We were promised a technological future with ways to search for things of interest, find out how to get to places on a map, etc. Instead the government can now track us in our daily lives anywhere and everywhere we go 24/7. That would be great in a world where the government is of the people, by the people and for the people. However in reality they want to find us and send us to el Salvador. WTF!
Until things change, I am not buying a single electronic device. Not an iPad or a TV or an empty-tree player. This is ridiculous. And now we can’t even know anything because all news is coming from the Murdocks and they just killed off NPR and PBS. This is how the bad part of the story starts.
See you all in a fire pit somewhere!
Out of all that, the one that really bothers me is one they didn’t even list: it knows all of your friends and associates. They have your location data. They have the location data of everyone around you. If you and several other people are in the same location frequently, you’ll start seeing Facebook and other apps suggest them as friends.
Fifteen years ago, I was among a community of people who primarily used aliases within the community to isolate their personal lives and identities from their community identity and activities. Facebook outed everyone to each other through friend suggestions.
All the rest of these things don’t bother me all that much, but by knowing your associations, they can infer things like political affiliation, and currently it seems like being in a database of people who hang out with “the enemy” is very dangerous for folks who take action behind the scenes while keeping a neutral face in public.
It’s pretty scary what information you can infer from geolocational data, it’s why you should try your best to not use it as much as possible.
When an app asks for your location only give it the minimum geolocation and time if you’re absolutely sure it needs it (for delivery make sure there’s not a place you can manually enter the dropoff location first, etc).
Also, “fine location” is a much more invasive technology than people think. Apple and Google have giant databases of Wifi broadcast locations and associated positions, which is what gives you the “more accurate location.”
If you want to help do your part to mitigate that turn off your router’s SSID broadcast and make sure none of your devices attempt to “auto connect” to your wifi.
It really is a trade-off with convenience because auto connecting to Wi-Fi is wonderful, and Wi-Fi-corrected location data is much better for navigating in urban areas.
Is it wrong to want the convenience and the privacy, both?