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Virginia Police Routinely Use Secret GPS Pings To Track People's Cell Phones
The nonprofit online news site Virginia Mercury investigated their state police departments' "real-time location warrants," which are "addressed to telephone companies, ordering them to regularly ping a customers' phone for its GPS location and share the results with police."
Public records requests submitted to a sampling o ... β Read more
@slashdot this is every state, everywhere.
if you've got a good reason for not being tracked, you know what to do.
i was speaking with @prologic recently who mentioned, like myself @off_grid_living prefers not to have a phone number (and possibly a phone).
this raises a bigger question. can you, a netizen of the world survive sans phone?
let's loop through reasons why one needs a phone in 2022 (and my responses to each):
- social media: nope.jpeg
- banking: if your bank supports mfa via email, or better yet totp/secure tokens nope.jpeg
- friends: most are on signal, twtxt, session, threema, irc
- family: don't have any, but if i did, session or salty(once it's finalised)
- work: fvck em
- doctors: they can send an email
- car repair: i do my own
- online shopping: nope.jpeg
- in-person shopping: get rekt
- government: fvck em too
- pharmacy: email me
- significant other: don't we spend too much time together?
what am i missing here?
@mutefall note to self. this is cliff-notes for a blog post. release the kraken
@mutefall Does that include a landline phone? Or just a cellphone?
@mutefall Does that include a landline phone? Or just a cellphone?
@mutefall Does that include a landline phone? Or just a cellphone?
@movq i suppose both, but cellular is more commonplace in 2022. i haven't had a landline in who knows how long either.
my world is a bit more quiet without these things. but i choose to live a certain way.
A landline phone, or even a mobile phone that never leaves the house, mitigates this kind of tracking almost entirely. I haven't carried my cell phone regularly for years. It just stays at home. Anyone with the means to track me this way already knows where I live. Besides, I don't give anyone my phone number unless I intend to talk to them and I've avoided two factor authentication pretty well. When I decide to start using a service that requires two factor authentication over SMS, I'll use one of those anonymous services that take Monero.
@mckinley very reasonable and i don't disagree with your tactics. my own view is less about tracking and more about not being distracted. in a world where attention can be currency, i try to preserve it. i do have a mobile, but there's no sim and it's a glorified messenger when i don't want to lug my laptop around.
@mutefall That's admirable and a good point. My phone is really only used for calls and the occasional text message, and I don't even connect it to my home network.
I live in three different worlds. One world is where my private and secure world where I try as much as I can do deploy applications and alternative services that respect my privacy and security. This is generally for myself and a little bit for my better half.
My second world is where I spend most of the time in where itβs with family and friends. As much as I try to explain about the horrendous implications of certain online services they donβt blink an eye.
The third world is where I do my work. I have no choice of OS or applications and although my development and planning have a lot of FOSS choices certain constraints limit me. I show everybody of all ages better online choices however like the second world mentioned above people unfortunately rely on popular services.
We can all certainly try our hardest to change peoples point of view, one day at a time, and with time will hopefully better our online future.
This is very much the same for us in Australia as well. The Attorney-General has the power to approve all warrants that compel Big Tech to divulge this type of tracking info, which personally I see as a major conflict of interest and needs to be changed to an independent body instead.
Everything I've started doing recently in terms of privacy are mainly to exclude my son from having a presence online until such time as he's ready to create his presence on his own. Imagine going to a job interview at 25 and the interviewer has baby photos of you π¬ Of course, having an online presence will come with some education and I'll need to make said education fun and engaging. I'd definitely prefer him having a Yarn account prior to any other form of social media.
Yeah thanks for the mention, if my Son James didn't buy my a phone, I would have one, I use it as a hot spot for this computer, the phone number died long time ago.
@mckinley i had an i-thing for a while out of requirements for work. it was very distracting and i'm not exactly pleased with apple trying to break e2ee. luckily was able to rid myself of it.
as for the current grapheneos/pixel if i need to go online there's plenty of open wifi spots as one rides around :-)
@prologic of you've think i've gone off the rails again. there may be truth to this
@ullarah this is unpacked really well. a box for everything. the concept of privacy imho is approaching life support. a better tactic imho is compartamentalising your life into boxes. never shall they meet.
@screem that's the fvcked thing. today's memories are tomorrow's potential crimes.
by the time your lad is ready to get online likely we'll have usernames such as as48x0480103484048801
squat him one now.
@off_grid_living aye. i live a lot like you do, but more city-bound. slowly making my move to off-grid. next step is to close the land i've been eyeballing, then a few years of hard work.
i dream of a life of peace, a good day's work, and some nature.
That is a most admirable dream, DON'T just leave your few years of hard work too late, like when your are over 60 years old. I could have enjoyed this more, if I started 15 years ago. But it's hard to find the perfect block of land.