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Location tracking of phones is out of control. Here’s how to fight back.
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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If you have a device that's actively connected to a cellular network, and has been while in your home or work, then your only option is to leave it behind or turn it off. That includes your car if it was made in the past decade, if nothing else, so it can catch OTA firmware updates, and send telemetry data.
GPS and location services don't mean shit when your carrier keeps logs of where you've been based on cell-tower triangulation.
I work for a telecom. In my country there is well regulated legislation that specifies how and when the police can ask the telecoms for cell location data, usually used for missing people.
They also provide large scale, anonymised data for crowd movement analysis. For example it was used to demonstrate how 60,000 people moved into and out of a stadium located for historical reasons in an old-fashioned, dense residential area, in preparation for the arrival of English football fans.
You also have to assume that your government has never illegally obtained data it shouldn't have in a shady manner.
It also doesn't bode well for what happens if your country falls into fascism, as all that data will still exist to be systematically, and retroactively used against you.
One of the good things about living in Ireland is that I'm 99% our government is neither competent enough to perpetrate elaborate crimes against its people without being exposed almost instantly, nor powerful enough that even fascists getting into government would have a meaningful impact bar providing a colourful humorous segment of the inevitable documentary on Europe's second fall to the Axis.
This video, where Veritaseum hacks LinusTechTips' phone, gives a good overview of how it's possible to track cellphones or hack sms, even without asking a carrier or having physical access to the device: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wVyu7NB7W6Y
TLDW: cellphone networks rely on old, unsecure infrastructure
GPS had been implemented in vehicles in the 90's. Most people are now finding out about the modems.
Yeah but it was a luxury, and most likely an RX-only unit that only had a GPS radio. Even if you had a 2g cell radio in the 90's in your car it'd be incredibly limited, and horrendously expensive for something you could carry in your pocket.
These days even the cheapest model of Honda Civic will have a modern internet connected network of microcontrollers and computers which all receive OTA updates, many of which handle telemetry.