Surveillance libraries in common smartphone apps have amassed dossiers on the minute-to-minute movements of 200 million+ Americans

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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/11/clinics-military-bases-aa.html

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Yes, but free stuff you don’t need, so totally worth it!

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Note: the link to “the accompanying guide” just points back to the article here on Boing Boing. For those looking for it, it’s here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/technology/prevent-location-data-sharing.html?action=click&module=Intentional&pgtype=Article

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Thanks for the guide. However, I fear that the majority of cell phone users simply does not care and does not want to go into settings. They want the shiny stuff, simply want it to work and find settings confusing. Remember that in another era the majority of vcrs flashed 00:00, because their users did not adjust the clock.

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You ain’t wrong. This stuff constantly slips by because consumers have always been all too lackadaisical about checking up on how their information is being used, or being bothered to do anything about it. It’s exacerbated today by tech companies who know people can’t be bothered and take advantage of that fact by slipping this stuff in as the default for their apps. I had been being pretty diligent about choosing “do not use location services” for apps I installed, but when I checked I found about a half dozen were set to “always use,” some of which are so context specific (Berlin travel guide from Fromers for example) that I have to question why that was the default instead of “while using.”

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For someone like me who is quite aware of the constant tracking (and does use a phone anyway) this is just some fun eye candy.

For people like my parents, this would be outright scandalous.

We are so used to this shit, we don’t even care any more. We just hope we never experience a full dystopian nightmare with a breakdown of civilisation like during the Nazi regime.

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It’s like terms and conditions, cookie walls and all other opt-in “choices” we get presented with, it’s way too much hassle to read it and there are so many anti-patterns discouraging you from doing so. Most users want better privacy and more rights but they know it’s a losing game so they just give up.

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…and then, when everyone is an open book for the trackers, the one person who disables the location services stands out like a sore point in the big data logs.

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