google locates you via android (quartz article)

[Art Blade]

Even devices that had been reset to factory default settings and apps, with location services disabled, were observed by Quartz sending nearby cell-tower addresses to Google. Devices with a cellular data or WiFi connection appear to send the data to Google each time they come within range of a new cell tower. When Android devices are connected to a WiFi network, they will send the tower addresses to Google even if they don't have SIM cards installed.

source https://qz.com/1131515/google-collects-android-users-locations-even-when-location-services-are-disabled/

You should read the article if you're using android..

[PZ]

There is always something, and it is only going to get worse with corporate deregulation.

[fragger]

It's such a scourge, this sort of thing. These companies seem so intent on getting hold of peoples' data and locations and such that it's becoming like an obsession with them. They must have meetings where they sit around a table and ask "Okay - what other avenues can we explore that will allow us to track people and intrude on their lives?"

They make me sick

[PZ]

Yes that does seem to be the way of the world these days. I recall the old days where our classroom grades were posted by our social security number on a list outside the instructors office. There was no such thing as identity theft 30 years ago. Along with the Internet comes that form of crime.

Today I don't even answer the phone unless it is someone I know because more often than not it is some form of scam.

[Dweller_Benthos]

I saw that on another site, not surprising. I didn't read the entire article, but if all it's sending is cell tower addresses, that's not as bad. Still sneaky and underhanded, but not to the point of using the phone's GPS to pinpoint your location. IF that's all it's doing, who knows what hasn't been found yet. But since in a typical urban area your phone might connect to three or four towers, they aren't going to get your exact location. They get the general area and sure, if they wanted to, they could triangulate signal strengths and get a pretty good guess, but it's not as bad as say, Verizon or AT&T selling your internet usage wholesale or recording everything you do and giving it to the NSA.... wait, they do that anyway.....

[mandru]

Heh... I see D_B slipped in just ahead of me. 

On the dark side of that issue is governments and their various agencies can track us so that they can collect and store data on our daily habits and travel.

Still there are some benefits to that overwatch.  In a situation where a person has been injured in a car crash (or an accident while (let's say) rock climbing) manages to call emergency services but is unable to maintain consciousness or give specific locations the emergency services using GPS info can still pinpoint them.


Then again (almost as odorous), the concept behind that functionality is set up so that when you walk into a large department store who has paid your service provider or browser developer (I'm looking at you Google Chrome) for targeted ad service and your device is transmitting your GPS location then you can be flooded with specific emails and text messages from that business and possibly competitors of that business who are offering better pricing. 


Edited error in grammar while trying to post too hastily. 

[PZ]

I saw a news segment the other day where they are using that data to send targeted advertisements to your phone. In the clip, a person had received an advertisement for a job targeting their location as well as their professional background. Some people sure are awfully free revealing their personal information so companies can use it.

[mandru]

On TV I watched a discussion looking at where we are and where we're headed as a study for the loss of individuality and freedom using the scale between Huxley's 'Brave New World' and Orwell's 1984.

Huxley projected tossing aside freedom in favor of a government providing heightened security and increased pleasure.

Orwell projected loss of value and freedom for the individual by an oppressive government enforcing how a person must think (P.C. sensitivity and flexible imaginary hate and or behavior crimes) through laws and police actions that can conveniently target anyone who does not fit the mandatory standards.

I'd say it's a coin toss (or even measures of both projections) between which road we are traveling down but it's clear that the world today is unrecognizable from the one I spent my early adulthood in. 

[PZ]

So true - I'd summarize by saying that we as a society were "innocent" in our naiveté back in the day. Sometimes I long for my younger years.

[BinnZ]

Individuality and the empowerment of that the internet provides is changing our society so quickly we don't even have time to realize what's going on. Governments are losing power and authority by the minute, and clever businessmen with access to large sums of money are always two steps ahead.

I think the internet is a rule-vacuum where an anarchistic market system is taking over slow and steady. I once before stated that money acts like mass; the bigger the amount, the stronger the attraction to more money. But when money is represented by coins and bills, it's still pretty solid. With internet banking, bitcoins and other crypto currency it's evaporating and going almost light speed.

Therefore I don't blame governments to spy on their citizens, nor protest against laws that make our security agencies capable of doing that on a mass scale. It's part of the deal. If we humans are clever and civilized enough we will design a world where control of digital content is part of our individuality and will protect our personal being instead of endangering it. All we need is a strong collective conscience of right and wrong and confine.

The world isn't so bad after all, we just need to keep using our abilities responsibly

[mandru]

All we need is a strong collective conscience of right and wrong and confine.

Confine?  I may be misunderstanding your intended use for that word.  I'm hearing handcuffs, straight jackets and imprisonment for anyone who refuses to become one with the "collective".  For me collective is a terrifying word to be very wary of.

If a collective conscience is ever reached for the exact values of 'right and wrong', even within a single country you can bet that it will be enforced on the population by some form of Government fully willing to eliminate those who refuse to conform.  "You no longer contribute to this civil society" will be a death sentence (see Belgium's euthanization practices of hospitalized elderly which is now up to five a day and all the closest family members get in making that decision is a telephone call the next day to go through the formalities of disposing of the body).

But even death would probably be a blessing over the inevitable punishment for habitual noncompliance or thought crimes to be quarantined away from civil society in highly isolated reeducation labor camps.

I simply do not believe in Utopias.  My disbelief comes from examining every Utopia attempt for which I've been able to gather information.  A point and time comes (usually fairly quickly) where once the seat of ultimate power is established the unthinkable is forced on its citizens.

Even after evaluating the broken promises and wasteful destruction of lives in each failed Utopia there are still those who stand around drooling over the prospects of giving it one more try and are perfectly willing to eliminate anyone who stands against their ideals of "right and wrong".

Not everyone in the Jonestown Guyana cult known as The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project drank the poisoned Kool-Aid willingly.  Many had it forcibly poured down their throats by the Leader's appointed enforcers to accomplish what was intended to appear as a mass suicide.

[fragger]

I'm sure neither Orwell nor Huxley would be the slightest bit surprised by some of what is happening today.

[BinnZ]

Confine?  I may be misunderstanding your intended use for that word. 

I think google translate got me on the wrong foot here. What I meant to say is borders. But borders is too much related to boarders as from a country for me, so I was looking for some other word. What I want to point out is the need of limits to what we may do to each other like respecting one's personal space, spirit and integrity.
In a lawless environment like the internet there's got to be some sort of authority of regulation, something all users can relate to. With our national governments all being more 'users' than providers of the world wide web we share together it makes regulation a whole different ball game.

I agree with you Mandru that the ultimate right and wrong isn't the highest of values to strive for. Right and wrong can only be concepts that need polishment and comparison. They should be the start from where we discuss together what direction or choice is best made to achieve progress.

On a side note; what's happening is Belgium might also be a few steps ahead to full freedom of personal life. If someone doesn't want to live any more, anyone or anything that keeps him or her from dying will feel like a prison and a prison guard. My opinion is that we cannot force someone to live when his life is a living hell. The fact that we western civilized people treat our elders as objects that need to be gotten rid of is another discussion.

[mandru]

Binn, from your description (if I now understand correctly) the term you were searching for was "respecting each other's personal boundaries".  I can agree with that. 


There was a recent item to hit our news here which brought me to mention Belgium.  In the specific situation I was speaking of neither the patient nor their family were consulted.  It was a decision made by the administrators of the hospital purely to cut costs made legal and upheld by the laws of that country.

In spite of that sort of thing Belgium considers themselves to be a civil society. 

[BinnZ]

Well, I think that item was brought to you by.... Fake News!!! 

Serious now; that would have been horrible. But it's nonsense. The Belgians are definitely not dumping their elders down the drain; they conserve them well. They call it triple fermentation:

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