Is Unacast tracking the location of your phone?

[Stephen Tashi]

TL;DR Summary

Is Unacast able to track the location of most people's cell phones?

The Unacast website https://www.unacast.com/covid19/social-distancing-scoreboard purports to rate how well states are doing with social distancing by tracking the location of cell phones. Any estimate of what fraction of cell phones in the US they can track?

 

[Vanadium 50]

It's interesting that they allow individuals to opt out. That they have information on an individual level, or this wouldn't be possible. I'm not sure what opting out means in terms of aggregate data.

It's also not clear that essential vs. non-essential as they describe it means anything. Especially as various jurisdictions define "essential" differently - if non-essential businesses are closed, how can a trip be considered non-essential.

The cynic in me says that this is really more the company taking advantage of the situation for some marketing rather than an actual useful tool.

 

[sysprog]

If your GPS on your phone is on, its location can be tracked, and even if it doesn't have GPS its radio signal can be correlated to cell towers and triangulated. To keep trackers from getting your location, you need removal-of-battery level of power-off, or at least a Faraday cage (metal foil wallet). Otherwise, yes, your phone can be used to track your locations.

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[anorlunda]

Any estimate of what fraction of cell phones in the US they can track?

Boy that's difficult because they get the data from third party apps, from the OS, from the ISPs.
The opt-out procedures are onerous and may cause unforeseen and undesirable side effects.

It would depend on both what you have installed, and how you use it.

The tracking data they get would might also be spotty and intermittent. So would you count a phone as "tracked" if it was tracked only sometimes rather than always?

Increasingly, there are public benefits to eliminating privacy. Social distancing with the virus is one example. 911 services finding the location of emergency callers is another, because almost nobody uses land lines to call 911.

The mind bending complexities of so many parallel paths contributes to the near impossibility of preserving our concepts of privacy in the digital world. A "real" privacy advocate would never own a cell phone, and never use the Internet.

The mere fact that Unacast seems to be successful in the EU, demonstrates the inability of strict EU privacy laws to stop these practices.

Years ago, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy said, "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." I always thought that to be an exaggerated and hateful statement, but every year since then it becomes more evident that McNealy was right.

 

[pbuk]

[Edited in the light of the fact that a phone that is off is not really off ]

Yeah, get over it - or turn your phone off leave your phone at home. Reduced privacy is the price we pay for near instant communication with everyone we might want to communicate with. If you don't want the latter you don't have to suffer the former.

 

[sysprog]

Yeah, get over it - or turn your phone off. Reduced privacy is the price we pay for near instant communication with everyone we might want to communicate with. If you don't want the latter you don't have to suffer the former.

Turning off a phone that has E911 isn't enough, because 'they' (we) can turn it back on without showing that it's on if we want to, and we can monitor its microphones and turn on its cameras, and turn on its GPS, etc. -- you have to take the battery out or put the whole device in a Faraday cage (e.g. a metal foil wallet) if you want us to be unable to spy on you with it -- your best bet is don't be outstanding -- if you're not out there committing serious crimes, there are too many 'teeming millions' for the few guys and gals who can do the tech stuff to handle the data streams, and too few police to do the physical stuff to handle wrongful doings -- right now, probably no-one is watching you -- there are far too many people to watch, and nowhere near enough people to watch all of the 'other people'.

 

[Tom.G]

And it is about to get more widespread!

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020...rtner-on-covid-19-contact-tracing-technology/

in the coming months, Apple and Google will work to enable a broader Bluetooth-based contact tracing platform by building this functionality into the underlying platforms.

 

[OCR]

And it is about to get more widespread!

Yup, I knew it. . . it was inevitable !

Spoiler

Lol. . .

.

 

[Stephen Tashi]

Remember radio messages like "It's ten o'clock. Do you know where your children are?"

Tracking services will arise that let parents track their children by their phones. Kids will find ways to use their phones while evading or jamming such tracking. Our privacy will be saved by smart naughty children.

 

[Tom.G]

Tracking services will arise that let parents track their children by their phones.

Those have been around for years.

About 4 years ago a plumber I was talking with was compalining that his girlfriend always knew when he was lying about his where-abouts.

One time when she called he made up a story about where he was. She then told him his exact location, on a boat in the Santa Monica Bay (Pacific Ocean near Los Angeles).

 

[MikeeMiracle]

Phone has to be off with the battery removed and no sim card inserted to be unable to be tracked. The sim card itself is a lot more capable than you think it is even with the phone power supposedly off...

Don't ask how I know, I am not allowed to say how I know this...draw your own conclusions from that last statement...