this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
178 points (98.4% liked)

Privacy

31921 readers
746 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Location firm Near describes itself as “The World’s Largest Dataset of People’s Behavior in the Real-World,” with data representing “1.6B people across 44 countries.” Mobilewalla boasts “40+ Countries, 1.9B+ Devices, 50B Mobile Signals Daily, 5+ Years of Data.” X-Mode’s website claims its data covers “25%+ of the Adult U.S. population monthly.”

Fast food restaurants and other businesses have been known to buy location data for advertising purposes down to a person’s steps. For example, in 2018, Burger King ran a promotion in which, if a customer’s phone was within 600 feet of a McDonalds, the Burger King app would let the user buy a Whopper for one cent.

Outlogic (formerly known as X-Mode) offers a license for a location dataset titled “Cyber Security Location data” on Datarade for $240,000 per year. The listing says “Outlogic’s accurate and granular location data is collected directly from a mobile device’s GPS.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I might know the answer beforehand, but still: Does it change anything regarding data collection if I turn off my location on android in the top menu?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Carrier probably collect and sell your location radio direction and range telemetry from towers. Especially with 5G, high antenna diversity and beam forming automatic gain control can probably locate you better than 10 meters at all times.

What I want to know is, how can I buy this data for people I don't like ?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Triangulation is actually based on other devices which I never knew.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yes, 3 towers just need to know how strong your signal is, the intersection of 3 circle is where you are.

But for a long time, antenna towers have multiple antenna, so each tower know your azimuth and distance on its own.

There is no escape. This is why ham radio was kneecapped too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Could you expand on ham being handicapped? I'm not familiar with this.

Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

By forbidding encryption so that hans can't carry civil internet. And then by not using bandwidth, ham get confined to smaller and smaller sections of the spectrum.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago