Cop Watch

[Obie]

Sick of the NSA Tracking You? Burn Them with a Burner Phone

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/sick-of-th...ner-phone/

[kalakoa]

I can turn the most accurate tracking off with my phone.

No; you can turn off the icon that indicates location tracking is being used.

The phone is an opaque device which is not under your control.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Personally, I don’t mind if they track me. I doubt my activities would be of any interest to anyone.

I’m just surprised that people get up in arms about a visible police state, but completely ignore a potentially far more invasive invisible police state. But out of sight, out of mind, right?

[Obie]

Until I'm forced to take up armed robbery, I'm not too worried about being tracked either.

Tracking is a good thing when you call 911.

[ironyak]

kalakoa - No; you can turn off the icon that indicates location tracking is being used.

That's an even darker consideration, but given what we've seen come from Snowden and Google reveals, it wouldn't really surprise me.

https://www.theverge.com/2013/7/17/45174...heat-sheet

https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/11/20690...gs-vrt-nws

If you read the Google and Apple plans, their first step is an app you can download, then possibly OS level changes rolled out to everyone (with the option to opt out or so they say).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52246319

However, given the national emergency and the priority of public health and safety, opting out might not be so easy, any more than not ending up in Unacast's proprietary dataset without your knowledge.

[Guest]

Now about those bridges..

[1voyager1]

Yeah, I qualify as a dinosaur.
My cellphone is an old style flip phone with no addons.
It never connects to the i-net.
Plus, it is only used in emergency conditions, or when M'Lady tells me to take it with me.
EDIT:
Our primary phone is a land line.
I do very little on the i-net anymore except glean info.
I use a VPN for almost all my i-net connections.
I keep no financial or other info on the computer.
I give little to no personal information on i-net or cellphone.
My computer knows very little about me personally.

So, I haven't the faintest idea as to what you're talking about.

- - - - - - - - - - -
Was a Democrat until gun control became a knee jerk, then a Republican until the crazies took over, nothing left.

[Guest]

Hey Obie, while you're considering the bridges, you might want to check out this article from awhile back in the NY Times regarding the very subject we've been discussing.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019...ivacy.html

In Stores, Secret Surveillance Tracks Your Every Move
As you shop, “beacons” are watching you, using hidden technology in your phone.

And, since I suspect you aren't a subscriber, and I do think the gist of this article is important to fully appreciate how insidious, and pervasive, and lucrative, the collection of our location data is (and how little control we have over it) here's a sample of this rather lengthy and detailed description of one small segment of the location data industry.

Imagine you are shopping in your favorite grocery store. As you approach the dairy aisle, you are sent a push notification in your phone: “10 percent off your favorite yogurt! Click here to redeem your coupon.” You considered buying yogurt on your last trip to the store, but you decided against it. How did your phone know?

Your smartphone was tracking you. The grocery store got your location data and paid a shadowy group of marketers to use that information to target you with ads. Recent reports have noted how companies use data gathered from cell towers, ambient Wi-Fi, and GPS. But the location data industry has a much more precise, and unobtrusive, tool: Bluetooth beacons.

These beacons are small, inobtrusive electronic devices that are hidden throughout the grocery store; an app on your phone that communicates with them informed the company not only that you had entered the building, but that you had lingered for two minutes in front of the low-fat Chobanis.

Most location services use cell towers and GPS, but these technologies have limitations. Cell towers have wide coverage, but low location accuracy: An advertiser can think you are in Walgreens, but you’re actually in McDonald’s next door. GPS, by contrast, can be accurate to a radius of around five meters (16 feet), but it does not work well indoors.

Bluetooth beacons, however, can track your location accurately from a range of inches to about 50 meters. They use little energy, and they work well indoors. That has made them popular among companies that want precise tracking inside a store.

Most people aren’t aware they are being watched with beacons, but the “beacosystem” tracks millions of people every day. Beacons are placed at airports, malls, subways, buses, taxis, sporting arenas, gyms, hotels, hospitals, music festivals, cinemas and museums, and even on billboards.

In order to track you or trigger an action like a coupon or message to your phone, companies need you to install an app on your phone that will recognize the beacon in the store. Retailers (like Target and Walmart) that use Bluetooth beacons typically build tracking into their own apps. But retailers want to make sure most of their customers can be tracked — not just the ones that download their own particular app.

So a hidden industry of third-party location-marketing firms has proliferated in response. These companies take their beacon tracking code and bundle it into a toolkit developers can use.

The makers of many popular apps, such as those for news or weather updates, insert these toolkits into their apps. They might be paid by the beacon companies or receive other benefits, like detailed reports on their users.

Location data companies often collect additional data provided by apps. A location company called Pulsate, for example, encourages app developers to pass them customer email addresses and names.

You really should read the article in full. It's amazing how valuable, and easy to get, your location data is. And yeah, I am sure you can turn your phone down to some bare minimum every which way.. but still there's a guy has already figured out how to get around that too. Our behavior, the patterns of our lives, and the myriad of ways we can be manipulated once they are understood, are just too valuable to let it all just go by. And, of course, we can minimize it. It's all in our lifestyle choices for sure. But still, might as well know what's going around.

[Obie]

quote:

---

Originally posted by hokuili

Hey Obie, while you're considering the bridges, you might want to check out this article from awhile back in the NY Times regarding the very subject we've been discussing.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019...ivacy.html

In Stores, Secret Surveillance Tracks Your Every Move
As you shop, “beacons” are watching you, using hidden technology in your phone.

And, since I suspect you aren't a subscriber, and I do think the gist of this article is important to fully appreciate how insidious, and pervasive, and lucrative, the collection of our location data is (and how little control we have over it) here's a sample of this rather lengthy and detailed description of one small segment of the location data industry.

Imagine you are shopping in your favorite grocery store. As you approach the dairy aisle, you are sent a push notification in your phone: “10 percent off your favorite yogurt! Click here to redeem your coupon.” You considered buying yogurt on your last trip to the store, but you decided against it. How did your phone know?

Your smartphone was tracking you. The grocery store got your location data and paid a shadowy group of marketers to use that information to target you with ads. Recent reports have noted how companies use data gathered from cell towers, ambient Wi-Fi, and GPS. But the location data industry has a much more precise, and unobtrusive, tool: Bluetooth beacons.

These beacons are small, inobtrusive electronic devices that are hidden throughout the grocery store; an app on your phone that communicates with them informed the company not only that you had entered the building, but that you had lingered for two minutes in front of the low-fat Chobanis.

Most location services use cell towers and GPS, but these technologies have limitations. Cell towers have wide coverage, but low location accuracy: An advertiser can think you are in Walgreens, but you’re actually in McDonald’s next door. GPS, by contrast, can be accurate to a radius of around five meters (16 feet), but it does not work well indoors.

Bluetooth beacons, however, can track your location accurately from a range of inches to about 50 meters. They use little energy, and they work well indoors. That has made them popular among companies that want precise tracking inside a store.

Most people aren’t aware they are being watched with beacons, but the “beacosystem” tracks millions of people every day. Beacons are placed at airports, malls, subways, buses, taxis, sporting arenas, gyms, hotels, hospitals, music festivals, cinemas and museums, and even on billboards.

In order to track you or trigger an action like a coupon or message to your phone, companies need you to install an app on your phone that will recognize the beacon in the store. Retailers (like Target and Walmart) that use Bluetooth beacons typically build tracking into their own apps. But retailers want to make sure most of their customers can be tracked — not just the ones that download their own particular app.

So a hidden industry of third-party location-marketing firms has proliferated in response. These companies take their beacon tracking code and bundle it into a toolkit developers can use.

The makers of many popular apps, such as those for news or weather updates, insert these toolkits into their apps. They might be paid by the beacon companies or receive other benefits, like detailed reports on their users.

Location data companies often collect additional data provided by apps. A location company called Pulsate, for example, encourages app developers to pass them customer email addresses and names.

You really should read the article in full. It's amazing how valuable, and easy to get, your location data is. And yeah, I am sure you can turn your phone down to some bare minimum every which way.. but still there's a guy has already figured out how to get around that too. Our behavior, the patterns of our lives, and the myriad of ways we can be manipulated once they are understood, are just too valuable to let it all just go by. And, of course, we can minimize it. It's all in our lifestyle choices for sure. But still, might as well know what's going around.

---

I have a flip phone that still works. My current phone is an unlocked android that I installed my own software on.