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Comment by baybal2 | Hacker News Reader

One more reason to fight for the right to anonymous SIM cards.

No way to underestimate how important this is.

Second to it, you guys need to push for removing tracking infrastructure that Google shoves into Android.

Not a single application should be allowed access to anything amounting to a "Device ID" or fingerprinting method, implicit or explicit

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One of the key points of the article is that location data itself is nearly impossible to anonymize.

Even if person had an anonymous SIM it would be trivial to identify them by the locations where they spent most of their time.

Yes, but you will need to first correlate connection data from a ton of anonymous IPs, and then send tough guys to the site to check everybody's passports at a gunpoint.

Not something automateable.

Or you just correlate the data with known locations as the NYT did in the article when they tracked the inauguration singer by knowing where she was on a single day.

Isn't the IMEI still publicly available?

If you didn't know, Google even added a special API in Android for Apps to use to get device IDs, IMEI included. The very point of it is to allow tracking by Apps.

In Android 6 they even made a special callback result to indicate that the user has refused to give his permission rather than indicating that modem/phone ID wasn't found.

Clearly they are aware of this and do that deliberately.

What special API is this ? Can you post a link, thanks.

android.telephony.TelephonyManager.getDeviceId()

android.os.Build.getSerial()

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