[HN Gopher] The "Location Off" switch on your phone is a lie
___________________________________________________________________
The "Location Off" switch on your phone is a lie
Author : gjsman-1000
Score : 22 points
Date : 2023-05-01 22:02 UTC (57 minutes ago)
(HTM) web link (gabrielsieben.tech)
(TXT) w3m dump (gabrielsieben.tech)
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| I'm actually not sure what exactly is accomplished by toggling
| Location Services off. For example, I have Android 11, and AIUI,
| several methods are used to get a fix on location.
|
| Does the LS button turn off the GPS/GNSS radios only? What about
| WiFi location services? Are those disabled by the button too?
| Bluetooth, is that a thing?
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| How about turning the phone off, or setting it to Airplane Mode?
| crazygringo wrote:
| Seems like a strawman to me.
|
| I've never heard anybody think setting "location services" to
| "off" prevented your cell service from detecting your location
| and presence, which can then of course be shared with law
| enforcement.
|
| The toggle is for not sharing your location with installed
| _applications_.
|
| I think everybody knows that if it's important not to be tracked
| by law enforcement (e.g. attending an illegal protest), you don't
| take your phone in the first place. (And certainly everyone _on
| HN_ already knows.)
|
| So no, the location switch is not a lie.
| gerdesj wrote:
| Did you actually read the blog?
|
| The second para starts: "Well, that would be the case if we
| lived in an ideal world, but that switch is more of a polite
| "please don't" than an actual deterrent."
|
| FFS this isn't /. 8)
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Hello, article author here.
|
| I wrote the article to notify an audience a little bit broader
| than Hacker News. There are many people who seem to think that
| it's only Google or Apple or Facebook they need to worry about;
| or that if they get GrapheneOS they are now really-secure and
| really-private (which they are, from Google, but not really
| overall). The very idea that their cellphone carrier may have
| their location, even without their phone cooperating, is often
| a foreign idea they never thought of.
|
| This is, of course, a very long rabbit trail that never ends.
| Your license plate could get scanned. You could get picked up
| on cameras and run through facial recognition. But it's still
| important to call out areas that people may not have
| considered. Imagine a journalist - if nobody calls this out
| because "everyone knows," she might have installed GrapheneOS,
| signed up for ProtonMail, paid with cash for a SIM card, and
| gone off to cover some story without realizing this blind spot.
|
| > I think everybody knows that if it's important not to be
| tracked by law enforcement (e.g. attending an illegal protest),
| you don't take your phone in the first place.
|
| My home state would not have almost every police department
| armed to the teeth with IMSI Catchers if everybody just _knew_
| they weren 't supposed to do that.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Also the accuracy of GPS is quite a bit higher than that of the
| accidental locating functionality of triangulating cell phone
| towers.
| cloudripper wrote:
| I know of a few occasions [0] when missing persons were found
| stranded the mountains due to the assistance of cell tower
| triangulation. That said, it's a pain to get any element of
| accuracy and in the US, it takes a lengthy legal process for
| law enforcement to obtain that data.
|
| [0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64911138
| Spivak wrote:
| > attending an illegal protest
|
| Otherwise known as a protest that isn't a 5k with signs and
| legally classified as a parade.
| asynchronous wrote:
| Seriously. In the states you have to get permission
| beforehand to protest, which imo destroys the point of it.
| advisedwang wrote:
| I think amongst the technically literate here on HN, probably
| 99% know what the switch does. But amongst the public at large
| there are ABSOLUTELY people that think the location button is
| magic. Non-technically literate people need protection just as
| much as us, and this the way this button is labelled fails
| them.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Article author here. This is exactly my point. This could be
| so much clearer.
|
| Think about when you open a private window in Chrome. There's
| a clear warning that your ISP or school or employer may know
| what websites you visit anyway. But there's no such warning
| for smartphones. It just says "Location: Off" and people
| don't know.
| acdha wrote:
| Have you done a survey? I'd be surprised if a sizable
| percentage of the population wasn't aware of that distinction
| after multiple decades of watching actors trace people using
| cell towers. They even talk about the difference as a plot
| point since it means the actors have to search around looking
| heroic instead of just watching someone use a computer map.
| NeuroCoder wrote:
| You're not wrong but who is going to read a software devs
| blog? If this was some major news outlet writing a tech piece
| then the public at large may actually be reached with this
| info
| basisword wrote:
| I think you're massively underestimating people. Anyone who's
| watched a cop tv show in the last 20 years knows you can get
| a persons location via their carrier by seeing which cell
| towers they were near.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I think the public at large isn't even aware of the location
| services toggle at all.
|
| But they know from every police procedural TV show under the
| sun that you can have your location tracked by your cell
| service.
|
| Same way decades ago TV showed a landline call taking 30
| seconds to be "traced" and the criminal would always hang up
| _right_ before...
| WoahNoun wrote:
| This entire blog post can be summarized as "21 year old discovers
| how cell towers work."
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| More like "21 year old tells other, regular, uninformed people
| how cell towers work."
| WoahNoun wrote:
| You submitted it yourself to HN. Do you think the audience of
| HN is "other, regular, uninformed people?"
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| How else would you propose getting it into a top search
| result for Google? ;)
|
| But seriously, it could be useful for people to share with
| family or friends who aren't technical. You never know.
| kevingadd wrote:
| I think it's reasonable to guess that not all HN readers -
| there are very, very many people who read HN - are experts
| on a technology as complex as modern wireless
| communications.
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-05-01 23:00 UTC)