Agree with DB below. Would like to add
Time to just STOP sharing data. Its worse than is obvious.
I recently told companies (any service) i do not want my email communications and I do not want direct payment from my checking account.
That's at least a start.
1
One thing about these "privacy policies" that irks me is the language they use. They "may" use your data, "for example - when completing a purchase", they also "may" find out other things about you, "such as your address if you supply it to us". This mostly sounds innocuous due to the terms "may" and "for example", when in reality there is no "may" about it - they ARE doing it. They ARE compiling a dossier on you, and it very well "may" be used against you or at least to manipulate you.
I am an animal lover and guess what, on every news site I visit there are stories about animals. Are the rest of you seeing these? They also know my politics, my age, my gender, and exactly where I live. I did not supply these details to anyone for public use; in fact, I try to guard them. Pretty soon they will be deciding what TV shows I watch and what books I can read. I do not want anyone making these decisions for me. This has gone too far.
An S.D.K is a collection (Kit) of tools used to create (Develop) programs (Software) that run on computers found in everyday things from smart phones to the processors controlling Mars rovers. Like a hammer, an S.D.K. is not some thing that gets installed
Using apps that can track you, is a fact of modern life.
Data is a fact of modern marketing
Until the government regulates the industry, it will only get more intrusive with AI.
The USA is ready for GDPR Compliance. Please. ASAP.
This was in the WaPo. Why does a college need 6,000 location data points per specific student per day? This isn't to market to them but to "track" and "reward" for "acceptable behavior" and set them up for a surveillance future. The NYT needs to go deeper....
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/24/colleges-are-turning-students-phones-into-surveillance-machines-tracking-locations-hundreds-thousands/#comments-wrapper
I do not understand this idea of "big data" being company intelligence. First, I dispute the contention that most of these companies have intelligence. Secondly, I have worked with computers and numbers almost my entire professional career and I have never used a numeric datum larger than 32 bytes.
It's all so harmless.
Until it isn't.
2
Will you please stop putting iPhones in the same category as other devices. Apple does not gather your personal data. It sometimes collects data - but does not attach it to a person. Articles that don't explain the difference are just plain wrong. They either don't do enough research, or they just don't care.
couldnt we as consumers just say NO......we are not going to install ANY apps that collect data.....the market would crumble....people have to want NOT to be spied on...or they think its harmless....until its used against them in a court of law...
sadly, until then the masses will download, and give away their info...almost Orwellian.....
@keith ...and therein lies the rub- the masses will not just say NO.
Using location data and internet search records as a basis for targeted advertising seems ubiquitous and unstoppable unless the entire internet framework is restructured and heavily regulated. That's unlikely to happen.
Commercial marketing use of personal data by the collecting entity is annoying but essentially unthreatening in itself. The amount of willpower required to ignore a retail advertisement is minuscule. Most humans can manage it. Especially when consent is received for the initial collection, its direct retail use by the collector is not seriously threatening to privacy interests.
What is much scarier is that data collected for marketing purposes can be sold to or otherwise accessed by other entities for different and potentially more malignant uses. This would include government agencies, political and lobbying groups, and criminal enterprises.
A strict bar on transferring personal data to government agencies except pursuant to a court order based on probable cause would make sense. So too a requirement for the public reporting and taxation of all private data transfers from one business to another. Stiff penalties, including criminal liability, should attach to violation of these restrictions.
You want privacy? Forget it, the genie is not going back in the bottle. What we can do is regulate how this information is used. For example, the SSN was designated in 1945 as a unique personal identifier and caused no problems until the 1970s when banks got it designated as private so that they could create a loan to someone they had never met just based on his knowing your social security number. SSN was intended to be be used to state identity, like a name. Don't allow banks and other loaners to use it as authentication, i.e. as a password, and identity theft would disappear.
The article is right, but reads like an Elizabeth Warren plan, meaning the reaction of most readers and voters is to become overwhelmed, space out, and ignore the big picture problem, resorting to taking baby steps to "protect" their phone.
As with all publicly owned corporations, the tech outfits' only objective is to maximize profits. First Silicon Valley sells you all this stuff you just can't possibly live without if you are not a dinosaur, and then it sells you more stuff to minimize the damage done by the stuff they got you to buy in the first place.
Silicon Valley's mantra: disruption = progress. And people buying that line got us Trump as President, families unable to talk to each other at dinner because they are glued to their cell phones, drivers killing people because they are looking at screens instead of the road, your privacy sold online, and cheap ubiquitous surveillance.
The next bit of "disruptive progress", cheap drones and self-driving cars, will have as their most blatant effect creating massive unemployment among suicide bombers.
But, before we get too self-righteous and blame it all on the corporate behemoths of Silicon Valley (and China!!), let's keep in mind that they would not succeed if we did not buy their snake oil. To the extent there is any sort of solution to these problems, we will discover where to begin by looking in the mirror, remembering there is no free lunch, and we are the only way to clean things up in (even a fflawed) a democracy.
1
1. Disable Wi-Fi when it's not needed. Wi-Fi can be used to track you.
2. Run only the apps you need, only when you need them.
3. Disallow the use of location services whenever possible. The next best thing is to only allow an app to use location services while you're using it.
4. If you're an Android user, install the minimum number of apps you can get by with. Apple is pretty good about monitoring the use of personal data since all apps are downloaded through their App Store. Android apps, on the other hand, are less restrictive and there could be more opportunities for misuse of personal data.
5. Although not related to the misuse of data by businesses, it's a good idea to disable Bluetooth if you don't need it. It's a short range technology and isn't all that useful for tracking, but because it's designed to pair with other devices it's possible for people with ill intent to use equipment to read the data on your phone. (I know it's possible, but I have no idea how easy it is.)
9
@DB
All good points, and should be common sense for anyone walking around with a personal mobile device.
Your Point # 4 is particuarly relevant if you are not using an Apple appliance.. because Apple keeps things pretty well locked down under user control.. but Android is wide open (the curse of an open mobile OS).
I'm less concerned about bluetooth than you are, mainly because it has limited value to actual hackers. It is much harder to make use of and thus and is more likely to be used by governments.. and the sophistication needed to do so is pretty high. And if your government has a legal warrant to tap into your phone.... they have better ways to go about it than bluetooth.
@DB
Does anyone gather and use location derived from cell tower locations? It is possible, but don't know if it used in this way by legit companies.
Also, there are devices (not apps, but hardware as would be necessary to track you with tower locations) that can determine information about who you call and who calls you. More can be determined but that requires more sophisticated longer range receivers than are needed to simply gather data about who makes or receives the calls. Your cell phone is a dull-duplex two-way radio and does not make phone calls directly, but via the towers. To tap a land line it is still necessary to put a tap on the line as I understand it. Not so with the radio called a cell phone which is dependent on a cellular network of radio relay towers which make phone calls possible. Illegal technology advances faster than you might imagine.
@J Chaffee
Generally speaking.. your cell phone transmissions are encrytped... which essentially means only you, the cell provider, and of course the government has the tech to actually decrypt it easily. Foreign intelligence would have the same capability as well.. but why on earth would foreign intelligence try to tap encrypted communcations from Joe Pubic Citizen?? They certainly would tap our idiot presidents commercial cell phone that he insists on using rather than a properly secured government cell phone with enhanced encryption.
2
Tax it. Any data sold should be subject to a transaction tax, in real time, as the data is transferred. What about data that is shared, but not sold? When an SDK transfers your data from an app to a third party, there should also be a transaction tax. A penny? Half a penny? More? I don't know.
But we all give our privacy data away for free, while other entities are monetizing it. Some of that value needs to go back to the public. Create something like a sovereign wealth fund, and use it to pay for something everyone gets, like single payer health care, or a stipend like Alaska does with its oil money.
16
@Kay ,,,,,,,,,,,,very good idea.....then it would/should be made public....
@Kay I love the idea. The transaction tax should be applied every time location data is transferred. Anonymous location that is summarized should be charged the same amount as a single location-user data point is. Thus anonymous transfer is strongly advantaged over single user data transfer. By setting the tax properly, the business model for location businesses is changed. The caveat is this: Can the tax be enforced?
One thing missing in the discussion is a meaningful definition of "private data." In principle, a person's location when in a public place is not private at all, and anyone who cares can follow and note someone's location as long as they are not in a restricted place from which the tracker is effectively excluded. But a target's entry into such a restricted location from a public place would not be private, nor would his or her movements after reentering the public space.
Most of us probably would agree that such tracking, or building a person's path over a significant period of time, would be annoying, invasive, something to be avoided and, if the government is doing it, something that should require a warrant. On the other hand, it is not clear that presentation of advertising or other information keyed to current location would not be, for many or even most of us, no worse than mildly annoying and possibly even a somewhat useful convenience.
I do not envy legislators who try to make sensible law in this area.
9
@Thomas D. Dial how has this nuanced and informed comment not been recommended more times. It seems that these Times articles are stumbling into outrage journalism instead of a thorough exploration of the issues.
1
People don't care about this data mining until and unless it is used against them. But that is hard to predict in the future. Will someone who is 21 now be held up to a spotlight when they are 51? Look where you went? Look at this data -- she can't be in power -- look at the data! Scary. This information -- saved -- could give someone power over you in the future. Perhaps, all data should be erased at the end of each year, and people start over. Maybe the issue is not the convenience of the apps, just that the info is sold to others and saved forever.
1
Again I am puzzled that the focus is on privacy, again. Many of us don't care, it may be of academic interest.
What, in my opinion, is of the greatest concern, is influencing. I am brought up to be immune against it. But when I was working for an organization for the relatives of demented, a pharmaceutical company was paying for our news bulletin - they influenced us heavily, lobbying for more medications. Of course in the cold war influencing was a wide-spread art. We cannot complain that the political influencers are lagging behind in modern times.
On the huge scale that influencing has, there is not much difference between commercial or political influencing - both aim at changes on a large scale. Changes that are visible only on that large scale. I care for transparency, and I care for the personal closeness between people. Are those values and trends in society promoted by the influencing industry?
13
@J. Dybwad
You don’t care . But many do care about privacy. Drug companies historically have broken the law , and are not trusted by the US public. In Norway if you trust drug companies good luck. Here they exist to rip us off financially.
3
@J. Dybwad
No one is immune from “influencing.” The fact you think you are is proof of how well it works. Also, the fact you think that influence campaigns have fallen behind in modern times when they have in fact accelerated and become larger/more sophisticated also speaks to the success of the campaigns.
That’s the point of an influence campaign. They do not control people. But they do modify behavior over a long period of time. You’re being influenced, and you’re not aware of it. Which is exactly what a successful influence campaign aims to do.
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@J. Dybwad
If you were living in Norway in 1943 you might see things differently. History happens every day, repetitions and all.
I appreciate this article. I did not even know this existed.
Again , my reaction echos citizenk below- So What ! The authors fail again to distinguish between META DATA and PERSONAL DATA, and fail to identify harm done to any individual by meta-data. I have elected to enroll in auto insurance by MetroMile, a company that monitors your driving distance and location using "pulse" device plugged into the OBD port of your car. I get a full report on mileage and a mapping of where I drive. The billing is a monthly base rate and a per mile rate is waaaaay below any other comparable insurance. Thanks Metromile.
1
I have a big "so what" after reading this article. These apps are not spying on us. It's all about generating business for someone. Every one wants a booming economy, low unemployment, etc.. This is how in works in the 21st century.
Now, if it's the government tracking me specifically, that's another story.
2
@citizenk ... Well, actually, yes, the government is tracking you specifically. But that's another story.
There is a movie called " The President's Analyst" that saw this hacking of the American Psyche coming, but not voluntarily. That so many persons still use Facebook just shows how overwhelmed and hopeless and outgunnedwe feel in this onslaught.
Thank you so for this critical coverage.
SDK's don't do anything - although the article and some commenters seem to think they do. SDK's simply offer a bundle of tools and standards so that one application can be programmed to interface with another through a standard interface or API.
Given SDK's do nothing but provide standards, it is the application on each side of the SDK that does something. The managers of those applications are the responsible parties. The SDK is responsible for nothing.
1
Which is worse? Tech companies analyzing big data in order to target advertising? Or the NY Times writing a headline that calls your phone a “spy” that “reports” to some secret entity?
i see the potential for abuse of location data, but i don’t think you’ve shown abuses flagrant enough to justify that headline.
2
Well, it's a little over-the-top to call smartphones "spies." It's not like they're "SPYING" on you. "Surveillance" or "surveilling" maybe, not "SPYING."
I don't see anyway we can prevent companies or government to collect our personal information and data. Privacy is a luxury in the past. Unless you are super rich that other people do things for you, few can track you.
Just don't do things illegal, and you will be fine.
Most folks don't give a rip about their phone privacy. Young folks never had any privacy anyway since they grew up in an online world. For those who do care, ditch the smart phone and use an old flip phone with a removable battery. Removing the battery is required for privacy, turning it off will not do
2
We have a neighbor whose home video collects data on the comings and goings of the several dozen people who live here. He compiles the data, including vehicle info, and, together with still photos he takes from his front porch, sells the data and visuals. Nothing I just wrote is true; but, what would we feel if it were?
1
Compared to the information people willingly share on Facebook this seems trivial.
1
When I purchased my first smart phone and installed my first app, I remember installing it...and then I remember reading " (APP) needs access to your contacts, your gallery, your location, etc..", I thought, "are they serious?Access to my contacts?" I had all these questions like , "Can they download my contacts", "Can they access my contacts at anytime?" Then I started asking myself paranoid questions like, "What does ACCESS really mean?" Sadly, I'm still asking myself these questions a decade later. Privacy is important.
2
@Kyle: Here's another unsettling bit of data collection. It's possible, likely even, that your car manufacturer is hoovering up your contact list every time it connects. Oh wait, you think you're safe because you don't connect your phone to your car? Does anyone else call you from a smartphone while connected to a car?
Although I do not own a Smartphone, only a little cellular for restricted communications, I am aware of the snooping associated with Internet usage. My wish is to be able to blow up by remote control the snoopers' and hackers' machines. Alas, nothing but wishful thoughts ...
Oh, the horror!
Now I can get directions instantly anywhere. Find the nearest gas station, know the weather forecast, find the closest coffee shop in a strange airport....OR –– I can eschew these wonders and turn my smart phone into an old-fashioned brick that simply makes phone calls. My choice.
1
@michaelm ... Actually the smartphone is nothing more than a mini desktop portable computer. Oh and by the way, you can also make a phone call with it- if you want.
Privacy is, almost, a thing of the past. Too many ‘apps’ and other things want to know about us and what we do, most importantly how we spend our money and where we go to spend that money.
It’s all about the money. How much we have and what we do with it. It’s all about making money off of you. So, that cellphone in your hand, pocket or purse is making plans to spend your money faster than you can make it.
I guess that’s why I turn the darn thing off when I’m not using it. Not sure if that will protect my privacy but I can try.
1
Turn your phone off, pull out your battery and move on. You don't need to have a phone on 24 hours a day and you don't need to feed the click world and give your information away for free.
No one receives a monthly check from Facebook or Google at the end of the month so why give information that they don't need to them for free?
Turn everything off and live your life stop giving everything away for free and fight for your privacy.
1
This series has not yet fully addressed why our data should go anywhere at all. For me targeted marketing is not a social good and I see no reason why anyone other than advertisers should care about more precise data on the value of a billboard. It seems that the leakage of these types of data to third parties and for marketing purposes within the tech giants is what creates most of the problem. Sharing and sale of these data could be banned and no one would be worse off. There is no right to someone else’s data.
Yes, some people who work in collecting and massaging these data might be lose their jobs, but they could certainly find something more useful to do with their analytical skills.
1
Could mapping programs know where congestion is happening if they did not have access to location data from people currently on the road? Obtaining information about best travel routes is very valuable to me. I would rather divulge such data to Google et al than not have information about congestion.
1
@bernard
Information about traffic conditions coming from government agencies is much more reliable .
1
The problem with the smart phone is much more insidious. With a few illegal apps a hacker, stalker or anyone with a few dollars and the ability to search Google can find the means to take control of virtually any phone and watch a person's every move.
It is time for smartphone makers to provide better operating systems to protect users. I see Verizon wireless is beginning to offer "better security" but they see this as an opportunity to squeeze more money out of consumers instead of providing secure phones as part of the monthly service.
Unlike China privacy should be a priority here and we should demand it.
3
In some ways, more harm is done by publishing articles like this than good.
How so?
In an era when people are constantly living in one or more forms or states of fear, suspicion, doubt ... this kind of opinion reporting simply helps make people even more fearful.
At some point.. some parts of society reach a form of paralysis of fear, uncertainty and doubt.
I genuinely get the concerns being revealed here, but they honestly are not new and are largely easy for an individual to mitigate to a large degree. You simply need to be aware of what tracks you, and how, and prevent it from doing so except in circumstances you control. Mind you.. this requires not installing any social media apps on your phone.. because they are the major culprits here.... and frankly most people seem to need that constant social media tethering with their friends, family, coworkers, etc. So be it... then.. but do so eyes wide open.
The only thing you cannot personally control is your cell phone provider logging your location data via your cell transmissions. But you know what.. if you genuinely do not trust your cell phone provider to be ethical and lawful with your data... then you should not have a cell phone service with said provider.
Even if you turn off all Location services, your phone is still tracked by your wireless provider when it pings the nearest cell phone tower as you move around. While the location is not very precise, it can still be useful. There is no way to prevent this, short of turning your phone off, or putting it in Airplane Mode.
The articles don't seem to address this issue.
7
@Greg
Who cares?
I don't.
My location data, by itself, is of little real value to sell to other companies. It does however provide a wealth of broad meta data to cell phone providers... such as seeing traffic congestion data in their cell networks and as such adding capacity to fill the demand. I'm fine with my cell phone company using my location data, along with millions of others, to help them build and maintain better cell networks, particularly high speed data networks.
4
@Chuck
Well since you don't care, how about getting a check at the end of the month for your willing participation. Why cant the customers ever get paid for providing such meaningful information. You think they are going to build a better cell phone tower? I am still waiting for a highway to be repaired and that is not happening.
Grow up and stop being a troll, the days of goodness are not with us anymore but the days of greed are all around us.
@Greg
Pull the battery out and use it when needed. You could go into the store of your wireless vendor and turn it on there. So your location is masked.
Try /e/ OS from e Foundation. It doesn't share your location data with Google, in fact it doesn't have any Google services inside. You don't need a Google account, which by definition means you have more privacy.
2
Before going on a foreign vacation, I called my credit card company to expect charges from abroad. I got a robot that asked me to state the purpose of the call. I said 'foreign travel". Immediately it quoted my entire travel itinerary and said it was unnecessary to advise the company. I understand that aids fraud protection, but it's kind of creepy.
@AIR
Anything you transact with your credit card is known by your credit card company. When you book tickets, or hotel reservations.. they know this.. and they know exact dates, venues, locations, etc. But credit card companies are not in the business of harvesting data for resale.. they are in the business of avoiding credit card fraud.. both for your benefit and for theirs.
Enhanced fraud protection should not creep anyone out. It should actually make you feel more secure and happy that the credit card companies are sophisticated enough now days to protect you (and them) from credit card fraud regardless of you notify them or not.
3
@Chuck
Really? so you have surrendered to A.I. and its ok with you. Why talk to real human beings? so we should appreciate Kangaroo courts, they are so efficient?
My business should not be the business of the world unless I say so.
Good morning
I tell you from Spain I am a mobile phone userequal millions of people
born in the 80s.
That we have lived no mobile phone and now everything is controlled with the new technology.
Now the new generations are addicted to mobile phonethis nullifies the capacity of the human being.
There are people who no longer know how to think without cell phones the big companies have control of cell phones and therefore of its users technology is an advance that helps the human being.
But you have to set limits to be balanced between technology and human capacity or finally we will live in MATRIX.
Regards from spain.
6
I'd like to know more about how you tracked the pings in Brooklyn. How do I tell when this is happening on my phone?
@Mary It happens because your location is turned on. You can prevent being tracked by turning the phone to airplane mode, for example. Or turn off all GPS locations. Go into Settings on the phone and you'll find how to do it. But it will limit which apps you can use. Somewhere is this series of article is also a link to instructions on how to do this.
The arguments always stop short of the answer to this question, and leave it up to the imagination:
"What is it possible to do with the information that can hurt consumers, assuming they're not criminal or are trying to hide something?"
3
We badly need regulation in this whole area to safeguard privacy. But our disfunctional political system will prevent that from happening. Republicans, especially will side with business over consumer privacy every time. Safeguarding your own privacy online is deliberately made difficult by everyone making a profit off the current system and spending lobbying dollars to ensure their continued profits. The only hope for a solution is in the ballot box. Vote blue.
And I just looked into the NYTs "Privacy" policy on my subscription and found how this organization steals my information and makes it impossible for citizen/consumers to do anything about it.
Heal yourself before attacking others.
11
@JohnBarleycorn
fair point.
Then again.. go read any privacy policy by any online presence on the internet.
1
Very worry some
Remember all the discussion in the 1990s about privacy and how it would become the defining issue of the decades? Congress utterly failed to protect consumers from invasive spying and the sale of personal information, just as it failed with the Do Not Call system and every other technology-driven issue facing Americans.
Campaign contributions were no match for the public interest, and that was before the mega tech companies like Facebook and Google became the all-powerful too-big-to-regulate stateless behemoths we have today.
15
@Bruce
to a certain extent.. this growing mania about privacy is very much a two edged sword.
Being afraid to the point of being obsessed with privacy simply instills a persistent level of anxiety that drives a person so continue to do things that further isolate them from the rest of society.
In era of expanding tribalism.... we need more real life connectivity face to face and less of this virtual sock puppet pretend connectivity of the digital only world. This is the only way we as humans overcome fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Humans are meant to be social creatures, not isolationists living in caves out of fear of any and every boogey man imaginable.
Less smartphones and more face to face rapport and a lot of these concerns being expressed in articles like this are greatly diminished.. and companies that want to harvest data via apps... find a declining field to harvest rather then a growing one.
1
@Bruce Thanks in part to Newt Gingrich for defunding the Office of Technology Asssessment
1
I put no apps on my (stupidly expensive) phone. I often shut it all the way off when traveling. I pay for nothing using my phone. I added two flip phones to my monthly bill for next-to-nothing, and I carry them if I won't be likely to need to search for information or directions.
No, I am not engaged in an affair or criminal activity. I simply refuse to participate in auto-intrusion upon my privacy and auto-self-surveillance at a level that goes far beyond 1984's Big Brother (or Communist East Germany's invasions of privacy). And I do it just on principle.
If I lived in China, I would own a lot of more subtle Groucho Marx glasses.
I am astonished at how people surrender their privacy for the most minimal trinkets of convenience.
44
@Craig Mason you are still surrendering your privacy with those flip phones. As described in the Vice article referenced in the second installment of this NYT series, the mobile phone companies collect location data from all devices (flip phones included) and have been selling that data to anyone who asks for it including private bounty hunters.
4
@New Yorker In Paris
Who cares though?
Every time you shop in a store.. the store gathers all manner of data about you as well.. much of it very marketable either for internal purposes, or for external purposes. Same goes for credit card companies.
The question though is.. what exactly can they do with this data, and what value does it have generally speaking. The answer is.. it is a modern form of micro-targeting for selling and thus gaining revenue through such sales. Thing is.. if you simply ignore what they are pushing to you.. they have no financial leverage over you.
Be a smart consumer, rather then becoming a digital hermit or real life hermit living in a cave somewhere... scared of every possible boogey man you imagination can dream up.
3
@Craig Mason,
I will just confirm what @New Yorker in Paris says, that non-smartphones will "ping" your location to your mobile carrier. I learned that when AT&T started texting me about international rates, all unsolicited, when I was still in US, but 15 miles from Canadian border. Of course, that's better than all the extra data they'd get if I had a smartphone. I'm retired and I can deal with the trade-offs of not having a smartphone. But working folks I know usually have no choice - instant email access required, employer-mandated apps, etc.
2
The privacy discussion is one we should have had 30 or 40 years ago, when the technology to destroy personal privacy was being developed. Now most people don’t even understand the concept. The issue isn’t just “privacy,” but the destruction of the complementary public sphere, where people used to meet on an equal footing. Now everything we do or say or think is “public,” but what we do or say is used by people we don’t know to manipulate what we see and hear. We think we are as free as birds, but the corporations & governments that use our data know better.
45
I hope someone explains to iHeartRadio that most of the meanings of "fulsome" are not things you want to use to describe your policy documents. Among others, Merriam-Webster lists "aesthetically, morally, or generally offensive," "exceeding the bounds of good taste," and "excessively complimentary or flattering."
5
I'm boring, lead a frugal life, don't buy anything, and am totally non-materialistic. For example, I drive my cars into the ground and only buy socks when I can see all my toes peaking out of the old ones. They can track me all they want. It will just put them to sleep.
4
I live in D.C. and believe that everything I say and do someone is watching and listening. Also they know where I am at all times. I don't mine because I'm not doing anything wrong or illegal.
So far, most of us aren’t concerned about this surveillance.
But go back and read the book “1984” by George Orwell, or recall our own “McCarthy Era” Red Scare investigations and think about what a our government could do now with this new technology.
8
@Dan More timely and more relevant is "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" since the power of the government pales in comparison to that of the tech companies to push and prod you to behave and spend as they want you to.
You'll learn the story of how McDonald's paid the developer of Pokemon Go $0.50 per patron to steer them to their stores with their game.
1
@Dan
We have more protections from the government in this subject than we do with companies. So I don't fear a McCArthy Era resurgence that would use data for prosecution. If we ever get to the point where this is a valid concern.. we are already well under the thumb of a police state........ because it requires much more focus than just sifting data.
As for companies.. in my view.. bring it on companies.. I challenge you to actually make effective use of any data you gather about my shopping or travel habits. It's only value is if you can use it to target market me for product of service sales... and frankly... you cant.. because I ignore anything pushed at me without my permission.
1
@Mikerttaffe
If a consumer is a slave to being pushed, poked, and proded through use of digital data for digital marketing.. said consumer has much more serious issues to deal with.. like having absolutely no self control or critical thinking skills.
2
This battle has been lost and such current concerns will soon be viewed as "quaint," like somebody listening in on Grandma's party line decades ago. When cars and refrigerators and, I believe, even SHOES are now communicating via the internet, we have hit the bottom of the slippery slope.
Use a Faraday case for your phone, only costs about $15. Put your phone in it whenever you leave the house, and only take it out when you are comfortable with your location being recorded.
6
Maybe if every person in Congress, the President, cabinet officers and SCOTUS had their daily locations tracked and posted online (like in the media), the problem would be addressed very quickly. In the meantime, I bet we would find all sort of nefarious trips.
1
As in many areas of life there are tradeoffs. Smart phones don't take away your intelligence, you have to forfeit it. Use a less educated phone if you can't appreciate and discern between the value and liability of technology, please
@art Any current cell phone can be tracked if it is turned on and not in airplane mode. That is not exactly the same as the tracking data discussed in these articles, but is necessary for phone operation, retained for a limited period by carriers, and available for law enforcement purposes. There is some dispute and uncertainty about whether turning off the phone is enough. The power "switch" may not disconnect the battery directly, but only provide a signal to the device through its firmware.
the only reason i want my location tracked is when i'm using GPS. i felt protected b/c i turned location services off when i wasn't using it but - surprise! i'm still being followed around anyway.
there oughta be a law.
2
How is the location data sent to these companies over someone's cell phone?
Who is paying for the transmission of all this location data from the user's cell phone?
2
Is it possible that, as reprehensible as these these trackers are, the market for all this data is simply a bubble? I don't have more money to spend, nor does anyone else who has experienced that last 25 years of wage stagnation.... the only real use for all this data, then is not marketing, but political control, al la China. I fear that is where we are heading. God help us if we think there is anything inherently more noble in our system here.By the time we notice, it will be too late. Those guys trading data are just robbers along the road to totalitarianism.
7
Although I resent this "consent" scam, there is one trade-off I would appreciate. Why is there any crime at all? It seems this data mining should reveal most criminal behaviour., white collar crime especially.
3
@Paul R
No central source or point of access.
E.g., in health care, look at some of the Scandinavian countries: centralized health info databanks of their populations. Insurance is not an issue per se because everyone has it, is covered, etc. And, everyone doing research has access (although I assume controlled). Works out brilliantly.
Yet, most of this data is not relevant to much of anything other than profiling, for lack of a better word, in order to profit, hence the question of whether it is not only wise to give that data away so willingly, but whether our illustrious government is doing us any favors by NOT regulating all that data collection.
Any kind of business operating with complete free reign is just dangerous, not to mention hardly beneficial to Society-at-large.
2
@Paul R The New York Times is mining data long after it was generated, far too long to use it to prevent crime, and the amount of data - about 50 billion points on 12 million users, over an unspecified number of months, probably about 3 - is trivial compared to the total data generated. Yet it represents only around 5% of the US total, based on the fact that roughly 3/4 of the US population, about 240 million, have smart phones. Yet even that has only 2 or 3 points per hour, on average, much less than enough to track potential criminals in real time. In addition, location information alone is seriously inadequate to predict or prevent a crime even if you know and only track those likely to commit one.
The obvious and much needed regulation would be for the permission given by the user upon installation of the application that the data be used ONLY for the specific application. No resale. No embedded spies (which is what they are, despite being called SDKs here), and certainly complete removal of all software when deletion of the application is done by the owner of the phone.
To think that you've cleaned up your phone when you attempt to delete all the applications that you no longer want is a foolish conclusion. The remnants of these spies remain in some cases, continuing to harvest data even when the initial program has been deleted.
2
They are used anonymously so that advertisers can determine whether the ad they delivered motivated you to make a store visit. Period. The data is not worth anything to anyone else. And guess what, consumers now expect to get highly relevant ads specifically for them to motivate them to do something they're likely to do. Clickbait headlines sell papers. Let's talk about what that's doing to our country.
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@anonymouse
As the article points out in great detail, the information they had, although anonymized, was easy, if laborious,to combine with other, publicly available, information to identify individuals with considerable precision. And the potential for malicious use, once that is done, is quite large. The authors mention that the data they used is extremely stale, and in my opinion they fail to stress enough that what they are doing is significant work, first to identify possible residences from locations in the data (places where the phone spends the night), then the possible owners (from the address of the location, as found in public records). They only have to do that once, though, since the blind identifier in the location data is stable, and it is work of a type that is quite straightforward to automate.
1
@Thomas D. Dial why would a malicious user go thru all that trouble to get REAL info? If US voting computers are so easily hacked, think how much easier it would be for Mr. malicious to set you up with Fake findings- eg visits to a pro in Russia who specializes in excretory sadism?
This is super creepy.
What I see is that their spying on people is quasi legal. As in, it's still legal for now, but might become illegal at some point.
The questions I do have, and hope some one can answer, if the phones are always spying on folk, it would follow that these tracking companies know where you are at all the time, like ALL the time, for reals.
If that is the case and say there was a slaying at Central Park of a VA student on the steps of her campus, and it was done by teenagers, it would be safe to assume that these teens, like any one else their age, are glued to their phones and do not leave home without their phones, just like every single teen nowadays.
Thus, these tracking companies would be able to tell exactly which phones were all together at the exact spot where this crime happened, and where each one went afterwards.
The question is - can they legally be subpoena to provide this info? if their work is gray legally, can their records be used in a court of law? by cops to track people? would they let cops see what info they are collecting?
It could help exonerate some 13 year old who was dumb enough to hang with the wrong crowd. But it would pull the blanket of what the tech roaches do in your kitchen at night while you're not looking.
I am not sure they really want us to know. Even though they are the only ones who know who was there that night.
1
@AutumnLeaf
Cell phones (smart or not) remain in touch with the network and report location as long as they are powered on and not in "airplane mode." They can be tracked by anyone who can get access to the location data the carriers hold. Legally, that generally requires a warrant to obtain the carriers' data. That is not the data NYT was dealing with for this article.
Many cell phone apps, in the course of normal operation, access location data on the phone and report it to a location data provider. In the continental US, that data can be as good as within roughly 12 -15 feet of the actual location if derived from the built-in GPS receiver, less, maybe by quite a lot, if the GPS receiver is off or not fully operative. That is the sort of data NYT had and analyzed for the articles. The numbers in the first of this series suggest that the data set they had a location data item about every 15 - 30 minutes on average, not good enough to pinpoint suspects at an arbitrary place and time.
Police probably could obtain a warrant to get location data from commercial location services, and once they had the data, authority to relate it to public information much the same as the Times did. As indicated above, that might not be very useful, especially if there was a substantial amount of traffic at the place and time the crime was committed. It could help exonerate someone if it established he was too far from the place at the time of the crime.
Great article...another reason I view Edward Snowden as an American hero.
We don't have firearms laws of sufficient strength because of the political power of special interests like the NRA.
Equally so, we aren't being protected properly by our lawmakers, not because they are too stupid to understand the dangers, but because, if you look at who really supports them, they don't serve us, they serve the tech barons.
Hugh
3
If you use software like CyberGhost or some other VPN program/service that anonymizes your system, this tracking fails gloriously.
1
@DKM
That seems pretty doubtful in view of the fact that they report location as data transmitted to location services. A VPN will disguise your IP address and encrypt the data it carries, but should not change the data or fail to deliver it to its intended destination.
@DKM
Geolocation has nothing to do with VPN. Completely unrelated. VPN just anonymizes your IP address. It does not affect how your location is being transmitted.
What a rotten country we live in. In the beginning of cell phones becoming main stream the early contracts we illegally given out to minors who ran up phone bills that reached thousands of dollars. Of course the cell companies were neither punished or even had charges brought against them not to mention that the cell phone companies themselves more often than not break their own contract but because they have bribed every congressman every senator and every candidate they get to commit any crimes they want steal from us and then make us pay them for a lousy product that we are not even allowed to own or even allowed to keep companies from doing whatever they please with the endless useless damaging info stealing "software updates". Ever single thing about this slimy industry is hateful, unethical and illegal but because they love to steal and sell our privacy they get to do whatever they want and remain above our laws.
1
Intriguing piece and well thought out, albeit more judgmental than it should be. Please follow up with the positive advantages of geolocation. If you ran off the road on a snowy night in a rural location with temperatures below zero, that data used by EMS could save your life. Investigative reporting should strive for balance of perspective, and a respected publisher like the NYT should expect its editors to deliver that quality.
3
Nobody is tracking my handy dandy flip phone!
3
Americans are brainwashed to not care about privacy. Feature, not bug.
How about this: a consumer watchdog that daily releases a list of companies it finds to be gathering info and intel? And some laws protecting WE THE PEOPLE? As long as Fascist Republicans keep winning everything...ain't no way.
Look, now Americans have MANY devices listening to them and recording them and they do not care. So why do you care? America is obviously a billionaire gamblers paradise and we are all the help ( this means we only get to do what they want, nothing else).
1
It’s exhausting to think about how to prevent this and yet operate in a convenient modern society these companies have pushed on us - I didn’t ask for a google monopoly, but I use it literally every waking hour
At the end of the day - I’ve paid google and other monopolies very little money directly for huge value received
Given I have nothing to hide, exchanging the search for best subway route or nearest coffee is worth some idiot in Silicon Valley knowing I’m at 23rd and Lex at 12:03 pm
2
I noticed that iHeartRadio promises "fulsome" disclosure of what they are doing, not full disclosure. Just what exactly is "fulsome disclosure?" What lawyer is advising them to use terms like that when journalists come around, that sound good but maybe aren't so good after all. These guys are slippery, all the more reason for us to be very careful about what we are giving them. The point of this series is well-taken. It's an area that cries out for regulation. Time for Congress to get off its collective butt and start doing some "fulsome" regulating.
3
Is there such a thing or app as a personal S.D.K.? After all shouldn’t the individual whose data is being mined be the firewall and get the first cut of the profits?
You did not open your article, "Many Facial-Recognition Systems Are Biased, Says U.S. Study," to comment, so I'm commenting here, as closest subject matter-wise.
Your article says that the NIST demographics study (FRVT part 3) confirms the studies you and the ACLU have used to allege racial and gender bias. And you, and most others covering this report, use Joy Buolamwini at MIT as your goto source for comment. In fact, a quick Google search of your reporting on face recognition and racial and gender bias over the last several years shows that her studies are the basis for most it.
The problem with that is that the ExecSum of the NIST report specifically states, "Much of the discussion of face recognition bias in recent years cites two studies [5, 36] showing poor accuracy of face gender classification algorithms on black women. Those studies did not evaluate face recognition algorithms, yet the results have been widely cited to indict their accuracy. Our work was undertaken to quantify analogous effects in face recognition algorithms. We strongly recommend that reporting of bias should include information about the class of algorithm evaluated."
References 5 and 36 are to Ms. Buolamwini's work. Those two studies are about face analysis not face recognition.
Finally, you report that they did not study Amazon's algorithm because Amazon did not submit it. Actually, the study cited technical difficulties and said NIST was in talks with Amazon about it.
2
The chief marketing officer of Factual, a "location data company": “We don’t even look at it as a user. We look at it as a device.”
We look at "it" as a "device." And the purpose of the "device"? Factual's profit.
That's the whole story right there. Tag you're "it," says Big Data.
1
@TMSquared
The Factual officer was quite correct. They do not know who is carrying a cell phone at any given time. Al Qaeda and similar groups have been reported widely and for years to know this and pass cell phones from person to person to mitigate tracking.
We need to put curbs on this spyware stuff and on advertising in general
2
Please do a similar article on how the New York Times tracks its own readers. One privacy browser gave the Times a "D" grade when I checked a few minutes ago and said that the Times included cookies from Amazon and Google, two companies that the Times regularly criticizes for poor privacy policies. Most people understand when they turn location on in an app that the app will track their location. But do people understand the privacy policies if they NYT? Personally I find the NYT tracking readers to be much more creepy than tracking people who are using a map app during a commute to work. A map app needs your location to get you from point A to point B. The NYT doesn't need to track its readers.
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@J.B
cookies used for targeting advertising are harmless unless you have no spine as an internet browsing human being.
As an Amazon customer, I see cookies relevant to what I have been browing on Amazon all the time.. all over the internet.
Thing is.. they cannot in any way force me or my computer to buy anything I don't want to buy.
1
@Chuck Cookies clutter reality. I have no need, much less desire, for profit driven algorithms to tell me what to purchase. We are humans and citizens primarily, not consumers.
Tell us more about how we can better secure our privacy.
@ecg2 You can't.
Many businesses require employees to have phones. Apple and Google, who make the vast majority of smartphone software, use proprietary code that you cannot see.
The vast, vast majority of smartphone users don't have the level of knowledge that would be required to really tell what BigTech companies can do with your phone, even if they had completely open source code.
The cat is already out of the bag, and won't go back in. You should simply assume that any time a device capable of recording and transmitting audio and video is doing so at all times, and transmitting that data to anyone who wants it.
6
@ecg2
Part 2 of this series has a pretty good discussion of this in the context of cell phones and their apps. Google can be your friend for other use cases (but at least use an incognito browser window).
The bottom line, though, is that you cannot operate a cell phone, smart or not, for its intended purpose without being tracked at least by the carriers.
I am probably not the first to inquire.
Can the president’s phone be tracked?
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@Ray Norton
Yes.. since he does not use a federally approved secure phone... and because he is a desired target of foreign governments.. he is a big security risk.. for the nation.... not so much for him.
But you and I... we are of little interest to a foreign nation.. unless we are a high value intelligence target working inside the federal government.
2
Does anyone really care about personalized ads? Every time I see one it just reminds me that my privacy is compromised. I will never click on one. It amazes me that better advertising is the reason these companies give us for taking our privacy and that we accept it. The fact is we really don't have a choice. Where is the Amazon, FB and Google competitor that values privacy?
I have a faraday cage which is a small metal screen pouch that I keep my phone in. It prevents tracking and cost $15.
7
@Sean It prevents tracking *while your phone is in the cage* maybe. Unless your phone stays in that cage 24/7, you are being tracked.
1
Maybe I'm naive but this story seems self-evident. Your smart phone is a computer. If you enable GPS tracking on your computer, someone other than yourself is tracking it. This reality seems hardly mystifying.
The tracking isn't just your phone either. Google can identify your desktop or laptop location based on IP address as well. So can the CIA or FBI for that matter. All IP addresses are tied to a physical location eventually.
Most users are renting their IP address from an ISP and subnetting all their wired connections within the home. Ergo, everything that happens on your home wireless connection is tied to an IP address with a billing address and a demarcation point. You are traceable.
That's why hackers variously attempt to either a) confuse their actual IP address through various masking techniques b) illegally borrow IP addresses which don't belong to them or c) use an IP address located in a place where their crime is not illegal. That's how the internet works.
17
Turn it around. Suppose a user needed to prove they were or were not at some location. Could they obtain that from one of these companies?
3
@h dierkes
Without a Court order, highly unlikely. With a Court order, possibly but only if one knew which of all the possible companies held the data and the data could be tied back to a specific person.
@h dierkes
Undoubtedly, either the prosecution or defense of said person would argue that the data only proves that the cell phone was at the specified location.
1
@h dierkes Willingly? Unlikely. Why risk drawing any attention to the fact that their "data anonymization" is flimsier than Salome's seventh veil?
Everyone in corporate and other sector that deal with general public (non-profit and political parties included) want to get as much data as possible with just one aim- sell something and ask people to spend money. They all conveniently forget that the main staff- money- is is very short supply for most people and being concentrated for a tiny section. Those rich folks cannot eat more food, use more medicine, buy more items and so on to cater so many aspiring companies with so many increasingly expensive products and services.
On the other hand, the cost of collecting, managing, and analyzing such huge data is massive. The return on such investment does not seem to justify it. But then, it's those "big data" guys/companies are promoting it as the magic wand and people, mostly with almost no idea, just fall in the trap after some attending some catchy presentation.
We need to give money back to the common people and consumer if we like them to buy products/services.
2
I don't have one of those. Never will. I also still have my soul, in addition to most of my personal information.
7
"The number of companies has grown from about 150 in 2011 to over 7,000 this year, according to Marketing Technology Media. "
The number of just *what kind of companies* is over 7000 now?
6
WOW. I was locked off of twitter one day. They decided I was a bot. In order to log back on, Google got in the middle, turned on every app on my phone and drained the battery in 45 seconds. I had never used twitter on my phone nor had I intentionally downloaded the app. It was frightening and bizarre. I can just imagine what they can do to those of importance in the government and military.
21
Why does a weather app need my "precise" location? Is the weather only targeting my home or block? We can't do much about the cellular carriers tracking our handsets but Apple and Google sharing our location data with app providers is unacceptable and a simple fix.
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@Andy The two most important things to learn about your cell phone is how to turn it on/off, and how to turn off "tracking".
1
@Andy:
"Why does a weather app need my "precise" location? Is the weather only targeting my home or block?"
You've never experienced a tornado, have you? Or a thunderstorm micro-burst?
Sometimes weather phenomena strike with astonishing specificity and locality. Eight years ago, if a tornado decided to "zig" instead of "zag" — if it took a path 250 yards further to the south — I might not be alive today typing these words.
3
@Andy
When I use my weather app.. I let it use my location data.
Reason.. I get more accurate weather data for my part of the large urban city I live in. If I turn it off.. then I only get what the weather is at either the downtown civic center or the airport.. and the weather there is often different then at my home.
I also do not keep the app open either. I open it when I need it and close it immediately afterwards. So the data serves me, not so much the weather app owner.
3
It always amazes me why there is no option to limit the accuracy of these location services. This should be a mandatory option and selectable by the user.
8
@Andy
If you turn off the GPS it will reduce the precision of reported locations by a factor of 5 to 10.
My phone is often off. Completely, like not powered up. Sometimes I'll go out into the world without it. My life is no worse off, I might argue it's better off. Then again, even if I was tracked, the trackers would be pretty bored with my activities.
3
@Greg I am the same. Most days I even forget I have a mobile phone, much to the annoyance of the rest of my family. I have no desire to engage myself in Twitter et al. Like you, my movements are pretty boring so it appears we are two of a kind. May 2020 be good to you.
This series from the Times are well researched and should impact user behavior, since our government will not protect us. The response from Washington on privacy rights is quite clear - we are on our own. The EU has it right with protecting its citizens from the predatory practices of surveillance technology companies. Let's not hold our breath here, and take action.
If the user agreement for an app or web site is long, confusing and obtrusive, do not use it and go elsewhere.
Disable the extensive tracking features in Windows 10 on your desktop. Microsoft gives itself permission to track you for marketing purposes.
Protect yourself when browsing. Research for the browser add-ins that shield you from numerous trackers that capture details of your session and package it for marketing purposes.
Be constantly diligent.
16
@PN
For me personally, I find it hilarious watching companies trying to use my internet activity to target me to buy something from some company.
It is hilarious because of how transparent it is when it happens, and as such.. it is equally easy for me to simply ignore it.
Futility on their part basically.
3
"Disable the extensive tracking features in Windows 10 on your desktop."
I already have, by not using Windows 10. *hugs tower as it runs Arch Linux*
We need our own GDPR. Democrats, are you listening?
Our lawmakers need to make laws against this level and breadth of selling literally everyone's location every day all of the time. It wont happen though. A good article. "Because the collection of location data is largely unregulated, these companies can legally get access to phone location sensors and then buy and resell the information they gather in perpetuity"
6
@K Henderson Your post wasn't complete. You sentence about citizen and phone owner protection won't happen ended before the additional fact which needs to be stated. It won't happen because there is too much money involved for all these businesses to not bribe our lawmakers with donations and contributions, letting those eager to stay in office to turn away from those who look for protection, we the voters.
2
In the very near future, workers will be compelled to accept even more sophisticated monitoring at work to ensure that the brain wave patterns are congruent with mental productivity. Those who initiate these ever-more-instrusive and invasive systems get to live large in Northern California and elsewhere on the proceeds of the IPOs. Welcome to your digital hive, worker bee!
10
Well then consumers should be paid for allowing companies to earn revenue off of their location without their knowledge or agreement. Look for clsss action lawsuits to proceed.
19
@Ralph Petrillo. Selling location info is not against any USA laws, so there wont be any lawsuits. That info is in the article.
3
@Ralph Petrillo
What makes you think it is "your data"? Just because something you did on your cell phone created a data track point.. does not mean you own said data track point.
In all likelyhood.. somewhere in your user agreement with your cell phone service provider.. there is a legal statement that says they agree to protect your privacy, but not protect your rights of ownership. Once you put something out in public cell airwaves.... it's essentially public.. like it or not.
1
@Ralph Petrillo
One other fact that is often overlooked: companies you do business with (take credit cards as one example) have been selling user data for decades and decades. How do you think all those catalogs or mailers used to show up at your house? Or you would get calls from telemarketers?
While we should put pressure on transparency online, we should also put in on companies we work with offline.