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Sixty-seven percent of smartphone users rely on Google Maps to help them get to where they are going quickly and efficiently.
A major of[sic] feature of Google Maps is its ability to predict how long different navigation routes will take. That's possible because the mobile phone of each person using Google Maps sends data about its location and speed back to Google's servers, where it is analyzed to generate new data about traffic conditions.Information like this is useful for navigation. But the exact same data that is used to predict traffic patterns can also be used to predict other kinds of information – information people might not be comfortable with revealing.
For example, data about a mobile phone's past location and movement patterns can be used to predict where a person lives, who their employer is, where they attend religious services and the age range of their children based on where they drop them off for school.
Perhaps we can carefully craft our data patterns to tell advertisers, "Take a hike!"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday February 12 2019, @03:15AM (5 children)
I'm not sure you've gone far enough, with just turning the phone off. Remove the battery - oops, can't do that with a lot of phones. Well, leave the damned thing home. The AI thinks that you spent a peaceful night at home, all alone, that way.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday February 12 2019, @02:57PM (3 children)
Suppose you have a burner phone that is used only when going to the gay sex club.
Better be careful when you turn the burner phone on.
Imagine:
1. turn off regular phone, put it in faraday bag
2. turn on burner phone.
(possibly interchange previous two steps)
3. depart for gay sex club
4. return home
5. turn off burner phone
6. resume use of regular phone.
(possibly interchange previous two steps)
It would be possible, looking at location data, to connect the pattern of the two phones use together.
So maybe don't turn on the burner phone until you arrive at the gay sex club.
But it still become possible to recognize a pattern of this phone on vs that other phone on, always at mutually exclusive times.
I'm not sure what my next step would be to prevent google and other church members from knowing that I was going to a gay sex club.
The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @07:29PM (1 child)
1) burner phone off, battery out
2) normal phone on, at home
3) travel with no phone on
4) turn on burner, if needed
5) when leaving turn off burner, battery out
6) arrive home, pocket normal phone
There you go, there isn't a pattern there to discern, at least is you normally leave your phone on the night stand at those times (accelerometer data).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @07:37PM
I had a phone years ago now that I dropped on accident and the battery popped right out. Picked up the phone and was surprised to see it still on. Pulling your battery is not a guarantee these days, there may still be a backup battery that pumps out occasional bursts to keep that sweet sweet location data flowing.
(Score: 2) by TheFool on Tuesday February 12 2019, @08:28PM
Just leave the regular (and burner) phone at home. You can almost certainly do without them for a few hours.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by MindEscapes on Tuesday February 12 2019, @03:21PM
Only if you don't drive your own vehicle. Few these days without their own built in tracking.
Need a break? mindescapes.net may be for you!