Cellphones Track Your Every Move and You May Not Even Know | Hacker News Reader

Cellphones Track Your Every Move and You May Not Even Know

nytimes.com

53 pointstrotsky17 comments

The sad thing is that this will only be used for nefarious purposes. Imagine a disaster like the tsunami here in Japan. It's conceivable the phone company could provide data updates for each user until the phone or the cell phone tower is overwhelmed with water. You could get a report of every person known to be ok and the last location of every missing person.

If this sort of usage was possible, people would understand the privacy they are giving up and appreciate the benefits.

Unfortunately, that sort of usage will never be built out. It will only be used as a when required by a court. Apple has taken a small step in this direction with the find-my-iphone feature, but I think it could be made much more accessible to the end-user. If people are going to forfeit privacy, at least let them benefit from it.

"...and you may not even know" - huh? Seriously? I thought this is well-known. The privacy implications have been discussed before many times (even Wikipedia knows about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_tracking#Privacy)

It's just that most people don't care enough, or at least they are willing to trade that part of privacy against the advantages of ubiquitous connectivity.

Everyone knows abstractly that cell providers can store all your location information. But the extent and detail that this real data set shows can be an eye opener.

The most shocking thing to me is that this information wasn't recorded because he was specifically targeted, but this information is stored for everyone, for such a long time.

Is it really an eye opener? Just because data isn't directly used it is not safe to assume that data is discarded.

The cell companies need data on crowd movements[1] to best allocate network resources, to provide a better service. This collective data has to come from a collection of individual datum. Data might need to be collected for all users over a long time frame (years) to correctly identify (for example) how much additional infrastructure is needed near stadiums in football season, how the profile of commuters is changing and what new suburbs are being inhabited.

If we want a stable and reliable cell network, we have to allow the cell companies best plan for our usage.

[1] http://senseable.mit.edu/realtimerome/

Fair enough. If you need usage information, and distribution of usage information, it can very well be anonimized. You don't need to store the (attributable) travel paths of individual users for any longer than it takes to process it (or for the billing period).

It's also important to set priorities. I'd rather have more solid privacy protection than up-to-micromanagement optimal planning of capacity. Western Europe has extremely good cell coverage, so I don't think this is much of an issue.

Our good coverage is in part due to analysis by the likes of Ericsson on user movements/density. Make the laws harsher on storing location data and we could see a drop in network quality down the road.

Having worked as an employee (not contractor) for 3 of the 4 major Irish cell companies I know that data like this is heavily protected internally (I never saw any subscriber location information). There are data protection laws already in place to stop this information leaking.

Why do you want to limit the information a company can keep on its users? Are you a fan of this new EU cookie directive?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2327282

Stallman +1

In other shocking news, your ISP knows what websites you visit.

While we need to have real discussions and set real policies, we should be talking about the length of data retention, the way the data is stored, the entities who can access the data, the purposes for which the data is collected, the exact data that's being collected, and a rational weighing of the benefits vs. the costs.

Instead, we usually get fearmongering and witchhunts, usually instigated by somebody selling something. If you've successfully kept a low profile, all is permitted. If you haven't, you get to be the Great Satan for a while. While the hate mail will help you grow a thick skin, if you're the Great Satan a little too often, the politicians, prosecutors, and bureaucrats smell a 'winning issue', and will attempt to ruin your business and make your life a hell.

I would not start an analytics or an advertising company in 2011.

The article mentions the data file and visualizations, but doesn't link them:

Raw data file:

https://spreadsheets2.google.com/ccc?authkey=COCjw-kG&hl...

Visualization (in German):

http://www.zeit.de/datenschutz/malte-spitz-vorratsdaten

I was watching the TV show Life the other day, and there were a surprising number of situations in which the protagonist relied on his cell phone while committing criminal acts, or traveling to or from criminal acts. And he's LAPD, so such a character would know better in real life. (Remember OJ Simpson's capture?)

From Wikipedia -

Qualified services may achieve a precision of down to 50 meters in urban areas where mobile traffic and density of antenna towers (base stations) is sufficiently high. Rural and desolate areas may see miles between base stations and therefore determine locations less precisely.

The tracking isn't exactly a revelation--same deal for using every scrap of customer data for marketing.

If I go into a store and pay for something with cash (and the store is a major chain), invariably I get an added part on the register receipt wanting me to participate in a store survey. The opinion site usually have a web alternative, but they want a phone number "so that we can notify you if you win". Feels heavily like a form of customer profile creation / data mining to me.

I'd like to be able to request a visualization of my location similar to the flight pattern project http://users.design.ucla.edu/~akoblin/work/faa/

figure ATT owes me at least that much

Is there any relatively easy way to find/record/request this information for one's own phone? Would be enlightening.

That would depend entirely on the local laws. You can be pretty sure that your local police force can obtain it though.

Try Google Latitude. The history feature is probably a rough approximation of what the cell phone company (and by extension, law enforcement) would see.

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