495
Location tracking of phones is out of control. Here’s how to fight back.
(arstechnica.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
495 points (99.4% liked)
Technology
59559 readers
2157 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
A lot of great comments here. I just wanted to add that even just your ip address is enough to roughly track your location. When your phone checks gmail you are leaving digital breadcrumbs in Google’s logs of your ip address which roughly tracks your location. App permissions will not solve this. We need strong privacy regulations with teeth.
And then there's wifi triangulation and Bluetooth which narrows it down further
And this is why my GPS and Bluetooth are disabled 99% of the time unless I'm actually using them. It cuts down on a lot of potential data leakage.
Can't they just triangulate you from cell towers?
Take the battery out I guess?
Yup, but that would require more effort (I.e. interacting w/ network operator). Tracking someone by Bluetooth can be done passively, as evidenced by services like "Find my Droid" or "Find my iPhone" or whatever.
Blocking my cell radios eliminates the entire point of the phone for me, so the tradeoff is too steep. That said, airplane mode is right over there if you need it temporarily.
What phone do you have, one of these?
A VPN helps
There are still attacks that can get around the VPN. It certainly helps, but it's not a complete solution on its own like VPN providers would like you to believe.
Yes and no, when I check my actual IP address it shows that it's somewhere pretty far away, I guess that's where my carrier has their trunk connected.
Yes, I am in Sweden, totally, believe it ipaddr checkers!