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grueztoday at 4:54 PM1 replyview on HN

>TURN YOUR PHONE OFF. Your phone does more than track you - the Bluetooth and wifi beacon scanners are always running. When you come across another person, most phones track the intersection of your beacon with theirs making a new data point that compromises both individuals privacy. Now consider sitting at a stoplight; you and and the 10 phones around you have now correlated the time and position you were sitting there. The person jogging by with no phone(but a set of Bluetooth headphones) is also tracked by their Bluetooth signature. Terrifying.

All phones nowadays have bluetooth/wifi mac address randomization, so it's basically useless for tracking, not to mention google/apple conscripting every phone into a wardriving network will kill battery life. Moreover all this effort in avoiding being tracked doesn't really mean much when all cars have a very visible and unique identifier that's mandated by law (ie. license plate).


Replies

alwatoday at 8:26 PM

And Flock Safety will gladly fingerprint the vehicles without said license plate, and distribute everyone’s location histories nationally.

See also (222 points, 19 comments, 14 days ago):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945960