Source:
https://www.theage.com.au/technology/mobile-phone-location-d…
I don't think it is very anonymous as data is of us at Home or just commuting or at work even if its anonymised. You can easily tell who that anonymised data belong to by checking roughly where he frequent and stay the most, home and workplace.
what bullsh!t. I wonder whether that's covered under the t&cs when you sign up?
Pretty sure they can change them at will. You then have the option to go to another telco …with the same t&c's.
Are the other telco's tracking movement too?
I haven't found any articles other than vodafone.
The movement is automatically collated by the cell towers. You could turn off location services to make it less accurate I guess but that movement has to be logged in order for the system to work (IIUC). Now the government is FORCING these private companies to hand over that data for government surveillance purposes. I doubt this will be rescinded after the pandemic is over. Especially if people keep resisting their tracking app.
I doubt this will be rescinded after the pandemic is over
Agreed, the "temporary emergency measures" have a way of quietly remaining in place after the crisis is over.
I guess the government can push what would usually be unacceptable with less resistance and once it's in place good luck removing it
@FireRunner: Unless enough people stand up and resist. There's quite a few protests going on ATM, not just the couple in the U.S..
@EightImmortals: Yes, you have to nip it in the bud otherwise it'll be near impossible to remove later
@EightImmortals: perfect time to rush through all manner of legislation.. you're not allowed to be out and about to protest it
@EightImmortals: call a state of emergency… do whatever the F# they want…
they only have good intentions right?
You could turn off location services
Can you?
Try to block your number and call 000
See if they know your number
@vinni9284: I've often been curious about that. Sure they could see my number but would be able to track my location? Mind you if I had reason to call 000 I'd make sure I turned location on first. :)
@EightImmortals: You location is not broadcast in a call, that's a data feature.
000 can try and pinpoint where you are using signal triangulation, by knowing which towers can see you.
@AdosHouse: I am sure all Telcos can turn on location services remotely without your knowledge, unless your phone is turned off.
@AdosHouse: I have always found this so ridiculous in Australia. Way back in the 1980's, we visited a fire station in Gisborne NeW Zealand. The Chief was the father of our sales woman.
At that time, when a 111 call came on about a fire, the location of fire that caller stated came up on a huge screens as well as the location of the caller.
Hoaxes were immediately known and police sent to caller locAtion.
Other emergency services had caller location too. I did St John training and we were told if we were on our own, to just dial 111 and proceed with our resuscitation and call a few words out when able but the address was not one they needed. This made sense to me and I couldn't believe it was not set up here. Of course that was before mobiles and people mostly had supplied phones - not their own.
Long before caller id was possible in landlines, the switchboard at a hospital I worked could detect caller phone numbers and then locate them. This was also for hoax detection (a lot of bomb threats in that town around that time and the police were eager to catch them) plus useful for emergency as family calling about an emergency is a fairly common event too.
In emergency situations, callers can be incoherent and it is hard to extract needed information. So location tracking for this reason is so important. PLUS if there is only you there, you don't want to be on the phone too long.
I have always found this so ridiculous in Australia. Way back in the 1980's, we visited a fire station in Gisborne NeW Zealand. The Chief was the father of our sales woman.
At that time, when a 111 call came on about a fire, the location of fire that caller stated came up on a huge screens as well as the location of the caller.
You have to keep in mind that PSTN landlines are different to mobiles. You can pinpoint a PSTN line to an exact address as they don't move - all landlines are tied to a physical address. If you call emergency services from a PSTN line here, they will absolutely know exactly where you're calling from - no different to that fire station in NZ. Everything you described happens in Australia - there's nothing unique about that system in NZ.
Mobile phones are different as the only way you can be tracked by emergency services (if at all) at the moment is by triangulation which isn't very accurate. That's why emergency services here got together and made this app to help you give them your exact location.
So location tracking for this reason is so important.
Absolutely. It is being worked on at the moment. But just have a look through this thread - there are people who will rally against it because they think the government will use it to track everybody's locations all the time.
@vinni9284: Blocking your number is a setting you can use with your Telco, obviously your phone broadcasts your number when you make a call, otherwise the tower wouldn't accept it. The Telco then just doesn't pass it on to the receiving number.
With a 000 call this feature is not available, this is a safety feature. That way 000 responders can know who you are, both for an emergency, and in case it is a prank call.
@AdosHouse: This is my point.
Regardless of what you "perceive" in regards to the credibility of your privacy information, it can easily be overridden (and even without your knowledge)
Although the 000 call number display is completely justifiable, what other applications do you think follows this protocol are not?
Big Brother is now bigger than ever.
@vinni9284: What they can or cannot do is laid out in their Privacy Policy.
Here is Telstra's if you wish, https://www.telstra.com.au/content/dam/tcom/personal/privacy…
And providing your number and location for a 000 call is law, details in the document above, just search 000.
@AdosHouse: Let me tell you with background computational knowledge, even with their 10000 page EULA "i agree" crap, with ambiguous words embedded giving them overpowering decisions that we all never read, there is a back door for everything.
The laws are their respective privacy policies change more than Uber drivers in the Airport.. it's not worth the paper its written on.
Telstra privacy policy snippet from your link:
• Information about your products and services including
device-specific information such as your hardware model,
operating system version, unique device and service identifiers,
device status, serial numbers, settings, configuration and
software and mobile network information
What is a service identifier?
• Information about how you use your products and services
such as:
− Your network usage including time and duration of
your communications as well as information about the
operation of the equipment, services and applications you
use on our networks
− How you use our services to access the internet,
such as information about websites visited
− Your location or the location of your devices when you are
using our products and services
How is releasing people's location data "anonymously" even legal?
We have given the political class the power (by our acquiescence) to make up the rules to suit themselves. By definition whatever rules they makes are therefore 'legal' and the terms 'legal' and 'illegal' have a lot of power in people's minds. Some people can think for themsleves, but not many.
Another stupid outcome thanks to Covid19. Keep chipping away at our personal rights and freedoms. One day they might as well put a chip into our brain, we can be become remote controlled robots.
Apple and Google have been providing high-level data for weeks/months, globally.
My understanding is that mobile phone data is used for purposes such as determining travel times on freeways etc. (didn't some guy somewhere have a car with 40+ mobile all turned on, parked in his car, and google maps showed the street as congested?)
It is the new world order; I don't think it is limited to Voda
This could be very handy for creating traffic jams dotted along your path. Speed up a road trip, drive home from work or stagecoach robbery!
If you read the article, you'll see that the data simply shows the number of subscribers in various areas at points in time. They only need the approximate location for that, which they can easily get by the number of phones connected to their cell towers. They're not supplying GPS-level data.
Headlines like the one on The Age are extremely sensationalist. It's just a ploy by them to get more clicks so they gain more ad revenue. They blow things out of proportion to get the public riled up. News companies thrive on sensationalism - they're a business after all.
I don't think it is very anonymous as data is of us at Home or just commuting or at work even if its anonymised. You can easily tell who that anonymised data belong to by checking roughly where he frequent and stay the most, home and workplace.
And that's the result of sensationalist headlines - people don't always read the whole article and start imagining scenarios in their head. Even here, people read the OP's post, don't read the actual story, and assume the government is tracking individuals.
The info Vodafone gave is limited to "there were x number of subscribers in y place at z time". So no, you cannot tell who that data belongs to because there are no identifiers.
sensationalist or not, this is how you and I hear about it. No message to Vodafone customers "hey we're giving x/y/z data to the government on their request, to ensure your privacy we have done a/b/c before providing this"
No message to Vodafone customers "hey we're giving x/y/z data to the government on their request, to ensure your privacy we have done a/b/c before providing this"
The way I see it, it is the same as e.g. NBN saying 9am-5pm usage has increased by 102% from Feb to April. Neither NBN nor my ISP contacted me to tell me my usage stats were going to be part of an anonymised high-level public data release.
The data is so high-level that absolutely nobody's privacy could be breached in any way whatsover, so there is no reason to contact every single customer to tell them about it. Remember - this is very high-level data. There is literally no way anybody's privacy can be breached in any way.
They did not share anonymised data points on individual subscribers. Thanks to the sensationalist headlines (and OP's forum post), people seem to think that they did.
to the government on their request,
The article also says "A government source said Vodafone approached the PM's department first to offer the data."
bit of a contradiction:
In a statement to the Sun-Herald and Sunday Age, Vodafone Australia's director of corporate affairs, Dan Lloyd, said the telco had "provided, on request…."
@jimdotpud: Vodafone could have told them "we have this data we can give you". The PM's department would then have to officially request it.
The point is the Vodafone and pretty much all teclo do collect these data. Anytime in future or pass the teclo could have sold or given these data to government/third party either by court order or free will or my employee with access.
The point is the Vodafone and pretty much all teclo do collect these data.
You might not be aware, but that is how all mobile networks worldwide operate. The telco has to know where subscribers phones are so they can route calls to them.
Anytime in future or pass the teclo could have sold or given these data to government/third party either by court order or free will or my employee with access.
It might come as a surprise to you, but that has been the case for decades. The government has always been able to request records of that kind. They can also request your financial records and see exactly how much you've been spending at what shops and websites, they can request your whole google search history, they can find out how often you buy condoms from Coles from your Flybuys history, your driving movements from toll records and numberplate cameras, find out the identity of every single person you called or texted along with the time/date/your location, and much, much more.
You might not be aware, but that is how all mobile networks worldwide operate. The telco has to know where subscribers phones are so they can route calls to them.
Hmmm …. That what I was saying ….
It might come as a surprise to you, but that has been the case for decades. The government has always been able to request records of that kind. They can also request your financial records and see exactly how much you've been spending at what shops and websites, they can request your whole google search history, they can find out how often you buy condoms from Coles from your Flybuys history, your driving movements from toll records and numberplate cameras, find out the identity of every single person you called or texted along with the time/date/your location, and much, much more.
Not a surprise to me, but to many yes.
Not a surprise to me, but to many yes.
There are 2 different things here. First of all, your original post at the top was incorrect. You made it out as if Vodafone gave to the govt granular location data which could be linked to individual user movements. I'm happy to be corrected, but I'm quite certain telcos only have cell-tower-level data which only allows for rough location via triangulation, which they didn't give anyway. The telco cannot access GPS/WiFi-accurate phone location data. Not even emergency services can track your phone's exact location.
Then in your post above, it sounded like it was a novel idea to you that telcos keep records of where your phone was. I bet if you asked any random person on the street "The police or government can request your phone location data to find out where you've been - true or false?", the majority would answer "true".
pretty sure they need a court order, warrant or subpoena to access the information. and yet this would typically be for a single or group of individuals under investigation, not a whole telco's subscriber base.
They did not share anonymised data points on individual subscribers
how do you know? did they make the data sets public?
if it's truly anonymous data and so high level, why not just publish it to the public?
reeks of bullsh!t
how do you know?
How do you know they did?
if it's truly anonymous data and so high level, why not just publish it to the public?
Did you not see the big graph in that article?
reeks of bullsh!t
reeks of paranoia.
i'm not talking about the graphs, i was talking about the data sets. if someone gave me a whole chunk of data i could publish a big graph that basically says next to nothing too. not the point i was making.
paranoia? really?
answer this then: if that graph was all there was to come out of it, why the big song and dance about the government having to request the data, why would vodafone not just offer up the graph instead?
again i'll say - if it's truly anonymous data and so high level, why not just publish it to the public?
i'm not talking about the graphs, i was talking about the data sets.
What makes you think the government asked for more granular data than what has been given?
paranoia? really?
Did you just make up a scenario where the government requested granular user-level tracking data all in your head?
answer this then: if that graph was all there was to come out of it, why the big song and dance about the government having to request the data,
There was no big song and dance until the sensationalist media spun it into a big hoo-haa. Unfortunately paranoid people tend to read headlines like that and start making up scenarios in their head. Nothing anybody says will convince them because the government is always against them.
why would vodafone not just offer up the graph instead?
Why would they? They're a telco. They're not in charge of social distancing measures or anything related to public health. They knew the government would be interested in the effectiveness of their lockdown measures, and they had some high-level anonymised data, so why wouldn't they give the data to the government?
again i'll say - if it's truly anonymous data and so high level, why not just publish it to the public?
again i'll say - what makes you think there is more granular user-level data than what has already been released?
Why would they? They're a telco. They're not in charge of social distancing measures or anything related to public health. They knew the government would be interested in the effectiveness of their lockdown measures, and they had some high-level anonymised data, so why wouldn't they give the data to the government?
that's a contradiction right there. Why would they? but then they do offer it!
i'd rather play devil's advocate and ask why.
in any other circumstance the government would not have access to any of this information unless it has a warrant for it. As such, vodafone has a duty of care to it's customers to safeguard any and all of the information they hold regarding their customer base. As stated, given this was not a requested via a warrant, it should not have been offered without notification to customers.
that's a contradiction right there. Why would they? but then they do offer it!
You asked why didn't Vodafone themselves produce and publish the graph.
I said Vodafone is a telco, they're not in the business of publishing health-related information.
in any other circumstance the government would not have access to any of this information unless it has a warrant for it.
It looks like you still under the assumption that the government requested data that identifies individuals.
You bet Telstra is doing something with location data. It's all kept for 7 years. Terabytes of the stuff. Keeps my department funded so…. I'm OK with it.
Not sure what is all the fuzz about. How do you think you can get Emergency SMS during the recent Bush fires ? Provided they are not linking the location device to your name to an external party and dont resell that information to 3rd parties for a profit…
https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/04/18/data-retention-…
And the problem is? Every time anyone goes anywhere, your face, your vehicle, your ticketing, purchases, and even tower pings show where you have been and where you are also to point what you may be doing/have done. This is because you are going out in public. Free to see in public. I don't need a tracking App to follow you around and know exactly what where when and who you do what ever with. Not practical on a large scale, but achievable to some, ie Private Detective clients.
This is all available information available to anyone looking in the right direction. It may not always be instant location tracking,and you have the choice how to hide if you want to hide who and where you have been or what you may be doing.
Unless you have something to hide, legal wise or moral, or simply want to be private, being anonymous or hidden, that stopped being a possibility years ago. Move on. I have nothing to hide, so I don't care who knows when I cross the street or where, or any such likewise scenario, but I know there are those that believe their privacy is still attainable.
If it become s Law, so be it, it is only a twist on what is already available, and it will most likely protect more people that hurt, given the Virus and other Emergencies every day.
If my phone, oh hang on I don't actually have a working phone, but if I did, or I was in my work vehicle with a phone and a Tracking GPS, and I crash out in the boondocks, or I am dead I would like to think SES would have a good idea where to find my body. So would your family for you.
If you seriously want privacy with your phone, turn it off unless you need it on in a safe location where you allow the boffins to know you are actually still there. Or, a ski mask perhaps on a pushbike and only use cash.
Just a few thought……
Yes, hopefully soon they'll start arresting people for thoughtcrime.