Is My Car Reporting Data

FYI - You can disable GPS on your cell phone, but all phones have had a GPS chip since 2007 or 2008 to track location whether you turn GPS on or off. As a matter of fact, if you have a company, such as Verizon, and try to activate a phone before the chip was required, they will not allow you to activate it. They will quote the Patriot Act as their reason...

If you have a cable box, all the shows you watch are captured. If you have a security camera that works via WIFI, it can be accessed. If you have a vehicle manufactured after 2007, it has a GPS chip that can track all your movements, even if the car does not have navigation...

All credit card transactions are monitored via algorithms, suspicious activity is checked. If you don't use credit cards regularly, you are flagged as suspicious and possibly anti-government. Everyone knows about the email and internet traffic being recorded.

Drones are being tested above me, as I write this. Get the picture? And you're worried about EM traffic from your car?

 

That's why I still use a Nokia 1600 with prepaid Net10. When I got my Prius"v" in 2012, I made sure that I got the level 2 model without navigation.

I do not dc Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any of the social networks. My credit reports are FROZEN.

 

Not sure how serious you were being in your post, but handset location does not require a "GPS chip", rather it uses good old fashioned triangulation. This was already a network feature before phones started toting GPS receivers. The phone network doesn't constantly track specific locations like in the movies, mostly because that would saturate the network and prevent useful (and billable) voice and data, not to mention destroy battery life, but it can figure a location when it needs to.

 

True. Social networks are a bad! I also recommend using DUCK DUCK GO as your search provider and downloading and installing the software to block tracking in your browser. Most websites have 17 or more individual tracking services loading with every page.

Unfortunately, the privacy and small government presence I was taught as a student is no longer part of the curriculum. The proliferation of the Internet and Social Networks especially, have eroded any expectation of privacy our children may have learned as adults. They are being conditioned to have NO expectation of privacy and to willingly post all information about themselves without even thinking twice about it... I have to stop now, I'm getting too upset.

 

True. You are correct, but the chip is accurate to within about 10 feet. Then, if they are going to kill you in a drone strike, they could save money on the size of the ordinance! We are 17 Trillion in debt you know...

 

Your phone has a unique id number, every phone has a different one and it is reported to all the towers that you are in signal range of. If you are connected to 1 cell tower they know where you are within a pretty specific donut shaped area around the tower. 2 towers, you can be pinpointed to a region that overlaps the two donut shapes. 3 towers, and they have your location down to a meter or two accuracy.

Anytime your phone is on, the location is known. Doesn't matter if it is an old Nokia or the newest Galaxy S4. No need for GPS to track location, and generally it is not used to track location. Tower tracking is much more convenient because there is no extra data. The data already exists because that is how cell phones work. When a call is routed to your number, the beacon is sent to the towers that you are registered with at the moment. In urban areas this can be many tens of towers. In the rural middle of nowhere, you are still usually connected to 2 towers at any time.

 

So, the point of all this, to answer the OP's question, is that there is absolutely nothing any of us can do to prevent our information from being intercepted or monitored. So, get a mule and live in a cave for maximum privacy. Oh, and don't forget to mask the excess CO2 being vented from the cave that can be picked up by satellite...

 

Sure, I know about "frequency hopping." and CID numbers. I don't share or communicate security information using any electronic device, anyway. The best kept secret is one that "you only know. That's why so many ancient "trade secrets" went to the grave.

The best method of spreading communication that you want spread far and wide is to tell the recipient that "It is a secret."

 

Right,

I worked in the Government in a high security area and retired in 2000. Even then, I had no expectation of privacy. It is worse, now. You can limit your exposure, but you can't eliminate it.

 

so, did we ever hear back from the op, or did the spooks get her?

 

Yeah... geez, quit being selfish.

 

we are all being tracked and i have proof, ever notice how when you are in the city or large shopping centre and look at the "tourist map" and it says you are here, how do they know ?

 

This is not strictly correct. Speaking for GSM/UMTS based networks at least, the network does not constantly track the handset location in that level of detail. Network opreators group cells into location areas. The exact size of such areas is determined by the operator to get the best performance out of the network - it's always a balance. These areas will normally cover at least significant parts of a city and in rurual areas they may be huge. In regional parts of my country they can be really huge - you'd be able to see them drawn on a desk globe. The level of information routinely noted is simply which location area you're currently in. If the network wants to contact your handset, it will page it through all towers that are part location area. When your handset responds to that, communication will be directed via the current cell identified by the handset. Your handset, for its part, will contact the network with the current location area from time to time (often something like every 4-6 hours it has been silent) or if the handset detects that it should move from a cell that was in one location area to a cell that is in a different location area.

More detailed locations dervied through triangulation are only required for location based services or other specific situations such as identifying the source location of a 911 call. The network can seek this location at any time your phone is on, but in normal circumstances it would not... it's simply a waste of network resources that could be used for revenue-generating traffic, plus it would kill the battery life of the handsets.

All of that said... it's not always the network operator. Technology does exist that allows shopping centre owners to track the movement of mobile handsets through their properties, completely independently of the mobile network operators.

We’re watching: malls track shopper’s cell phone signals to gather marketing data | Ars Technica

Hopefully this makes everyone feel better.

 

From my years of intelligence and law enforcement experience, I have to say that the most effective cover is one of "hiding in plain sight."

A situationally aware person can almost immediately "pick out" the particular individual, conversation or thing that is different from the usual situation. People tend to "telegraph" out or send non-verbal signals that "they are different" from the usual person in a crowd.

Too much information can actually "overload" intelligence gathering systems.

 

Wouldn't activately attempting to "limit your exposure" thus actually call attention to yourself?

 

Not if you know how it is done. I know that when I walk into a local store, no one pays any attention to me, unless it's someone who knows me. It's like no one pays attention to the trash collector, maid or service person in a large building or a big hotel.

The Captain of a ship stands out. The Wiper in the engine room doesn't.

 

If that's true then it would be nice to be able to access it, say through the OBD port, to get location data for free. Anyone knows how?

 

Has the OP chimed in at all? Maybe this is a test to see which one of us qualifies for the NSA?

 

This was a very entertaining thread here. Now I'm surprisingly interested in the what the OP is doing day to day to cause this level of paranoia.