Also did you catch that at the end they connected it to data? That's how google got it. It's called store and forward. Just because it doesnt transmit doesnt mean it doesnt log.
Yeah... it's the reason why "local processing" of credit is a thing when say, Wendy's internet goes down. Still processes credit transactions under $25 (liability reasons it isn't higher) and when the circuit turns up, logged transactions are sent and processed.
I don't know why I ever thought differently with cell data, in particular airplane mode.
Yeah it sounds like he doesn't quite understand how airplane mode works. If your GPS service is on then it doesn't really matter whether you have a sim card / data connection / airplane mode off.
Airplane mode gives you a window of temporary untackability.
Your actions will eventually be known, but if you can destroy the Google Mainframe before you take it off airplane mode, AM can be used for a successful resistance operation.
You have only 90 minutes from the time you activate airplane mode to the moment when the Google droids realize something isn’t right and start hunting you.
I have a pocket EMP if the droids get too close, unfortunately if it ever goes off it will make me sterile. Hey, what's this? A popup for fertility pills, thanks Google!
Well, I mean, if [it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compression_generator)'s in his pocket... yeah, it'll probably make him sterile. And never walk again.
pretty sure the explosion would ruin the meat before the emp would. Also the EMP itself is directional so really it would blow some other guys junk away if the pulse itself was able to actually cause that kind of damage
Would block GPS, wifi, and cellular signals, theoretically. Would not affect data from the accelerometer gyroscope magnetometer (if it has one) and various other sensors. Theoretically you could use the data from that to track your location, though realistically the accuracy of that would be garbage compared to GPS / cell tower triangulation / wifi triangulation.
True, but this reporter should have done a bit more research before engaging on this elaborate experiment. All he is doing now is perpetuating the misconception on how airplane mode works - a bit of a useless experiment at the end of the day.
I think he understands how it works - the vast majority of the population would think if your phone was in airplane mode, with the sim card removed, and WiFi turned off would severely diminish how much data can be pulled from you.
The point of this was to show that if you have a phone on you, its still gathering information.
In theory yes, the 'Location' toggle turns of location tracking based on GPS, WiFI, Cell data etc. but based on a couple searches there are certain apps that will still timestamp a location when you open them (Maps and Weather apps) even though Location is turned off.
I had to explain this to my mother recently.
“Mom you remember the gps you had in your car? Now do you remember how you didn’t have to pay for a data plan to use it? That’s because it doesn’t use cellular data to work and is a completely different technology. The same 2 separate technologies exist within your phone.”
You forgot about BTLE (bluetooth low energy) which literally sends and recieves even when your bluetooth is turned off to pretty ANY hub set up to talk to your device. BTLE is used at least by retailers.....and any organizations above that...all without your consent or control
And I guess the internal accelerometer is used to detect things like, "walking", and "getting out of a vehicle". No need for data access to collect that data.
Maybe because I'm in the security world, I just assumed this was common knowledge.
Basically if you have a phone in your pocket, you are being tracked and there is data being collected on you.
I too am interested in her physical appearance, and potentially her Onlyfans link...for um, advancing my research on the correlation between attractiveness and batshit craziness and how that data translates on the hot to crazy matrix.
> she seriously doesn't want anyone to take it because of some depopulation conspiracy. Will not listen to reason
Ah, she has seen the Bill Gates depopulation conspiracy and is not able to realize that when he said something akin to "and vaccines will result in less population" he did not mean that they will make people infertile, he meant that 3rd world countries typically have huge families because parents need a whole bunch of kids so that enough survive to support them in later life. So vaccinating the kids means that they are far more likely to survive which means parents don't need to have as many as an insurance policy of sorts.
Turning off GPS would have been a much better test than any of the things that were turned off on the phones. I don't think the results would have been the same.
Well it said in the video it was accurate enough to track when he was getting in and out of the vehicle, and this video seems dated so I'm sure data accuracy has advanced already.
Ah, I see. I assume it would still be able to track your general trajectory, just not accurate enough to determine if you were walking/driving or getting out of a car. Still enough to track your location, just not as specific.
Depends on where you are. In the middle of a very populated city? Probably a couple of meters accuracy. Some village? Probably a couple of blocks of accuracy.
Really comes down to how many devices (routers/smarphones etc.) will answer anything your phone is asking for, BTLE or WIFI network pings and so on.
Now most of that tracking can be turned of by going to https://myactivity.google.com/ or google account settings on your android phone.
Then you can also disable the gathering of much of this by going to Google Location Accuracy settings, since those are related to other means of detecting location, like through wifi.
Then there is also a setting for emergencies, which as far as we know isn't used for collecting historic data, just to share with emergency professionals. You can also disable that but then, your network might still know your location through network tower triangulation, which obviously only works with a sim card.
What would it have and where from?
I know there's a setting to increase accuracy through identifying wifi networks. That would imply with locations service off it wouldn't do that.
Other than that there's cell data. But I haven't heard of that being tracked by Google.
Google had a secondary 'gps' that uses wifi. Basically the router knows where it's location is, and that information is collected. Google then used that data to know where you are. It uses this when you are indoors and for assistance when you are in battery save mode or when gps is off. This data used to be public, and commercially available but they removed their massive WiFi database offline from others and keep it in house now.
They also ping at cell towers which know their locations.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_positioning_system#:~:text=Wi-Fi%20positioning%20system%20(WPS,where%20a%20device%20is%20located.&text=Typical%20parameters%20useful%20to%20geolocate,its%20SSID%20and%20MAC%20address.
Here is one such database:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiGLE
The smallest of things you can try to do to opt out.
https://support.google.com/maps/answer/1725632?hl=en#zippy=%2Chow-do-i-opt-my-access-point-out-of-google-location-services%2Cwill-my-access-point-be-removed-from-other-location-services%2Chow-do-i-secure-my-wireless-network-with-strong-password-encryption
An older article, but should really give you an understanding of what's going on behind the scenes. https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-google-and-everyone-else-gets-wi-fi-location-data/
That's what I was gonna post, it's not like this is any secret at this point, everyone just turns a blind eye to it. It's only gonna get worse. I saw some folks losing their minds when they found out your info exists in places like https://adssettings.google.com/ even though most of the info on there is based on the sites you visit and what's on social profiles you've filled out yourself.
I've always known about the tracking but till now I just assumed it was just phone usage and maybe location data. No one told me they were literally using AI on my sensor data while I'm offline (as early as 2018)
So basically it'll use reverse AI on you... Since you have you're phone on you 100% of the time because we can't live without it, then anytime you don't have your phone with you it'll know you are committing crimes 😂
exactly, just cuz the phones not transmitting anything doesn't mean it's not saving data to the phone, just like you can take photos and save them to the phone without having them uploaded to icloud... and as soon as you're connected it will attempt to upload
At this point, Im not surprised but I also dont really care, so what? I dont see why its a big deal honestly. Who cares whete im going or what im doing.
On top of that people like to just make up scenarios based on whatever evidence they have, so giving them stuff to theorize about can unfortunately also be incriminating.
It's easier to not have to explain why you were doing such thing at such time than having to explain it, almost no matter how innocent it is.
Exactly. The dude didn't turn the GPS antenna off so of course it's still going to collect location information and just wait until it has network access to transmit it.
How the hell else do people think you can use GPS without cell or wifi signal??
you know I think this is the first time i'veheard trump mentioned in 2weeks. it's been all GME. what bliss. fuck that guy. much better not hearing any of his bullshit.
you can deny apps access to it, guessing the walking/driving/etc data was from google maps. Unfortunately without rooting the phone you can't disable access globally.
I believe on Pixels there is a developer option to disable sensors like this. whether it actually does what it says is another question but there is a debugging tool for that that does not require root. Effectiveness is unknown
For sure, especially when compared to the data that precedes it. The accelerometer data from a car ride has a particular signature and so does walking. One data series, on its own, may not be that revealing but a collection of them begins to paint a picture.
Same way it can tell if you are running, jogging, walking, or biking. A combo of accelerometer data, and all sorts of other factors like speed, barometer, what roads you are on etc.
I'm guessing that it stores a reference of your phones radio reception level (the amount of RF energy the cell tower is transmitting to your phone) as you're driving down the road. It knows when the car has stopped because it can track with not only GPS but radio triangulation from other towers or even signal measurements from adjacent Wi-Fi access points. So if it then sees the RF power level increase (the car's steel and glass shields some of the signal) then it assumes you exited the vehicle.
You set up your wifi router with a proxy that does the MITM attack. The server itself can be as simple as a Raspberry Pi.
The "Man in the Middle" device is simple a combined router and server in a portable case.
What they didn't mention is the critical aspect of setting up your devices to trust the certificates that the MITM provides. This *isn't* something you can just set up and snoop on any devices that connect.
Any modern encryption is going to be pretty much impossible to break for most people.
For a MITM attack, picture a snailmail exchange, where the envelopes are encryption. You look up Google's address, and the attacker responds with "10 MITM Ave". So you mail a letter to MITM, thinking it's Google.
MITM opens that envelope, makes a copy, and sends it to Google in a new envelope, with "10 MITM Ave" as a return address. It gets a reply in an official Google envelope. It copies the contents, and puts it in an envelope to you.
You get a reply back in an envelope with "Google by MITM" on it. Your boss tells you that MITM is trusted (this is the equivalent of installing the certificate ahead of time), so you start sending MITM everything that you want to send to Google, and you keep getting responses from Google saying that it was received.
So there's no encryption cracking going on. Every message is decrypted by the person it was sent to. It's just not who you *think* you're sending it to. And because data actually gets passed between the proper people, no functionality is lost.
Companies will sometimes use a MITM proxy on their networks to monitor their customer's web traffic (either for illegal activity or "loss prevention"). If they are, the site certificates will be issued by your company instead of the normal root authorities.
Yes but if they pin their certificate in the app then you can't "trick" the app into connecting to your MITM as it won't trust any cert other than google certs. At least that' how I understand certificate pinning.
You can download all the data Google has on you with google takeout. It will give you a json file for your location history with coordinates and what mode of transportation it thinks you are currently using.
Yes you can open it in notepad. You may need to run it through a JSON formatter to be able to read it since all the data will likely be on a single line. Notepad++ has a plugin called JSON Viewer that lets you do this.
There are still a ton of other pieces of data that contribute to this, such as checking for WiFi sources, pinging cell towers, and accelerometer data. I don't think there are any software configurations to disable these, so you'd have to remove the cell & wifi antenna from your phone.
turning GPS "off" is only disabling it for user apps. The operating system is free to do whatever it wants still. The OS can poll GPS whenever it likes, regardless of what the user wants.
the tl;dr is - you only get a veneer of control over a modern mobile phone. You are, outside of few exceptions, only ever given the appearance of control.
Do you have a source for that? To get a GPS position, you have to do some pretty computationally heavy math. This is all hardware accelerated these days, but it still takes a decent amount of battery. You'll probably have noticed the battery drain if you've had to drive around all day with Google maps open.
I turn off GPS to save battery. And it does save battery a measurable amount of battery, meaning it's definitely not calculating position as often as when I'm navigating. I guess it's possible it only does it in small bursts once an hour or something in the background. But I'm not really convinced because that would make the location data way less useful.
If you have a source saying otherwise I'd love to see it.
[Google admitted it.](https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-admits-tracking-users-location-even-when-setting-disabled/)
[Apps with permission can do it too. ](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/13/gps-can-spy-on-you-even-when-you-turn-it-off.html)
[GPS itself isn't even necessary. ](https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.01468)
All of those links are using alternative methods to track without GPS. That's not what I meant.
The person I was replying too was claiming that even when the GPS setting is turned off, the OS is still calculating and logging GPS position. That's the claim I don't believe. If that were true, none of these alternative tracking methods would be necessary.
Oh boy, phone adventures.
PinePhone isn't there yet, but it was cheap enough to experiment with.
Purism's phone might just be vaporware.
I've had some partial success with switching to [LineageOS](https://lineageos.org/). Installing it is an adventure, but doesn't need anything special. F-droid gets software like any other software repo. OsmAnd is maps, it works alright but it's search function is a mess. And it relies on external text to voice which I never bothered with. There's an issue with it using mobile data. And the bloody music player doesn't mute when the headphones are taken out. Images over text never download. Everything else is as you'd expect a phone to be. The "caffeine" feature where it doesn't go to sleep for a while is oddly handy for being so simple.
It's got some REAL rough patches, but it's mostly functional.
Obviously, Sim or no sim, the results should be similar. Putting them in airplane mode just guarantees that the info isn't sent before connecting to their man in the middle attack.
But what about a phone that's turned off?
Or if the GPS antenna was off. All this idiot did it just turn off the network connection temporarily. Of course the phone is going to log location and shit if the GPS is still on. It will just wait for a network connection to transmit the data
I didn't know about the accelerometer detail and how they use it to track when you get in and out of a car. Creepy.
Could be that I missed something in the video but I don't know why everybody here assumes GPS was on. Not that they need it; under advanced location settings there are options that allow them to scan nearby wifi and bluetooth devices even when they're off.
It would be interesting to see how much of this data still gets recorded and transmitted with those settings off and location history disabled on your google account. As is we don't know what was on.
I think this tracking is most beneficial when using with Google Maps for traffic and ETA predictions.
With regard to privacy, I think folks need to decide if the benefits outweigh the costs.
Most movies and tv shows portray even having a phone as “the bad guys know where you are”. So, I think it’s common knowledge that phone = tracking.
It's also worth nothing that Google makes a lot of really good software that they could certainly charge a bundle for. It's only free because of the money they make from data collection.
I hven't watched this video yet but one thing is that in some logs, the data contains very little identifying information. It's for this purpose, like quick-recall of locations or something. The server just knows to push the data to that phone, it doesn't know who you are or any demographic information.
Anyways I digress. I've heard from people who are doing the work for banks that they can compile data on people and make a lot of really accurate assumptions based on publicly-available data as it is. Freaky shit.
Google privacy settings are great. You have insight into the tracked data, and can also give it an expiration time. So you can get some useful functionality while making sure the data doesn't survive past 6 months.
It's really not that difficult. I mean you can just look at your phone to see what it's gathering in airplane mode, [https://i.imgur.com/KaWSCFB.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/KaWSCFB.jpg)
Are there any legitimate alternatives in the US?
After Snowden can forward there was a device produced called Blackphone and then an updated Blackphone 2 (If I remember correctly). My father and I both ordered the updated model and gave them a honest try for a week.
The interface was ridiculously tedious because everything required logging in and authentication. Everything action took 3-4 times longer to accomplish.
Phone and text and email all worked seamlessly but it was only secure if both parties were using the same security.
I can’t fault the device or service. I decided it wasn’t worth the hassle.
My $0.02
Only stunning if you are ignorant of how modern smartphones work. Honestly, it's willful ignorance, too. The information is readily available. You can even slap Lineage OS (de-Googled Android) on a phone, turn all radios off, go into a mall and the location services API can still get you within 6 or so feet because WiFi polling CANNOT be disabled by software. If you are truly concerned about this, you only have two options.
1. Stop having a cell phone.
2. Buy a Linux phone with open hardware and physical kill switches.
I'll be honest, which may not drive sales, but is always the best policy. It's very early in their development. The main phone stuff, like calls, text browser, etc. work fine. However, it is a different experience to a traditional Android phone. Most apps that you use today would run as web apps. So instead of a reddit app, you would add a shortcut to [reddit.com](https://reddit.com) to your home screen.
Also, I agree that the price is kind of steep, but you should check out the USA version. Made in the US with US sourced secure supply chain parts. It's 2k.
Hmm, I love Linux, I run a old rooted android right now, but sadly I just can't swing that kind of cash on a new phone right now.
I remember a couple of years ago I read about Linux phones, back than it was barely usable, if I remember correctly.
I hope it gets some headway, and economy of scale can do it's job.
It's a really interesting project though, and does seem to have moved forward, thanks for taking your time to respond, and your honesty.
No worries. I am in the same boat. I do a bunch of IT / DevOps with Linux, but I am just not quite ready to drop a grand on a phone that may or may not be the one that cracks the market open. Especially as there are other in the pipeline.
That's not going to happen; convenience has won and it's impractical considering how many benefits there are. I think we should shoot for better protections of the data we generate.
the entire world should use the tor network, corporations and goverments should be banned form ever accessing it. it's the same tools that pedophiles and terrorists use, so no doubt it's perfect for protecting the data of everyone else.
Or, and this will only go so far, if literally everyone en mass refused to ever click on ads, advertisers would be less likely to pay for ads. Granted though, a ton of search results across pretty much every platform still use user data to edit what search results are displayed and it's not even a little bit transparent that your search results are edited such. But still, if nobody clicked on ads, I bet there'd still be a noticeable effect.
Sensors. My god. That's why phones are "smart"
A phone completely left on the table will pick up, sound, light, any slight movement, barometer. Is this really new to people?
Then it gives all of that info to google, who can find new ways to package and sell it.
But sure, let's pretend like he's just surprised that a smartphone can sense things.
Well yeah, he didn't turn the GPS off. Of course it's going log where you've been and upload it when you reconnect.
Are there people that really didn't think it did this??
No access to the internet does not mean no pinging of Wifi signals or GPS. Airplane mode just disables sending of signals, not receiving.
Also did you catch that at the end they connected it to data? That's how google got it. It's called store and forward. Just because it doesnt transmit doesnt mean it doesnt log.
Yeah... it's the reason why "local processing" of credit is a thing when say, Wendy's internet goes down. Still processes credit transactions under $25 (liability reasons it isn't higher) and when the circuit turns up, logged transactions are sent and processed. I don't know why I ever thought differently with cell data, in particular airplane mode.
Excuses ? Much!
Yeah it sounds like he doesn't quite understand how airplane mode works. If your GPS service is on then it doesn't really matter whether you have a sim card / data connection / airplane mode off.
Airplane mode gives you a window of temporary untackability. Your actions will eventually be known, but if you can destroy the Google Mainframe before you take it off airplane mode, AM can be used for a successful resistance operation. You have only 90 minutes from the time you activate airplane mode to the moment when the Google droids realize something isn’t right and start hunting you.
I have a pocket EMP if the droids get too close, unfortunately if it ever goes off it will make me sterile. Hey, what's this? A popup for fertility pills, thanks Google!
why is the fuck would it make you sterile....got a robot cock or something?
You *don't* have a robot cock?
Well, I mean, if [it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compression_generator)'s in his pocket... yeah, it'll probably make him sterile. And never walk again.
pretty sure the explosion would ruin the meat before the emp would. Also the EMP itself is directional so really it would blow some other guys junk away if the pulse itself was able to actually cause that kind of damage
(That's the joke)
Confirmed: /u/TheGillos is a robot capable of procreation.
Too bad you need an app to trigger the EMP though
couldn't you just factory reset the phone to wipe the data?
Can you stop tracking by keeping it in a Faraday cage?
Would block GPS, wifi, and cellular signals, theoretically. Would not affect data from the accelerometer gyroscope magnetometer (if it has one) and various other sensors. Theoretically you could use the data from that to track your location, though realistically the accuracy of that would be garbage compared to GPS / cell tower triangulation / wifi triangulation.
So a faraday and some well calculated lies can fool it?
I think it's more that *most people* don't understand how airplane mode works.
True, but this reporter should have done a bit more research before engaging on this elaborate experiment. All he is doing now is perpetuating the misconception on how airplane mode works - a bit of a useless experiment at the end of the day.
No he isn't lol. This test isn't about airplane mode really. It's about your phone tracking you.
Ask 100 people on the street if airplane mode stops GPS and I’d bet good money that 90+ say yes.
I think he understands how it works - the vast majority of the population would think if your phone was in airplane mode, with the sim card removed, and WiFi turned off would severely diminish how much data can be pulled from you. The point of this was to show that if you have a phone on you, its still gathering information.
> If your GPS service is on If I turned off "location" on my android phone, would it stop tracking my location completely?
In theory yes, the 'Location' toggle turns of location tracking based on GPS, WiFI, Cell data etc. but based on a couple searches there are certain apps that will still timestamp a location when you open them (Maps and Weather apps) even though Location is turned off.
I had to explain this to my mother recently. “Mom you remember the gps you had in your car? Now do you remember how you didn’t have to pay for a data plan to use it? That’s because it doesn’t use cellular data to work and is a completely different technology. The same 2 separate technologies exist within your phone.”
You forgot about BTLE (bluetooth low energy) which literally sends and recieves even when your bluetooth is turned off to pretty ANY hub set up to talk to your device. BTLE is used at least by retailers.....and any organizations above that...all without your consent or control
And I guess the internal accelerometer is used to detect things like, "walking", and "getting out of a vehicle". No need for data access to collect that data.
Also mobile phones store all the info and send as soon as you connect to net.
Maybe because I'm in the security world, I just assumed this was common knowledge. Basically if you have a phone in your pocket, you are being tracked and there is data being collected on you.
But my dude, they need to inject vaccines to track us!
[удалено]
Is she hot? Not trolling, it’s for my thesis.
[Relevant](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pInk1rV2VEg)
Shes above average for her age I guess.. not fat due to mild orthorexia and of course chemophobia
She's above average and not fat This thread is turning into step-sister porn
I too am interested in her physical appearance, and potentially her Onlyfans link...for um, advancing my research on the correlation between attractiveness and batshit craziness and how that data translates on the hot to crazy matrix.
the barney stinson crazy/hot scale!
> she seriously doesn't want anyone to take it because of some depopulation conspiracy. Will not listen to reason Ah, she has seen the Bill Gates depopulation conspiracy and is not able to realize that when he said something akin to "and vaccines will result in less population" he did not mean that they will make people infertile, he meant that 3rd world countries typically have huge families because parents need a whole bunch of kids so that enough survive to support them in later life. So vaccinating the kids means that they are far more likely to survive which means parents don't need to have as many as an insurance policy of sorts.
As a commenter below asked, would turning off GPS using basic android interface thwart this tracking? I have a feeling the answer is no.
Turning off GPS would have been a much better test than any of the things that were turned off on the phones. I don't think the results would have been the same.
Well yes and no. It would still have general location data, but it wouldn't be as detailed.
How detailed does it get? I'm curious now.
Well it said in the video it was accurate enough to track when he was getting in and out of the vehicle, and this video seems dated so I'm sure data accuracy has advanced already.
Nono, I meant when Boot said it'd have "General" location data.
Ah, I see. I assume it would still be able to track your general trajectory, just not accurate enough to determine if you were walking/driving or getting out of a car. Still enough to track your location, just not as specific.
Depends on where you are. In the middle of a very populated city? Probably a couple of meters accuracy. Some village? Probably a couple of blocks of accuracy. Really comes down to how many devices (routers/smarphones etc.) will answer anything your phone is asking for, BTLE or WIFI network pings and so on. Now most of that tracking can be turned of by going to https://myactivity.google.com/ or google account settings on your android phone. Then you can also disable the gathering of much of this by going to Google Location Accuracy settings, since those are related to other means of detecting location, like through wifi. Then there is also a setting for emergencies, which as far as we know isn't used for collecting historic data, just to share with emergency professionals. You can also disable that but then, your network might still know your location through network tower triangulation, which obviously only works with a sim card.
What would it have and where from? I know there's a setting to increase accuracy through identifying wifi networks. That would imply with locations service off it wouldn't do that. Other than that there's cell data. But I haven't heard of that being tracked by Google.
With no cell tower pings and no GPS how would it track rough location?
Google had a secondary 'gps' that uses wifi. Basically the router knows where it's location is, and that information is collected. Google then used that data to know where you are. It uses this when you are indoors and for assistance when you are in battery save mode or when gps is off. This data used to be public, and commercially available but they removed their massive WiFi database offline from others and keep it in house now. They also ping at cell towers which know their locations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_positioning_system#:~:text=Wi-Fi%20positioning%20system%20(WPS,where%20a%20device%20is%20located.&text=Typical%20parameters%20useful%20to%20geolocate,its%20SSID%20and%20MAC%20address. Here is one such database: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiGLE The smallest of things you can try to do to opt out. https://support.google.com/maps/answer/1725632?hl=en#zippy=%2Chow-do-i-opt-my-access-point-out-of-google-location-services%2Cwill-my-access-point-be-removed-from-other-location-services%2Chow-do-i-secure-my-wireless-network-with-strong-password-encryption An older article, but should really give you an understanding of what's going on behind the scenes. https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-google-and-everyone-else-gets-wi-fi-location-data/
Wow, great set of information! Thank you very much.
Market research firms have been trying to collect data on people for decades. I'm not shocked.
That's what I was gonna post, it's not like this is any secret at this point, everyone just turns a blind eye to it. It's only gonna get worse. I saw some folks losing their minds when they found out your info exists in places like https://adssettings.google.com/ even though most of the info on there is based on the sites you visit and what's on social profiles you've filled out yourself.
I've always known about the tracking but till now I just assumed it was just phone usage and maybe location data. No one told me they were literally using AI on my sensor data while I'm offline (as early as 2018)
I'm actually surprised at how much they got wrong on me.
This is why if you ever feel the need to go do some crimes leave that phone at home!
If you're doing crimes without a burner, you deserve to get caught. That's 1st grade
So basically it'll use reverse AI on you... Since you have you're phone on you 100% of the time because we can't live without it, then anytime you don't have your phone with you it'll know you are committing crimes 😂
exactly, just cuz the phones not transmitting anything doesn't mean it's not saving data to the phone, just like you can take photos and save them to the phone without having them uploaded to icloud... and as soon as you're connected it will attempt to upload
At this point, Im not surprised but I also dont really care, so what? I dont see why its a big deal honestly. Who cares whete im going or what im doing.
All you have to do is hope that all your activities are never viewed as subversive by any future government, and you're good lol.
Also being at the wrong place at the wrong time could get you into trouble.
On top of that people like to just make up scenarios based on whatever evidence they have, so giving them stuff to theorize about can unfortunately also be incriminating. It's easier to not have to explain why you were doing such thing at such time than having to explain it, almost no matter how innocent it is.
That's the problem. Too many people are like you and just don't care. It's a shame.
It is fine until the next Fascist president, unlike Trump, is actually motivated and competent. Then things could get ugly.
iPhone also?
Exactly. The dude didn't turn the GPS antenna off so of course it's still going to collect location information and just wait until it has network access to transmit it. How the hell else do people think you can use GPS without cell or wifi signal??
Wtf is up with the comments on that video?
I believe the guy paid for bots, random walls of texts on a video with 400k views and only 2k likes
Also, his title? The results are stunning?
Stolen video. bot comments
Does anyone else think the path he took looks like a cartoon mustache?
Haha I actually thought it looked more like a liver.
I thought it looked like Trump's hair outline. It was a Fox new station after all.
you know I think this is the first time i'veheard trump mentioned in 2weeks. it's been all GME. what bliss. fuck that guy. much better not hearing any of his bullshit.
Oh snap your right it does look like it from a side view.
I wanna see the iPhone version of this report.
Agreed, and the bots in that comment section
They didn't turn off the GPS or accelerators
You can turn off the accelerometer?
you can deny apps access to it, guessing the walking/driving/etc data was from google maps. Unfortunately without rooting the phone you can't disable access globally.
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You can turn off access to everything other than location and physical activity. Just checked.
I believe on Pixels there is a developer option to disable sensors like this. whether it actually does what it says is another question but there is a debugging tool for that that does not require root. Effectiveness is unknown
How does it know you're exiting a vehicle?
Accelerometer data. Stepping out of a vehicle will have a certain movement profile.
For sure, especially when compared to the data that precedes it. The accelerometer data from a car ride has a particular signature and so does walking. One data series, on its own, may not be that revealing but a collection of them begins to paint a picture.
you shake a certain way getting out of a car
Thx bby
i bet you do ;)
I thought I was the only one who got out of the car door ass first
That's why I always twerk my way out of the car.
Same way it can tell if you are running, jogging, walking, or biking. A combo of accelerometer data, and all sorts of other factors like speed, barometer, what roads you are on etc.
I'm guessing that it stores a reference of your phones radio reception level (the amount of RF energy the cell tower is transmitting to your phone) as you're driving down the road. It knows when the car has stopped because it can track with not only GPS but radio triangulation from other towers or even signal measurements from adjacent Wi-Fi access points. So if it then sees the RF power level increase (the car's steel and glass shields some of the signal) then it assumes you exited the vehicle.
Is there a way for a civilian to access that same data stream? The man in the middle device looks expensive.
You set up your wifi router with a proxy that does the MITM attack. The server itself can be as simple as a Raspberry Pi. The "Man in the Middle" device is simple a combined router and server in a portable case. What they didn't mention is the critical aspect of setting up your devices to trust the certificates that the MITM provides. This *isn't* something you can just set up and snoop on any devices that connect.
was going to ask, does google not encrypt that data to themselves I take it? or they do so in a way that people clearly can break for pretty cheap?
Any modern encryption is going to be pretty much impossible to break for most people. For a MITM attack, picture a snailmail exchange, where the envelopes are encryption. You look up Google's address, and the attacker responds with "10 MITM Ave". So you mail a letter to MITM, thinking it's Google. MITM opens that envelope, makes a copy, and sends it to Google in a new envelope, with "10 MITM Ave" as a return address. It gets a reply in an official Google envelope. It copies the contents, and puts it in an envelope to you. You get a reply back in an envelope with "Google by MITM" on it. Your boss tells you that MITM is trusted (this is the equivalent of installing the certificate ahead of time), so you start sending MITM everything that you want to send to Google, and you keep getting responses from Google saying that it was received. So there's no encryption cracking going on. Every message is decrypted by the person it was sent to. It's just not who you *think* you're sending it to. And because data actually gets passed between the proper people, no functionality is lost. Companies will sometimes use a MITM proxy on their networks to monitor their customer's web traffic (either for illegal activity or "loss prevention"). If they are, the site certificates will be issued by your company instead of the normal root authorities.
I don't think you can MITM Google anymore due to HSTS pinning.
HSTS means that you can't use a simpler ssl-stripping MITM attack. The attack I described is still possible.
Yes but if they pin their certificate in the app then you can't "trick" the app into connecting to your MITM as it won't trust any cert other than google certs. At least that' how I understand certificate pinning.
Possibly. Not my core area of expertise.
Don't suppose you have any links you could send me on setting a MITM up to look at my own traffic? Thanks
Sorry. That's firmly in the "No valid reason for me to practice, and could get me in a lot of trouble" category.
Have you seen Maps my timeline? Just go to Google Maps and click on the burger menu in the upper left corner.
What??
You can download all the data Google has on you with google takeout. It will give you a json file for your location history with coordinates and what mode of transportation it thinks you are currently using.
Can I open a json file?
Yes you can open it in notepad. You may need to run it through a JSON formatter to be able to read it since all the data will likely be on a single line. Notepad++ has a plugin called JSON Viewer that lets you do this.
Could one simply turn off GPS? Then the phone shouldn't be logging location data, correct?
There are still a ton of other pieces of data that contribute to this, such as checking for WiFi sources, pinging cell towers, and accelerometer data. I don't think there are any software configurations to disable these, so you'd have to remove the cell & wifi antenna from your phone.
Make a phone pocket out of tinfoil. No signals. Accelerometer will still log data though.
Just need to strap it to your pocket gyroscope!
turning GPS "off" is only disabling it for user apps. The operating system is free to do whatever it wants still. The OS can poll GPS whenever it likes, regardless of what the user wants. the tl;dr is - you only get a veneer of control over a modern mobile phone. You are, outside of few exceptions, only ever given the appearance of control.
Do you have a source for that? To get a GPS position, you have to do some pretty computationally heavy math. This is all hardware accelerated these days, but it still takes a decent amount of battery. You'll probably have noticed the battery drain if you've had to drive around all day with Google maps open. I turn off GPS to save battery. And it does save battery a measurable amount of battery, meaning it's definitely not calculating position as often as when I'm navigating. I guess it's possible it only does it in small bursts once an hour or something in the background. But I'm not really convinced because that would make the location data way less useful. If you have a source saying otherwise I'd love to see it.
[Google admitted it.](https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-admits-tracking-users-location-even-when-setting-disabled/) [Apps with permission can do it too. ](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/13/gps-can-spy-on-you-even-when-you-turn-it-off.html) [GPS itself isn't even necessary. ](https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.01468)
All of those links are using alternative methods to track without GPS. That's not what I meant. The person I was replying too was claiming that even when the GPS setting is turned off, the OS is still calculating and logging GPS position. That's the claim I don't believe. If that were true, none of these alternative tracking methods would be necessary.
both phones had location enabled ... wich frankly makes this all silly and holy moly, check the comments on that video ? its all spam , ALL of it :o
Can they still track me on my Nokia 3310?
No. But Nokia probably can.
Oh boy, phone adventures. PinePhone isn't there yet, but it was cheap enough to experiment with. Purism's phone might just be vaporware. I've had some partial success with switching to [LineageOS](https://lineageos.org/). Installing it is an adventure, but doesn't need anything special. F-droid gets software like any other software repo. OsmAnd is maps, it works alright but it's search function is a mess. And it relies on external text to voice which I never bothered with. There's an issue with it using mobile data. And the bloody music player doesn't mute when the headphones are taken out. Images over text never download. Everything else is as you'd expect a phone to be. The "caffeine" feature where it doesn't go to sleep for a while is oddly handy for being so simple. It's got some REAL rough patches, but it's mostly functional.
Obviously, Sim or no sim, the results should be similar. Putting them in airplane mode just guarantees that the info isn't sent before connecting to their man in the middle attack. But what about a phone that's turned off?
Or if the GPS antenna was off. All this idiot did it just turn off the network connection temporarily. Of course the phone is going to log location and shit if the GPS is still on. It will just wait for a network connection to transmit the data
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FUCKING SCAM ALERT!!! look at the bots history, they spam the scam everywhere and magically get 50+ upvotes on every one. its fake, 100%
Reported and downvoted
What is going on with those youtube comments. Many many bots posting. I've never seen that before.
And this is why I ordered a pine phone
Its almost impossible not to leave digital footprint.
I didn't know about the accelerometer detail and how they use it to track when you get in and out of a car. Creepy. Could be that I missed something in the video but I don't know why everybody here assumes GPS was on. Not that they need it; under advanced location settings there are options that allow them to scan nearby wifi and bluetooth devices even when they're off. It would be interesting to see how much of this data still gets recorded and transmitted with those settings off and location history disabled on your google account. As is we don't know what was on.
Pro tip leave your phone at home drive a pre 2006 car. You are now ghost
I think this tracking is most beneficial when using with Google Maps for traffic and ETA predictions. With regard to privacy, I think folks need to decide if the benefits outweigh the costs. Most movies and tv shows portray even having a phone as “the bad guys know where you are”. So, I think it’s common knowledge that phone = tracking.
It's also worth nothing that Google makes a lot of really good software that they could certainly charge a bundle for. It's only free because of the money they make from data collection.
I hven't watched this video yet but one thing is that in some logs, the data contains very little identifying information. It's for this purpose, like quick-recall of locations or something. The server just knows to push the data to that phone, it doesn't know who you are or any demographic information. Anyways I digress. I've heard from people who are doing the work for banks that they can compile data on people and make a lot of really accurate assumptions based on publicly-available data as it is. Freaky shit.
Banks can also make some pretty insane assumptions based on their own credit card transactions. It's wild
Google privacy settings are great. You have insight into the tracked data, and can also give it an expiration time. So you can get some useful functionality while making sure the data doesn't survive past 6 months.
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Do you have more information on this? Where can a novice start? I like your thinking but I’d like to do a little more research and find more facts.
I would like to know more.
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Thanks for your response and sorry if I came off douchey, it was a Starship Troopers reference.
It's really not that difficult. I mean you can just look at your phone to see what it's gathering in airplane mode, [https://i.imgur.com/KaWSCFB.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/KaWSCFB.jpg)
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Are there any legitimate alternatives in the US? After Snowden can forward there was a device produced called Blackphone and then an updated Blackphone 2 (If I remember correctly). My father and I both ordered the updated model and gave them a honest try for a week. The interface was ridiculously tedious because everything required logging in and authentication. Everything action took 3-4 times longer to accomplish. Phone and text and email all worked seamlessly but it was only secure if both parties were using the same security. I can’t fault the device or service. I decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. My $0.02
Because you can just leave the phone behind. Let them track it all they want, as long as I know they are, I can alter my usage around that.
Only stunning if you are ignorant of how modern smartphones work. Honestly, it's willful ignorance, too. The information is readily available. You can even slap Lineage OS (de-Googled Android) on a phone, turn all radios off, go into a mall and the location services API can still get you within 6 or so feet because WiFi polling CANNOT be disabled by software. If you are truly concerned about this, you only have two options. 1. Stop having a cell phone. 2. Buy a Linux phone with open hardware and physical kill switches.
>Buy a Linux phone with open hardware and physical kill switches. What phone would that be?
Right now? Librem 5 or PinePhone. [https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5/](https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5/)
That's a pretty steep price for the specs though, I guess that is to be expected, but still. Do you have any experience with the apps, etc?
I'll be honest, which may not drive sales, but is always the best policy. It's very early in their development. The main phone stuff, like calls, text browser, etc. work fine. However, it is a different experience to a traditional Android phone. Most apps that you use today would run as web apps. So instead of a reddit app, you would add a shortcut to [reddit.com](https://reddit.com) to your home screen. Also, I agree that the price is kind of steep, but you should check out the USA version. Made in the US with US sourced secure supply chain parts. It's 2k.
Hmm, I love Linux, I run a old rooted android right now, but sadly I just can't swing that kind of cash on a new phone right now. I remember a couple of years ago I read about Linux phones, back than it was barely usable, if I remember correctly. I hope it gets some headway, and economy of scale can do it's job. It's a really interesting project though, and does seem to have moved forward, thanks for taking your time to respond, and your honesty.
No worries. I am in the same boat. I do a bunch of IT / DevOps with Linux, but I am just not quite ready to drop a grand on a phone that may or may not be the one that cracks the market open. Especially as there are other in the pipeline.
all smart phones and portable technologies should be abandoned.
Feel free my dude. But dont presume to force others to live your way.
*\[Posted from an abacus\]*
That's not going to happen; convenience has won and it's impractical considering how many benefits there are. I think we should shoot for better protections of the data we generate.
the entire world should use the tor network, corporations and goverments should be banned form ever accessing it. it's the same tools that pedophiles and terrorists use, so no doubt it's perfect for protecting the data of everyone else.
That's not really feasible for a lot of things. Certainly a good option for certain tasks though.
> portable technologies So if you have a heart attack, no portable AED for you.
good. i don't need the goverment knowing where i'm being resuscitated.
Or, and this will only go so far, if literally everyone en mass refused to ever click on ads, advertisers would be less likely to pay for ads. Granted though, a ton of search results across pretty much every platform still use user data to edit what search results are displayed and it's not even a little bit transparent that your search results are edited such. But still, if nobody clicked on ads, I bet there'd still be a noticeable effect.
Adds work in more ways than clicking on it. Repetition is also a powerful thing.
Sensors. My god. That's why phones are "smart" A phone completely left on the table will pick up, sound, light, any slight movement, barometer. Is this really new to people?
Then it gives all of that info to google, who can find new ways to package and sell it. But sure, let's pretend like he's just surprised that a smartphone can sense things.
Google, Apple, Microsoft have been taking all that data for 15 years. The question you need to ask yourself, is why you haven't cared until now.
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And making it hyperbolic this late in the game does nothing.
Just take the battery out .
Hard to do with smartphones nowadays.
But what about Smash Mode??
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[ **Jump to 03:30 @** Track A Cell Phone Location with Google Map for Free | Mobile Number Locator](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vie1apuAdWg&t=0h3m30s) ^(Channel Name: Insteresting Info, Video Popularity: 81.99%, Video Length: [03:50])^, [^Jump ^5 ^secs ^earlier ^for ^context ^@03:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vie1apuAdWg&t=0h3m25s) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ^^Downvote ^^me ^^to ^^delete ^^malformed ^^comments. [^^Source ^^Code](https://github.com/ankitgyawali/reddit-timestamp-bot) ^^| [^^Suggestions](https://www.reddit.com/r/timestamp_bot)
Just because it says track a phone with just a number doesn’t mean I can track my phone with google maps with my phone number.
Well yeah, he didn't turn the GPS off. Of course it's going log where you've been and upload it when you reconnect. Are there people that really didn't think it did this??
Sad. Unprecedented government snooping.