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Comment by wyldfire | Hacker News Reader

I'm about to go commit a crime. How do I turn off this feature?

Leave it at home. Don't think that Google is the only culprit here. As long as you're connected to public infrastructure there's a company that will be legally obligated to narc on you.

Google might be just the latest addition. Or maybe the traditional media has declared outright war on internet companies in retaliation for taking their ad and subscriber revenue.

If you're going to commit a crime, leave your phone at home so that (1) you can't be linked to the crime scene and (2) there's evidence you may have been somewhere else (at home) at the time.

Also make sure your home activities continue as normal such as electricity, water, gas, and internet usage.

And don’t use any vehicle with a license plate that can be tracked to you, or the area around your house.

All that effort is better focused on committing legal white collar crimes, via plausible deniability and in person conversations that aren’t recorded.

> All that effort is better focused on committing legal white collar crimes, via plausible deniability and in person conversations that aren’t recorded.

We've got about 5 minutes before "in person conversations that aren't recorded" are a historical artifact.

> And don’t use any vehicle with a license plate that can be tracked to you, or the area around your house.

And don't use any vehicle which has navigation system or live traffic info screen.

I’m assuming you’re just joking but think about location tracking the next time you want to attend some demonstration for example.

Should be perfectly legal to demonstrate but if you’ve got you’re phone on you someone will know you were there and protesting for X.

That’s very valuable information not just for law enforcement but also for marketing/advertising and also for more scummy stuff like influencing your political choices (eg Cambride Analytica style).

I don’t have my phone on my when I attend events that could “leak” my political or ethical choices.

Activists are already well aware of the need for proper opsec.

Leave your phone at home, use a burner phone (and don't reuse it!), don't call any personal phone numbers,, don't use your normal accounts, don't blab on social media, and so on and so forth.

Basic stuff, but sometimes people do get careless.

There should be a service where you can buy the aggregated information that advertising exchanges have on you, as well as any other shared details.

Can someone else aside fom the data subject file a GDPR request to companies?

If so it would be easy to just request reports from companies and compile them to some friendlier format.

If you really must bring it, get or make a Faraday cage pouch and test it by calling your phone from another device.

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