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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: 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.