there are ABSOLUTELY people that think the location button is magic. Non-technically literate people need protection just as much as us, and this the way this button is labelled fails them.
- gjsman-1000 3y agoArticle author here. This is exactly my point. This could be so much clearer. Think about when you open a private window in Chrome. There's a clear warning that your ISP or school or employer may know what websites you visit anyway. But there's no such warning for smartphones. It just says "Location: Off" and people don't know.
- gowld 3y agohttps://support.google.com/android/answer/3467281 https://support.google.com/android/answer/3467281 Linked from Location Setting. But it doesn't mention carrier tracking your location. That is fundamental to how cell phones work, though, unless you enable Airplane Mode.
- autoexec 3y agoAirplane mode is also a lie (https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/9l57b6/my_phone_was_in_airplane_mode_and_i_still/ https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/9l57b6/m...)
- circuit10 3y agoCould it be receiving signals but not sending them, or is that not how it works?
- autoexec 3y agoI think you'd have to be sending and receiving to stay connected to the towers at all. I haven't tried it, but if it's true that you can still call 911 while in airplane mode then you're certainly sending and receiving. What we need is a "No really, all radios off" switch, preferably a hardware switch, but if we had one maybe people would opt of being tracked all the time.
- acdha 3y agoHave you done a survey? I’d be surprised if a sizable percentage of the population wasn’t aware of that distinction after multiple decades of watching actors trace people using cell towers. They even talk about the difference as a plot point since it means the actors have to search around looking heroic instead of just watching someone use a computer map.
- usrusr 3y agoAnd watching other actors pop batteries in and out of burner phones. "The network knows where your phone is" is a well established part of pop tech assumptions. Despite all this, if it came to overthrow a surprise dictatorship tomorrow qI'd still expect almost everybody, myself included as well as a majority of hn readers almost as big as that amongst the general population, to naively show up at the street riots with their devices happily logged into the network. But not a single one of them would do so because they believed that toggling the GPS feature to off somehow protected them.
- acdha 3y ago> I'd still expect almost everybody, myself included as well as a majority of hn readers almost as big as that amongst the general population, to naively show up at the street riots with their devices happily logged into the network I agree this would be common but lower percentages after the George Floyd protests got a LOT of widely-circulated warnings on social media, and then a bit later a ton of right-wingers were getting rounded up for January 6th. I think those were eye opening for a lot of the people for whom this is likely to be relevant.
- NeuroCoder 3y agoYou're not wrong but who is going to read a software devs blog? If this was some major news outlet writing a tech piece then the public at large may actually be reached with this info
- basisword 3y agoI think you’re massively underestimating people. Anyone who’s watched a cop tv show in the last 20 years knows you can get a persons location via their carrier by seeing which cell towers they were near.
- Blahah 3y agoWhat about the people who haven't?
- rtpg 3y agoEvery day somebody is born who hasn’t heard somebody say “triangulate the signal” on some procedural. Meanwhile the intersection of “hasn’t heard this” and “is intentionally turning off location services on phones” is, I imagine, an extremely small cohort of the phone using population. But this would be a good sort of public poll to do!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- walderf 3y agothere were 4.97bn mobile internet users in 2022 accounting for almost 60% of total web traffic. yeah. most people don't know they're supposed to care about the amount of just how little to no privacy they really don't have anymore. general awareness to the function of a tap-on tap-off feature like this, something that's, with a staunch juxtaposition, not currently infringing nor bearing any matter to whatever social-media-esque consumption they're filling their eyes-on-screen time with as they go about living a naive inspired blissful existence, their attention no doubt occupied by and kept busy with literally any and every other thing. :/
- crazygringo 3y agoI think the public at large isn't even aware of the location services toggle at all. But they know from every police procedural TV show under the sun that you can have your location tracked by your cell service. Same way TV used to always show a landline call taking 30 seconds to be "traced" and the criminal would always hang up right before...
- m463 3y ago> I think the public at large isn't even aware of the location services toggle at all. lol, of course they know about it. they know about read receipts too. Their friends tell them. then they get creeped out and figure out how to turn things off.
- bmicraft 3y agoUntil some app requests permission to turn it on and they go back to clicking yes/accept on absolutely everything.
- candiddevmike 3y agoEveryone knows they track your MAC address
- walderf 3y agojokes on them. i have a Linux address.
- tough 3y agoNever knew it standed for Media Access Control until you made me wikipedia it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address
- candiddevmike 3y agoAll People Seem to Need Data Processing
- beachy 3y agoThose people can't be helped by words, no matter how you label/describe the switch.
- burnished 3y agoYes, they can. Ignorance can be cured with explanations.
- rgrieselhuber 3y agoExactly. I’ve known people who honestly thought having a VPN on their phone hid their location as well.
- s3p 3y agoTrue, but none of them are going to stumble on the boutique article about it. If that's the audience, this should meet the technically illiterate where they are; twitter, youtube, facebook, etc.
- fomine3 3y agoIt's like Google was sued about incognito mode on Chrome. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3678190/google-execs-knew-incognito-mode-failed-to-protect-privacy-suit-claims.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3678190/google-execs-k...