Your Lawnmower could be spying on you!

ST Gui said:
I do like having some automation and remote control over my lights and have considered the same for shades for a couple of windows.
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I'd like a sarcastic version that automatically locks the front door and closes the blinds when people try to approach the porch... :unsure:
 
Someone sent the below link to me. I didn't bother to verify the information that it displayed about me so I have no idea how accurate it is but regardless it is interesting as I know that a lot of it that I know off the top of my head is accurate. Based on a 60 Minutes segment that I saw years ago I have no trouble believing it. The 60 Minutes segment showed a visualization of how much we are tracked as soon as we go on the internet. It is like vultures circling. This website seems to align with that.

There is no danger going to the below site. All it does is show you how much information and what kind of information about you is available just because you went to a website. This information is available every time that you go to any website. The only difference with this one is that they are telling you about it and shows you what is being tracked about you. The same thing happens every time that you go to any site, including this one. This information is available to anyone who wants it and has the software to harvest it.

Taken - Since You Arrived
 
I read this yesterday. It's so simple. So obvious. And yet so dangerous.

www.militarytimes.com

US troops are reportedly being targeted using location data, Pentagon says

U.S. forces deployed to war zones have been targeted using commercially available location data, according to reports fielded by military officials.
www.militarytimes.com www.militarytimes.com

Back in WWII, they had a saying, "Loose lips sink ships". Well, we have a bigger risk now. How many of us right now have our location turned on? Apparently enough in those military units that the enemy used that data to target them. The answer? Take away their cell phones. I can hear the cries..."But you can't take away my cell phone!!!" Even if you were to get everyone to turn off their cell phone location, someone would turn it back on so they could play a game...and leave it on.

@Andrew Shadow - great website. "spotted herons rising at dawn".

FWIW, I use NordVPN, the Brave browser and ProtonMail.

Chris
 
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Cool... I'm not in NYC.

Proton VPN & Mail and Brave also use gmail only because I've had it since day one but I've turned off all Google access to my phone without losing basic functions.

Blew it all posting my location here! :rolleyes-2x:
 
Yeah. My IP shows I'm in Berlin.

1780078303842.png

I'm actually downstairs.

Chris
 
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I couldn't see a date on the article above about tracking US troops. But this goes back about a decade that I can remember. Someone reported that fitness trackers revealed loops that some troops ran in base in the US when using a fitness app called Strava.
 
Many people think that Google is a software company who generously offers their products to the public for free. Whether they are primarily a software company or primarily a data mining and collection company who develops, markets, and offers their software to the public for free as a means of collecting that data is sometimes hard to discern. Google has among the largest data bases in the world, and they make hundreds of millions of dollars annually selling that data to all manner of businesses for all manner of purposes.

The software is not free of course. The price that we pay for using it is allowing Google to collect and sell the data that they harvest from us. Whether or not that price is worth what we get is up to each person to decide. The same is true with much of the software that we use from other companies as well be it knowingly or not. The problem is that often there seems to be little alternative to this arrangement.
 
Andrew Shadow said:
Many people think that Google is a software company who generously offers their products to the public for free.
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Yeah...
What do you think happens while updating your satnav? (or any computerized device for that matter...) ;)
Is there a one- or a bidirectional data flow taking place? :unsure:

Its only a "scandal" when it "accidentally" leaks out:

www.theguardian.com

TomTom satnav data used to set police speed traps

New privacy row as satnav maker TomTom admits selling data to Netherlands government. By Charles Arthur
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

Not long and your own vehicle will issue you a ticket... :sneaky:
 
GPS units are receivers only and do not transmit. They receive timed signals from satellites and calculate the location. I've got an older Garmin unit which requires a garmin dongle and subscription to function so the traffic information is another story... any radio nerds out there who can test newer GPS units for transmissions with traffic info turned on?

The guardian article in from 2011 and is based on a Reddit thread from that time.

Reddit is a breeding ground for rocket scientists, brain surgeons and experts on everything in existence.

If one uses Google maps on a phone however, by default you are tracked via cell signal triangulation. I found this out years ago trying to get to a place out in the country and a friend plugged the address into Google maps on her phone and it quit working when she lost the cell signal.

Your phone tracks you whether the location (GPS) is on or off and Carplay units which do not have GPS receivers merely display Google maps from the phone. Even a phone without a Sim card will track you (you can call 911 without a Sim card), they just don't know who it is (unless your Sim card was the last one in it).

Call me old but I miss the days of a cross country adventure, pulling the correct map out of the glove box, unfolding the whole mess to the suspected correct location in front of my face while steering with my knees and arguing with my honey over how to proceed, all while hurtling down a highway at death defying speed. :p
 
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JetRanger said:
If one uses Google maps on a phone however, by default you are tracked via cell signal triangulation.
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GPS units store a track, breadcrumbs along the way, location, direction, elevation, speed...
Nice to look up where you've been (maybe fight a speeding/parking ticket, or even credit card fraud proofing you haven't even been near the hotel where a five digit bill has been racked up in your name... BTDT BTW...), or navigate your way back to your starting point in an unknown area...

The idea that the satnav MFG's seem to (secretly) obtain this track data during server connectivity for map and firmware updates isn't new, yet seems even logical in order to monitor field functionality and product improvement, and therefore persists stubbornly...
Especially on the units with internal WLAN, like TomTom and the newer Garmin XT Series you've no control about what is actually shared...
 
ST1100Y said:
GPS units store a track, breadcrumbs along the way, location, direction, elevation, speed...
Nice to look up where you've been (maybe fight a speeding/parking ticket, or even credit card fraud proofing you haven't even been near the hotel where a five digit bill has been racked up in your name... BTDT BTW...), or navigate your way back to your starting point in an unknown area...

The idea that the satnav MFG's seem to (secretly) obtain this track data during server connectivity for map and firmware updates isn't new, yet seems even logical in order to monitor field functionality and product improvement, and therefore persists stubbornly...
Especially on the units with internal WLAN, like TomTom and the newer Garmin XT Series you've no control about what is actually shared...
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"They" definitely have the ability to access the GPS and your computer if you connect online to update maps or upload routes.

I almost miss Loran-C! :p
 
JetRanger said:
If one uses Google maps on a phone however, by default you are tracked via cell signal triangulation. I found this out years ago trying to get to a place out in the country and a friend plugged the address into Google maps on her phone and it quit working when she lost the cell signal.
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I am by no means a Google maps expert as I use it very infrequently as I primarily use a GPS receiver. The below is my understanding of how Google maps works based on what I have witnessed when using it and the little that I have read on it. It does align with my experiences using Google maps.

Google maps uses the phones GPS receiver to navigate in Google maps but it can not do this without access to the map set for the area that it is currently in. It is true that it supplements that data with whatever Bluetooth data, WIFI data, and cellular network data, that it can access to increase the positioning accuracy, provide local traffic conditions, and to provide local information. It does this by accessing Googles servers on the internet through the cellular network. Access to the cellular network is not required for it to be able to navigate provided that it has access to the local map set. If the map set for a given area has been downloaded to the phone it will navigate just fine without any access to anything else beyond the GPS receiver. If the local map set was not downloaded then internet access through the cellular network is required for it to be able to access that map set on Googles servers.

I suspect that in your case it is more likely that navigation stopped working when the cell signal was lost because when that happened it also lost access to the internet, which meant that it also lost access to the local map set. You mentioned that this happened years ago, which does further support this. Years ago local map sets were not automatically downloaded. If a person wanted to navigate while off line they had to manually download the map set for where they wanted to navigate. Not all that long ago Google made a change where the local map set, i.e. the map set for the area that the phone is currently in, is now automatically downloaded to the phone specifically to ensure that GPS navigation can still continue in that small area even if the cell signal is lost.

I have downloaded map sets to my phone many times in advance of going somewhere knowing that I would not have any access to any cellular network when I was in that area. I have never had any problem navigating using Google maps without any cellular network access as long as I made sure that I had a local map set on my phone for Google maps to use.
 
Andrew Shadow said:
I am by no means a Google maps expert as I use it very infrequently as I primarily use a GPS receiver. The below is my understanding of how Google maps works based on what I have witnessed when using it and the little that I have read on it. It does align with my experiences using Google maps.

Google maps uses the phones GPS receiver to navigate in Google maps but it can not do this without access to the map set for the area that it is currently in. It is true that it supplements that data with whatever Bluetooth data, WIFI data, and cellular network data, that it can access to increase the positioning accuracy, provide local traffic conditions, and to provide local information. It does this by accessing Googles servers on the internet through the cellular network. Access to the cellular network is not required for it to be able to navigate provided that it has access to the local map set. If the map set for a given area has been downloaded to the phone it will navigate just fine without any access to anything else beyond the GPS receiver. If the local map set was not downloaded then internet access through the cellular network is required for it to be able to access that map set on Googles servers.

I suspect that in your case it is more likely that navigation stopped working when the cell signal was lost because when that happened it also lost access to the internet, which meant that it also lost access to the local map set. You mentioned that this happened years ago, which does further support this. Years ago local map sets were not automatically downloaded. If a person wanted to navigate while off line they had to manually download the map set for where they wanted to navigate. Not all that long ago Google made a change where the local map set, i.e. the map set for the area that the phone is currently in, is now automatically downloaded to the phone specifically to ensure that GPS navigation can still continue in that small area even if the cell signal is lost.

I have downloaded map sets to my phone many times in advance of going somewhere knowing that I would not have any access to any cellular network when I was in that area. I have never had any problem navigating using Google maps without any cellular network access as long as I made sure that I had a local map set on my phone for Google maps to use.
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If I need to use GPS on my phone, I have Organic Maps which works off line and has no permissions to access any data (I turned off background data) on my phone... and doesn't talk to Google (supposedly).
 
Not being a 7th dan black belt in origami I'll be happy to never unfold a map again. I don't use Google Maps even though it's supposed to work offline. I'm still ticked at Garmin for dropping Navigon. That was a great map app for iOS.

Google used to say Don't be evil. Now what they don't say is If it's free you're the product.
 
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