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Location tracking of phones is out of control. Here’s how to fight back.
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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A lot of great comments here. I just wanted to add that even just your ip address is enough to roughly track your location. When your phone checks gmail you are leaving digital breadcrumbs in Google’s logs of your ip address which roughly tracks your location. App permissions will not solve this. We need strong privacy regulations with teeth.
Yes, I am in Sweden, totally, believe it ipaddr checkers!
Yes and no, when I check my actual IP address it shows that it's somewhere pretty far away, I guess that's where my carrier has their trunk connected.
And then there's wifi triangulation and Bluetooth which narrows it down further
And this is why my GPS and Bluetooth are disabled 99% of the time unless I'm actually using them. It cuts down on a lot of potential data leakage.
Can't they just triangulate you from cell towers?
Take the battery out I guess?
What phone do you have, one of these?
Yup, but that would require more effort (I.e. interacting w/ network operator). Tracking someone by Bluetooth can be done passively, as evidenced by services like "Find my Droid" or "Find my iPhone" or whatever.
Blocking my cell radios eliminates the entire point of the phone for me, so the tradeoff is too steep. That said, airplane mode is right over there if you need it temporarily.
A VPN helps
There are still attacks that can get around the VPN. It certainly helps, but it's not a complete solution on its own like VPN providers would like you to believe.