Cell Phone Carriers Are Secretly Selling Your Real-Time Location Data

It is not bad enough that so many people carry an "open mic" with them 24/7 but now it is confirmed that you are tracked in real time and nobody knows exactly who accesses that data (or has access since it appears it is an open market).

Just another reason that we need to update our privacy laws to compensate for the abuses being performed.


www.nytimes.com...

The service can find the whereabouts of almost any cellphone in the country within seconds. It does this by going through a system typically used by marketers and other companies to get location data from major cellphone carriers, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, documents show.

www.zerohedge.com...

Four of the country's largest cellular providers have been selling your real-time location information, allowing a Texas-based prison technology company, Securus, to track any phone "within seconds," without a warrant. The system uses data sold by AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon and other carriers - who provide it through an intermediary called LocationSmart.

Kevin Blankston, director of New America's Open Technology Institute told ZDNet in a phone call that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act only restricts telecom companies from disclosing data to the government. It does not restrict carriers from disclosing information to other companies - a loophole Blankston calls "one of the biggest gaps in US privacy law.

a reply to: infolurker

First off, this is messed up, should never have happened and the loop hole should be closed as quickly as possible.

That said anyone that didn't think our new fangled smart phones were not being tracked every second of every day, or that someone cant access your location or turn your phone into a recording device for someone not near you, well you have been sleeping over the last 20 years.

Yep.

My android phone and my iPad also seem to play together well in the information gathering sandbox.

I'll talk about things at work with my phone in earshot. Not googling them or anything...

I come home and get on the iPad to see ads for what I was discussing far away and never googled...

Get used to it. Or build a tiny house and rid yourself of all electronics.

I do not own a cell phone. It is amazing.

No one bothers me... no distractions when I drive. No texts, no Facebook updates and definitely no Twitter.

No more driving halfway home, just to have my wife send me back to the grocery store.

Cut the wireless tether my friends... eliminate the "oh, by the ways"... end electronic incarceration!

For more information, and a somewhat helpful pamphlet, text "Liberation" to 64555- standard carrier rates may apply...

a reply to: infolurker


Why do police have such a hard time catching drug dealers, bank robbers, gang members, etc.., if they can pinpoint where they are located at any given moment?

originally posted by: carewemust
a reply to: infolurker


Why do police have such a hard time catching drug dealers, bank robbers, gang members, etc.., if they can pinpoint where they are located at any given moment?

Because basic map skills are no longer taught in schools...

a reply to: infolurker

Well i’ll Be damned.... who woulda thunk it lol

originally posted by: madmac5150

originally posted by: carewemust
a reply to: infolurker


Why do police have such a hard time catching drug dealers, bank robbers, gang members, etc.., if they can pinpoint where they are located at any given moment?

Because basic map skills are no longer taught in schools...

Fake news...they give students a map to find there classes at the beginning of the year. I think

originally posted by: madmac5150

originally posted by: carewemust
a reply to: infolurker


Why do police have such a hard time catching drug dealers, bank robbers, gang members, etc.., if they can pinpoint where they are located at any given moment?

Because basic map skills are no longer taught in schools...

Then police should get one of those self-driving cars that go where you tell it to go.

originally posted by: Allaroundyou

originally posted by: madmac5150

originally posted by: carewemust
a reply to: infolurker


Why do police have such a hard time catching drug dealers, bank robbers, gang members, etc.., if they can pinpoint where they are located at any given moment?

Because basic map skills are no longer taught in schools...

Fake news...they give students a map to find there classes at the beginning of the year. I think

There are no "you are here" kiosks every 100 feet out in the "real world"...

a reply to: madmac5150

I think I have an idea to teach people to learn this very basic thing called reading a map(properly). The government should purposely put up a map saying you are here. But and this is a big but, the you are here map should be purposely wrong to confuse. Then maybe others will learn to use a map.
Or it may just cause mass chaos amongst the youth. Which actually sounds kinda funny

originally posted by: Allaroundyou
a reply to: madmac5150

I think I have an idea to teach people to learn this very basic thing called reading a map(properly). The government should purposely put up a map saying you are here. But and this is a big but, the you are here map should be purposely wrong to confuse. Then maybe others will learn to use a map.
Or it may just cause mass chaos amongst the youth. Which actually sounds kinda funny

You just described the functioning principal of the United States Government. You have made an error. Agents will be visiting you briefly...

originally posted by: madmac5150
I do not own a cell phone. It is amazing.

No one bothers me... no distractions when I drive. No texts, no Facebook updates and definitely no Twitter.

No more driving halfway home, just to have my wife send me back to the grocery store.

Cut the wireless tether my friends... eliminate the "oh, by the ways"... end electronic incarceration!

For more information, and a somewhat helpful pamphlet, text "Liberation" to 64555- standard carrier rates may apply...

I envy you. I have a smartphone to keep in touch with recruitment agents, their websites and linkedin. I've found a good job working remotely but now I just want a quiet day where I can concentrate on my work without aggro. 99.99% of the jobs that agencies contact me with now are just not my area of interest, industry, speciality, location or career level - and that ends up with an argument.

Recruitment agencies are just getting more and more aggressive, "Don't forget to contact us when you eventually decide to change your mind.". Almost like a couple of people in black suits sitting in a black limo with tinted windows right outside my house 24-hours a day, getting out whenever I visit my mailbox.

So I'm gradually disconnecting, as well as removing my CV from all those websites to avoid the phone-calls. Linkedin is particularly hard because I want to be able to get news from various forums, but I don't want adverts popping up in my news stream every other article After blocking/disconnecting those sources, I then get the very same adverts popping up in the websites I visit, so I have to then set ad preferences to whack them as well. Then they cold call my linkedin address. It's like whack-a-mole.

Just last week I was at work talking about the new challenger he just got , We only talked for a few minutes....
When we got back inside and I picked up my phone and there it was, a pic of a challenger that Google plus had sent to my phone .
This is not the first time it has happened either .

Just a thought, possibly a good money venture..... make an app with college campuses, so people can use a similar google maps for campuses? Find their way to class