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!
And then there’s wifi triangulation and Bluetooth which narrows it down further
I don’t think enough people have mentioned that Auto manufacturers have been able to locate vehicles since the 90’s.
Use FOSS as much as possible, pressure your gov to implement laws against tracking (against what Snowden showed us).
There is no need to know the location and history, and the communication of everyone everywhere.
If you have a device that’s actively connected to a cellular network, and has been while in your home or work, then your only option is to leave it behind or turn it off. That includes your car if it was made in the past decade, if nothing else, so it can catch OTA firmware updates, and send telemetry data.
GPS and location services don’t mean shit when your carrier keeps logs of where you’ve been based on cell-tower triangulation.
Do we know how carrier shares cell data?
In another thread, it was suggested thet “cant” just sell it like they isp traffic data for example.
Obviously the state can get it since is logged. Not sure if they would need s warrant tho
This video, where Veritaseum hacks LinusTechTips’ phone, gives a good overview of how it’s possible to track cellphones or hack sms, even without asking a carrier or having physical access to the device: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wVyu7NB7W6Y
TLDW: cellphone networks rely on old, unsecure infrastructure
I was talking specifically about how telcos behave within law and corp policy.
But yeah a threat actor with money can do anything if they really care.
Pretty easy steps; get app you are interested in. Deny it access to things it doesn’t need when asked. If the app proceeds to not work until you enable, delete. Otherwise, enjoy app without the unnecessary permissions.
That’s my approach with Rethink DNS. I get FOSS alternatives whenever acceptable for my use case, but isolate even them to only bare working minimum of outside connections.
Most apps literally don’t work right is you do not enable all location services
11 out of 32 apps requesting location on my phone have the permission granted, because I actually need them to use location for one reason or another. the rest works perfectly fine with the permission disabled.
Dismantle the GPS chip. This is the only way
Stop spreading rumours.
Just disable the location permissions. And turn off GPS when you dont actively need it.
Do you know that Pegasus software now has an unlimited license?
Pegasus spies on all the data on a phone. If a phone is really infected with that, then location access is the least of your worries. But this is not relevant to this post anyway, because 99,9% of people will never be a valid target for such high-level spyware.
Don’t just give location access to any app that requests it, especially background location access.
