6 ms·

And once you've gotten rid of Google and Apple, your telecom company tracks you, your CC payments help track you and even cameras in public do. It's hard to no

And once you've gotten rid of Google and Apple, your telecom company tracks you, your CC payments help track you and even cameras in public do. It's hard to not want to throw your hands in the air screaming "whatever" when almost everything you use in public is somehow used to track you either as you move around, or in the future.

dualvariable 6mo ago
This is one of those things that can't ever be solved with individual solutions but needs to be solved through legislation and standards, and ideally a fundamental right to privacy (and a fundamental redefinition of what privacy means when it comes to corporate surveillance of individuals).
- whamlastxmas 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - foresto 6mo ago
    > Government leaders will never give up their pipeline of knowing everything about everyone. Then let us hire different leaders into government. Public servants, not overlords.
    - HenryBemis 6mo ago
      If you have noticed, every independent candidate almost never gets elected. Vast majority of those who say they will "change the country to the better" either never get elected or are ousted early on. And those who stay change their tune. I fear that only blackmail-able people with the potential to win elections, get the support, so that they are beholden to someone who ultimately gives them the job (e.g. funding their campaign) and has to return the favor x10 when elected, so promises go out the window and new reality sets in.
      - mothballed 6mo ago
        Someone tried to create an entirely new country with minimal governance by dumping sand on a submerged reef until it became an island[]. Even then it was quickly co-opted by the nearing statist powers (Tonga) with the blessing of western powers. So it's not just that the primary process will crush anyone who will seriously roll back government powers. They won't even let anyone peacefully create an entirely new fucking island to try and get away from the tyrants and do it while leaving everyone else alone and not messing with the powers that be. [] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Minerva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Minerva
        anonymars 6mo ago
        Isn't that the libertarian paradox in a nutshell, the entire reason why "government" exists? Because in reality, the alternative is "might makes right" and a larger, stronger group will band together and steamroll the smaller and uncoordinated individuals?
        mothballed 6mo ago
        Government is might makes right, just with a nice name slapped on it. Minerva was minarchist, not anarchist, but for whatever reason they chose not to defend their country by force. Somaliland and the remains of Rojava come to mind as present-day ~minarchist governments that defended their territory by force and ~succeeded. The point being is these kind of changes won't be allowed by election or peacefully. The primaries stop the election process and the militaries stop the peaceful separation process. America did have a period of relatively small government intervention at the beginning, but that took a war with Britain. It also had some periods of it during the pre-founding (some of 1600s Pennsylvania and Rhode Island while Britain was occupied elsewhere). Pennsylvania (before it was a state) in particular was basically straight up anarchist for I want to say, about 20 years.
        PaulDavisThe1st 6mo ago
        > relatively small government intervention at the beginning, Yes, the women, slaves, non-land-owners and native Americans all loved that phase! It was paradise on earth and the embodiment of the eternal liberty to which all (*) humans are entitled. (*) your experience may vary, depending on your membership of various demographics. Some restrictions apply. Please see package for details.
    - wahnfrieden 6mo ago
      Hierarchical power conflicts with servitude
  - throwway120385 6mo ago
    I guess we'll just sit on our hands and do nothing, then.
- GJim 6mo ago
  Needless to say, cars in the UK/EU have no such privacy invading features without an explicit opt-in thanks to sensible data protection legislation; including the GDPR. The FUD spouted on here by the scummy adtech industry about legislation to protect YOUR privacy is mind boggling. These are the people doing the digital equivalent of sniffing your underwear to work out what you had for breakfast. (And before somebody shouts FUD about the UK/EU vehicle eCall 112 system, that certainly doesn't track you or seek to invade your privacy on any level!)
  - golem14 6mo ago
    I'm tempted to say "oh you sweet summer child", because it seems just unbelievable that the statement is true (in the sense that the small print in rental cars and sales contracts doesn't allow it, ot it's done by law enforcement agencies surrepticiously). But maybe it IS true. I know it's legally mandated.
    - GJim 6mo ago
      > it seems just unbelievable that the statement is true So do you think UK/EU vehicle manufactures are deliberately in mass breach of data privacy law... fully knowing the cost of a consumer backlash, fines and vehicle recall costs to fix any law breach? Really? It's genuinely amazing how many Americans on here (a tech news site!) are unaware of data privacy law and expectations outside their homeland.
      - jaapz 6mo ago
        > So do you think UK/EU vehicle manufactures are deliberately in mass breach of data privacy law... fully knowing the cost of a consumer backlash, fines and vehicle recall costs to fix any law breach? They were also in mass breach of vehicle emission laws. The fact that there was some backlash (although people didn't really stop buying VAG cars), people got prosecuted, the company got fined, didn't really change their decisions while they were pumping out fraudulent cars. Yes, we should have privacy laws like this in the EU, this is a good thing! But thinking that, when these laws are in place, all companies magically will follow them is naive. To them it's still a cost/benefit analysis, and history has shown short term benefit trumps many other things for these companies.
- idiotsecant 6mo ago
  Its quite easily solved. Stop buying them. There's lots of cars out there that don't have these fun features. Buy them.
- frumplestlatz 6mo ago
  Your point is aptly demonstrated by the article — the car may still use tethering via Bluetooth to exfiltrate your data[1]. The workaround of always using a wired connection is both inconvenient and unreliable — the same facility could be added for wired connections at any time. I would like to see some form of IP/property rights applied to user data, with treble damages for willful infringement. The entire concept of collecting user data and calling it “telemetry” needs to be abandoned — including (especially) in the software industry. Collecting any user data ought to be something that makes corporate lawyers nervous. Unfortunately, I expect that to happen roughly after hell freezes over. [1] I couldn’t confirm that any car currently actually does this. Hypothetically, iPhone tethering is possible over both USB and Bluetooth if personal hotspot is enabled.
zekyl314 6mo ago
Exactly, and more and more places are removing cash as a payment option :(
- razakel 6mo ago
  Cash handling isn't free, and for smaller businesses might actually end up being more expensive than accepting electronic payments.
  - bigfishrunning 6mo ago
    If your margins are so razor thin that the cost of handling cash is significant, you need to raise your prices. Cash is legal tender -- not accepting it for in-person transactions is really shitty (maybe shouldn't be allowed?)
    - whamlastxmas 6mo ago
      It's not about "just raise prices", it's about some industries (e.g. upstart restaurants) that already have massive failure rates and have hyper competition. Even airlines don't make money on flights, and instead only on selling credits cards or other perks. If your operating costs are some percentage higher for accepting cash versus the coffee shop across the street that doesn't, you're more likely to fail.
      - bigfishrunning 6mo ago
        If everyone has to accept cash, then everyone has the same costs and the point is moot. At any rate, courts are required to accept legal tender, and I think that requirement ought to extend to businesses as well.
        angoragoats 6mo ago
        > At any rate, courts are required to accept legal tender Assuming you’re talking about the US here: there is no such requirement, at least not at the federal level. Individual states may have their own laws, but see for example this notice [0] from a Texas federal court that they will no longer accept cash as of May 21, 2021. [0] https://www.txnb.uscourts.gov/news/notice-court-will-no-longer-accept-cash-effective-may-1-2021 https://www.txnb.uscourts.gov/news/notice-court-will-no-long...
everdrive 6mo ago
Nonetheless I'll still try to maintain what privacy I can.
- B1FF_PSUVM 6mo ago
  You do you, John C. Calhoun of Minerva Road, Springfield, CO. An agent will be shortly with you to assist in that endeavor.
  - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 6mo ago
    > An agent will be shortly with you to assist in that endeavor. In some parts of the world that's a death sentence for the target. In other parts, it's one for the agent.
    - B1FF_PSUVM 6mo ago
      Oh, please. We're not cavemen here. A little coaching on internet best practices, a dash of psychological assistance, perhaps a girl scout cookie or two ...
drnick1 6mo ago
> And once you've gotten rid of Google and Apple, your telecom company tracks you, your CC payments help track you and even cameras in public do. Maybe, but what happens without the mod described is that Google and Apple track you in addition to the telecom company. That, of course, assumes that you carry a cell phone tied to your identity. Some people refuse to carry cell phones altogether because of the privacy implications, or use them mostly in airplane mode with an anonymous SIM for backup.
simplyluke 6mo ago
> your CC payments help track Not only that. Them and the point-of-sale vendors (aptly shortened PoS), sell that data. They tend to attempt to do this anonymized. How successful they are in anonymizing that is very much so up for debate. The websites (and even their retail locations) you buy from send your purchase data to meta and other advertisers directly via APIs so they can better track their marketing conversion rates. You can browse their APIs [1][2] to see what kind of data they like to get, but it tends to be every piece of identification they have on you. Rewards programs make this a much richer data set. You don't need to be a user of Google/Meta for them to build a marketing profile based on this. Google links your physical conversion from ads based on your maps data. Facebook does the same if you give them your location data. Many retailers attempt to use the bluetooth/wifi signals from your phone to track the same data even if you pay in cash [3]. There's no legal framework preventing this outside of the EU and California. 1: https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/ads-commerce/conversions-api/parameters https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/ads-commerce/c... 2: https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/conversions/upload-offline https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/conversion... 3: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/14/opinion/bluetooth-wireless-tracking-privacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/14/opinion/bluet...
- lesuorac 6mo ago
  > They tend to attempt to do this anonymized. How successful they are in anonymizing that is very much so up for debate. Yeah I think the big thing to push or talk about is that there is no such thing as "anonymized". There's only such as a thing as "can only be identified as X many people". Like for a given dataset you can make any data point correlated to 1 of say 50 people. If somebody is anonymizing data and they don't provide a k-anonmizity [1] you should just assume it's 1:1 and effectively not anonmized. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-anonymity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-anonymity
  - bamnet 6mo ago
    K-Anonymity isn't the only technique. Differential Privacy is arguably more robust.
asdefghyk 6mo ago
RE .... company tracks you ..... [ somewhat off topis ] Did you know ... in many countries government tracks car number plates and the data is stored for many years.
asdff 6mo ago
At least you can shut your cellphone off and pay in cash.
Henchman21 6mo ago
Perhaps it's time to give up some convenience for old ways, eh?
brikym 6mo ago
A friend used to work in ad tech years ago. The telecoms sell real time location data to digital billboard companies which are targeted at whoever is nearby. It's basically minority report. I can definitely imagine they're now using visual processing and face recognition on the billboards.
nullsanity 6mo ago
[dead]
kyleblarson 6mo ago
1987 4runner, no phone, use cash.
- King-Aaron 6mo ago
  I have heard whispers at times that people who operate 'off grid' like this end up being viewed heavily as persons of interest. Anecdotally via friends in law enforcement.
  - kyleblarson 6mo ago
    I live in Idaho so I don't think that's much of an issue.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 6mo ago
      You live in ID and you still have an 87 4-Runner that hasn't fallen apart from rust? I'm doubly impressed.
- techdmn 6mo ago
  Increasingly headed in this direction. Already have the old Toyota and use cash. I've been saying for years that advertising ruined the internet, we're getting to the point where surveillance is ruining computing.
jazzyjackson 6mo ago
I use a googleless flip phone and just don't do anything important on it, and leave it behind often. We didn't always carry tracking devices with us, you can choose not to. You can also buy an older car that doesn't come with a SIM card installed.
- abc123abc123 6mo ago
  This is the way! But note that telcos are working hard to ban dumbphones from their networks. There is a clear push to force people to dump dumbphones and accept the digital surveillane device. Should that happen, I will move to a VoIP provider. Not perfect, but better than a smartphone.
port11 6mo ago
It’s still worth minimising how many companies get your data, and minimising the data itself. I’m not sure what data Apple and Google get specifically out of their car thingies, but it’s very easy to avoid using their car thingie.
abc123abc123 6mo ago
True, but we must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I don't own a smartphone, so neither google nor apple track anything about me that way. I leave my dumbphone at home when I'm out and about, so it basically works like a traditional landline phone, again, no data there (except for phone calls and textmessages of course). My car is old, so no gps/trackers there, but this is troubling of course. I think that if/when I buy a new one, it has to be either some vintage car, or I have to find a workshop who can rip out all the tracking. CC payments can be mitigated by paying cash, when available. But yes, CC and bank are a concern and so is CCTV.
HeyLaughingBoy 6mo ago
Whenever these "privacy concerns" come up, I can't help but remember Elf Sternberg (whatever happened to him?) mentioning in 1998 that online privacy was a lost cause because everything you did was in a database somewhere. The only thing that's changed in the intervening 28 years is that we produce even more data.
- HeyLaughingBoy 6mo ago
  > (whatever happened to him?) He's apparently now better known for other aspects than his insights into large databases!

dualvariable 6mo ago

This is one of those things that can't ever be solved with individual solutions but needs to be solved through legislation and standards, and ideally a fundamental right to privacy (and a fundamental redefinition of what privacy means when it comes to corporate surveillance of individuals).

whamlastxmas 6mo ago
[flagged]
- foresto 6mo ago
  > Government leaders will never give up their pipeline of knowing everything about everyone. Then let us hire different leaders into government. Public servants, not overlords.
  - HenryBemis 6mo ago
    If you have noticed, every independent candidate almost never gets elected. Vast majority of those who say they will "change the country to the better" either never get elected or are ousted early on. And those who stay change their tune. I fear that only blackmail-able people with the potential to win elections, get the support, so that they are beholden to someone who ultimately gives them the job (e.g. funding their campaign) and has to return the favor x10 when elected, so promises go out the window and new reality sets in.
    - mothballed 6mo ago
      Someone tried to create an entirely new country with minimal governance by dumping sand on a submerged reef until it became an island[]. Even then it was quickly co-opted by the nearing statist powers (Tonga) with the blessing of western powers. So it's not just that the primary process will crush anyone who will seriously roll back government powers. They won't even let anyone peacefully create an entirely new fucking island to try and get away from the tyrants and do it while leaving everyone else alone and not messing with the powers that be. [] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Minerva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Minerva
      - anonymars 6mo ago
        Isn't that the libertarian paradox in a nutshell, the entire reason why "government" exists? Because in reality, the alternative is "might makes right" and a larger, stronger group will band together and steamroll the smaller and uncoordinated individuals?
        mothballed 6mo ago
        Government is might makes right, just with a nice name slapped on it. Minerva was minarchist, not anarchist, but for whatever reason they chose not to defend their country by force. Somaliland and the remains of Rojava come to mind as present-day ~minarchist governments that defended their territory by force and ~succeeded. The point being is these kind of changes won't be allowed by election or peacefully. The primaries stop the election process and the militaries stop the peaceful separation process. America did have a period of relatively small government intervention at the beginning, but that took a war with Britain. It also had some periods of it during the pre-founding (some of 1600s Pennsylvania and Rhode Island while Britain was occupied elsewhere). Pennsylvania (before it was a state) in particular was basically straight up anarchist for I want to say, about 20 years.
        PaulDavisThe1st 6mo ago
        > relatively small government intervention at the beginning, Yes, the women, slaves, non-land-owners and native Americans all loved that phase! It was paradise on earth and the embodiment of the eternal liberty to which all (*) humans are entitled. (*) your experience may vary, depending on your membership of various demographics. Some restrictions apply. Please see package for details.
  - wahnfrieden 6mo ago
    Hierarchical power conflicts with servitude
- throwway120385 6mo ago
  I guess we'll just sit on our hands and do nothing, then.
GJim 6mo ago
Needless to say, cars in the UK/EU have no such privacy invading features without an explicit opt-in thanks to sensible data protection legislation; including the GDPR. The FUD spouted on here by the scummy adtech industry about legislation to protect YOUR privacy is mind boggling. These are the people doing the digital equivalent of sniffing your underwear to work out what you had for breakfast. (And before somebody shouts FUD about the UK/EU vehicle eCall 112 system, that certainly doesn't track you or seek to invade your privacy on any level!)
- golem14 6mo ago
  I'm tempted to say "oh you sweet summer child", because it seems just unbelievable that the statement is true (in the sense that the small print in rental cars and sales contracts doesn't allow it, ot it's done by law enforcement agencies surrepticiously). But maybe it IS true. I know it's legally mandated.
  - GJim 6mo ago
    > it seems just unbelievable that the statement is true So do you think UK/EU vehicle manufactures are deliberately in mass breach of data privacy law... fully knowing the cost of a consumer backlash, fines and vehicle recall costs to fix any law breach? Really? It's genuinely amazing how many Americans on here (a tech news site!) are unaware of data privacy law and expectations outside their homeland.
    - jaapz 6mo ago
      > So do you think UK/EU vehicle manufactures are deliberately in mass breach of data privacy law... fully knowing the cost of a consumer backlash, fines and vehicle recall costs to fix any law breach? They were also in mass breach of vehicle emission laws. The fact that there was some backlash (although people didn't really stop buying VAG cars), people got prosecuted, the company got fined, didn't really change their decisions while they were pumping out fraudulent cars. Yes, we should have privacy laws like this in the EU, this is a good thing! But thinking that, when these laws are in place, all companies magically will follow them is naive. To them it's still a cost/benefit analysis, and history has shown short term benefit trumps many other things for these companies.
idiotsecant 6mo ago
Its quite easily solved. Stop buying them. There's lots of cars out there that don't have these fun features. Buy them.
frumplestlatz 6mo ago
Your point is aptly demonstrated by the article — the car may still use tethering via Bluetooth to exfiltrate your data[1]. The workaround of always using a wired connection is both inconvenient and unreliable — the same facility could be added for wired connections at any time. I would like to see some form of IP/property rights applied to user data, with treble damages for willful infringement. The entire concept of collecting user data and calling it “telemetry” needs to be abandoned — including (especially) in the software industry. Collecting any user data ought to be something that makes corporate lawyers nervous. Unfortunately, I expect that to happen roughly after hell freezes over. [1] I couldn’t confirm that any car currently actually does this. Hypothetically, iPhone tethering is possible over both USB and Bluetooth if personal hotspot is enabled.

zekyl314 6mo ago

Exactly, and more and more places are removing cash as a payment option :(

razakel 6mo ago
Cash handling isn't free, and for smaller businesses might actually end up being more expensive than accepting electronic payments.
- bigfishrunning 6mo ago
  If your margins are so razor thin that the cost of handling cash is significant, you need to raise your prices. Cash is legal tender -- not accepting it for in-person transactions is really shitty (maybe shouldn't be allowed?)
  - whamlastxmas 6mo ago
    It's not about "just raise prices", it's about some industries (e.g. upstart restaurants) that already have massive failure rates and have hyper competition. Even airlines don't make money on flights, and instead only on selling credits cards or other perks. If your operating costs are some percentage higher for accepting cash versus the coffee shop across the street that doesn't, you're more likely to fail.
    - bigfishrunning 6mo ago
      If everyone has to accept cash, then everyone has the same costs and the point is moot. At any rate, courts are required to accept legal tender, and I think that requirement ought to extend to businesses as well.
      - angoragoats 6mo ago
        > At any rate, courts are required to accept legal tender Assuming you’re talking about the US here: there is no such requirement, at least not at the federal level. Individual states may have their own laws, but see for example this notice [0] from a Texas federal court that they will no longer accept cash as of May 21, 2021. [0] https://www.txnb.uscourts.gov/news/notice-court-will-no-longer-accept-cash-effective-may-1-2021 https://www.txnb.uscourts.gov/news/notice-court-will-no-long...

everdrive 6mo ago

Nonetheless I'll still try to maintain what privacy I can.

B1FF_PSUVM 6mo ago
You do you, John C. Calhoun of Minerva Road, Springfield, CO. An agent will be shortly with you to assist in that endeavor.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 6mo ago
  > An agent will be shortly with you to assist in that endeavor. In some parts of the world that's a death sentence for the target. In other parts, it's one for the agent.
  - B1FF_PSUVM 6mo ago
    Oh, please. We're not cavemen here. A little coaching on internet best practices, a dash of psychological assistance, perhaps a girl scout cookie or two ...

drnick1 6mo ago

> And once you've gotten rid of Google and Apple, your telecom company tracks you, your CC payments help track you and even cameras in public do. Maybe, but what happens without the mod described is that Google and Apple track you in addition to the telecom company. That, of course, assumes that you carry a cell phone tied to your identity. Some people refuse to carry cell phones altogether because of the privacy implications, or use them mostly in airplane mode with an anonymous SIM for backup.

simplyluke 6mo ago

> your CC payments help track Not only that. Them and the point-of-sale vendors (aptly shortened PoS), sell that data. They tend to attempt to do this anonymized. How successful they are in anonymizing that is very much so up for debate. The websites (and even their retail locations) you buy from send your purchase data to meta and other advertisers directly via APIs so they can better track their marketing conversion rates. You can browse their APIs [1][2] to see what kind of data they like to get, but it tends to be every piece of identification they have on you. Rewards programs make this a much richer data set. You don't need to be a user of Google/Meta for them to build a marketing profile based on this. Google links your physical conversion from ads based on your maps data. Facebook does the same if you give them your location data. Many retailers attempt to use the bluetooth/wifi signals from your phone to track the same data even if you pay in cash [3]. There's no legal framework preventing this outside of the EU and California. 1: https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/ads-commerce/conversions-api/parameters https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/ads-commerce/c... 2: https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/conversions/upload-offline https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/conversion... 3: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/14/opinion/bluetooth-wireless-tracking-privacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/14/opinion/bluet...

lesuorac 6mo ago
> They tend to attempt to do this anonymized. How successful they are in anonymizing that is very much so up for debate. Yeah I think the big thing to push or talk about is that there is no such thing as "anonymized". There's only such as a thing as "can only be identified as X many people". Like for a given dataset you can make any data point correlated to 1 of say 50 people. If somebody is anonymizing data and they don't provide a k-anonmizity [1] you should just assume it's 1:1 and effectively not anonmized. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-anonymity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-anonymity
- bamnet 6mo ago
  K-Anonymity isn't the only technique. Differential Privacy is arguably more robust.

asdefghyk 6mo ago

RE .... company tracks you ..... [ somewhat off topis ] Did you know ... in many countries government tracks car number plates and the data is stored for many years.

asdff 6mo ago

At least you can shut your cellphone off and pay in cash.

Henchman21 6mo ago

Perhaps it's time to give up some convenience for old ways, eh?

brikym 6mo ago

A friend used to work in ad tech years ago. The telecoms sell real time location data to digital billboard companies which are targeted at whoever is nearby. It's basically minority report. I can definitely imagine they're now using visual processing and face recognition on the billboards.

nullsanity 6mo ago

[dead]

kyleblarson 6mo ago

1987 4runner, no phone, use cash.

King-Aaron 6mo ago
I have heard whispers at times that people who operate 'off grid' like this end up being viewed heavily as persons of interest. Anecdotally via friends in law enforcement.
- kyleblarson 6mo ago
  I live in Idaho so I don't think that's much of an issue.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 6mo ago
    You live in ID and you still have an 87 4-Runner that hasn't fallen apart from rust? I'm doubly impressed.
techdmn 6mo ago
Increasingly headed in this direction. Already have the old Toyota and use cash. I've been saying for years that advertising ruined the internet, we're getting to the point where surveillance is ruining computing.

jazzyjackson 6mo ago

I use a googleless flip phone and just don't do anything important on it, and leave it behind often. We didn't always carry tracking devices with us, you can choose not to. You can also buy an older car that doesn't come with a SIM card installed.

abc123abc123 6mo ago
This is the way! But note that telcos are working hard to ban dumbphones from their networks. There is a clear push to force people to dump dumbphones and accept the digital surveillane device. Should that happen, I will move to a VoIP provider. Not perfect, but better than a smartphone.

port11 6mo ago

It’s still worth minimising how many companies get your data, and minimising the data itself. I’m not sure what data Apple and Google get specifically out of their car thingies, but it’s very easy to avoid using their car thingie.

abc123abc123 6mo ago

True, but we must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I don't own a smartphone, so neither google nor apple track anything about me that way. I leave my dumbphone at home when I'm out and about, so it basically works like a traditional landline phone, again, no data there (except for phone calls and textmessages of course). My car is old, so no gps/trackers there, but this is troubling of course. I think that if/when I buy a new one, it has to be either some vintage car, or I have to find a workshop who can rip out all the tracking. CC payments can be mitigated by paying cash, when available. But yes, CC and bank are a concern and so is CCTV.

HeyLaughingBoy 6mo ago

Whenever these "privacy concerns" come up, I can't help but remember Elf Sternberg (whatever happened to him?) mentioning in 1998 that online privacy was a lost cause because everything you did was in a database somewhere. The only thing that's changed in the intervening 28 years is that we produce even more data.

HeyLaughingBoy 6mo ago
> (whatever happened to him?) He's apparently now better known for other aspects than his insights into large databases!