Here I am, so smug that I don’t turn on location services on my phone. Thinking, “Ha! You can’t track me.”
This is me eating crow. OK. Not crow, because crow isn’t kosher. But, you get the idea.
And, I am also going to credit a Fox commentator for bringing this to light. Tucker Carlson. You know, the guy who wore bow ties on TV forever. (No more. Now, he wants to be taken seriously.)
It seems that last month, Carlson sent out a Fox news anchor (Brett Larson) on an escapade across the District (of Columbia, of course). On this special journey, Brett carried two telephones, neither of which had a SIM [subscriber identification module] card installed. Moreover, one of the devices was set to “airplane mode”, while the other was not so engaged.
In case you don’t know what that term means, setting your phone to airplane mode is supposed to mean that all RF (radio-frequency) signals are terminated. So, the user can’t make telephone calls, connect to a Bluetooth device, and neither send nor receive a WiFi signal.
Did you read that list above? Because it describes the true problem. Most phones do NOT turn off their GPS- global positioning system information- since no radio waves are involved in that technology, when the phone is activated (I don’t know why we don’t call it deactivated) into airplane mode. And, if that weren’t alarming enough, more than a few Nokia smartphones are able to reach 911, even when said phone is in airplane mode. (The only guaranteed benefit of airplane mode is that the battery life is greatly extended [since nothing is really running] when the phone is in airplane mode. )
Back to this study. Both of the phones were kept in Brett’s pocket, as he went about his “tour”. Brett walked a bit around the Senate Office Building; he had already hired a limo to drive him to Children’s Hospital, St. Alban’s (a private school near the National Cathedral) and then to return him to North Capitol Street. The only time Brett used the phones all day was when he took some selfies at the National Cathedral grounds.
Once Brett returned to the Fox news bureau, he connected both phones up to a device to monitor any transmissions it may provide (it was intermediate between the phone and the “WiFi” device) and then turned on his WiFi. He was somewhat surprised when he found the phones immediately transmitted some 300 KB (kilobytes) of data to Google.
The good news? (Just so you know, there isn’t much good news for you and me.) The phones did NOT transmit the exact route the Brett took. But, it was damned close.
Not only did it clock the route, but it clocked (as in to the second!) the stops, when he got out of the car, when he went back in, and how long he spent in every single location during the test.
When a discussion with Google was held, the firm claimed that the user had already agreed to sign away their privacy- but it could be possible for a user to “opt out” of location history. (Just so you know, you’d have better luck calling up the IRS for help on 15 April on their 1-800-829-1040 number and expecting to reach a human in under 3 hours, and not be disconnected while waiting for that human.)
As the report indicated, we are not the customer. We are the product. The one Google sells to anyone who wants our data.
(&&%^#!!!!!
Oh my god!!! So there is basically nothing we can do if we have a cell phone?
So, Jeanine, the answer is maybe. Some of the phone are provided with a GPS setting- which means maybe we can modify it from our Settings menu. (We need to seek out Location Services, GPS, GPS Services, or GPS tracking- and turn it off. However, that may mean it will be tough for our phones to find a satellite signal. And, 911 will CERTAINLY NOT work.) But, even then, the phone may still be tracking our location (because there are hidden places for the GPS). The only way to turn it off completely is to pull the battery out. Oh, yeah, then it’s a brick and not a smartphone.
We are shocked, shocked! And then the Austin bomber is caught because they were able to track him via his cell phone. All technology (starting, perhaps, with fire) is double edged, used for good and for evil. It’s up to us to decide which wins out, good or evil. We’ve all been asleep at the switch of a train about to derail, everyone of us. Have we woken up in time?
Alana recently posted..Spring is Here Give a Cheer
I don’t know if we have. Or, what folks who have Google Home or Alexa will do when they find out what patent applications their vendors have proposed- to classify and mine overheard conversations….