Haha, hahahahaha. Sure. Not only are they not going to do this, but since it was brought up they’ll probably relax rules involving privacy with the carriers because it’s “good for the consumer” or some BS.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
LocationSmart Bug Provided Easy Access to Real-Time Location Data of Millions of Phones
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
The carriers also need to know which physical towers every device is connected to at all times in order to route packets
VPN service wont stop the cell tower based tracking.
Doesn't help. And I wouldn't even trust such a service with my internet traffic.
[doublepost=1526677676][/doublepost]What ****heads. Why are the cell companies giving them this data, in real-time of all things?!
First in replies/comments are usually stupid.
Your comment didn’t disappoint, just proved the point.
It's not worthy of a lawyers time. Well it is, but it's a losing proposition. We (me, you, and erbody else) give the carriers the right to use our location data as they see fit. It's the same right we give to phone makers like Apple and Samsung. None of parties involved consider location data as personal info anyway. They all tell us that in their privacy policies.
cant believe people are critical on how the government track their every move when it was hitler's time but right now they are bring tracked right under their own nose by the 'best' country. this is what happens when you give corporations this kind of power. US citizens are so delusional on their 'freedom'
I switched to payphones and homing pigeons. No one is tracking me yet!Simple solution, just don't use a mobile phone.
Even non smart phones can be tracked.
Seems like if you take my location (or my height, hair colour or pizza preference) and tie it in a 1:1 relationship with my cell phone number you've created a direct association with me, an individual. Isn't that why Apple makes such a stink all the time about anonymized, hashed device IDs when they talk Siri queries? Maybe I've misunderstood?
that does not, on its own, permit direct association
I think you have misunderstood. Well, more so conflated than misunderstood. Look at it this way.
Apple collects data about you. Data they classify as personal and non-personal. Location data along with a ton of other data points, is classified as non-personal. Apple tells you they can do whatever they want with that data, including sharing it. On its own, one of those data points may not be able to permit direct association. Collectively, and with other data... say I provide a telephone number to go with that Apple data and LocationSmart adds that to data they've collected from other sources...
Apple's privacy policy covers Apple. It doesn't cover 3rd party Apple partners. A lot of us assumes it does. That same privacy policy tells us it doesn't, but we (collectively) don't read it and assume phrases like "We don't sell your data" and "You are not the product" mean something they don't.
Apple making a stink (just borrowing your phrase) about privacy related to Siri queries can't be conflated with Apple's policies regarding other parts of their operation. Apple hashing device ID's on Siri queries doesn't negate what their privacy policy says they can do with data.
Last edited:
Aha. The devil, as they say, is in the details. Thanks for putting it in such rational, non-shouty, non-disparaging/forum-style terms. I (and others, I'd assume) appreciate it.
Yeah, I am fairly sure that Apple (or Samsung or Google for that matter) does not sell your realtime location associated with your phone number - something that is easily searchable for anyone who knows your name. I actually find it hard to believe that even Cell phone carriers can be scummy enough to sell something like that wholesale. They might sell your location associated with some unique anonymized ID that's not your phone number, and then, as you said, this LocationSmart company somehow associates it with people's phone numbers (how, though?). I'm not surprised that FCC is going to investigate into this company, I find it hard to believe that what they are doing is actually legal.
I hope my quote didn't imply that I think any of those companies are selling location data. That's not the case at all. What they can do is share data with 3rd parties. What those 3rd parties do with that data is unknown. I don't think the activities of LocationSmart are legal either, but that is yet to be determined. Regardless, my quotes were less about LocationSmart and more about the data collection and sharing that we simultaneously rail against and allow companies to use.
One thing this capability is important for, at least for many users, is to receive regionally localized weather/emergency and/or AMBER alerts. A few nights ago, at a crowded, very noisy little pub in N Virginia - everyone seemed to be looking at their phones - it was a flash flooding alert. I do assume though it can be abused, and is.
An item (Slashdot Aug 2017) cites Zack Whittaker in ZDNet suggesting that a firm, Reveal Mobile, gathers(d?) locations and router SSIDs/MAC #s and monetizes(d?) them. (https://apple.slashdot.org/story/17...cation-data-even-when-location-sharing-is-off)
Among the inadvertent? suppliers of the location information (bug or feature) was the Accuweather iOS app. It was apparently fixed (https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/0...s-ios-app-to-address-privacy-outcry?sdsrc=rel)
So it happens.
I'm sure you're a very ethical person, but anyone can (and does) parrot this spiel, and people not technically inclined (ie, most of the planet) just take your word for it, blindly, at face value... as - let's be honest - what ELSE can they do? Red faces and corporate-speak-formed "apologies" and promises of "Looking into this" and "we are investigating this, and will put measures in place to ensure..." <yadda yadda yadda> inevitably, predicatably GUSH OUT when something goes wrong, because - unlike hardware - software is like the written word - it all LOOKS good at the first few glances, but all it takes is ONE BYTE to mess up the lives of many users.
All the "reassurances" in the world, are as good as useless. Unlike the constants in the atomic, PHYSICAL domain of hardware, the "laws" of software are changed on a daily basis...
You can only try, but NOTHING is guaranteed. I do not mean to undermine your sincerity, but with software, people trust you as much as N.E. Other Corp, Inc, IE, as much as they can, and to the limit of their knowledge of the mechanisms, which is ZERO.
You both seem to don't understand the tech behind cell towers, they can track you since the beginning of GSM, each mobile is connected to a cell tower, they know which tower you are connected to, and by triangulation they know your whereabouts.
Yep, but aggregation from multiple carriers, would more people have a problem with that ? less so, if its just aggregated users from the same carrier.
That wouldn’t help.
[doublepost=1526729556][/doublepost]
Payphones and homing pigeons don’t tend to use GSM.
Can you trust those pigeons not to leak your whereabouts to the highest bidder...?