My car doesn’t have OnStar, so they can’t track me that way. Phones pinging is a good thing if you want the advantages of having a cell phone. Tracking my movement is a side effect of that and is potentially worrying. Managing that information is an important consideration and subject to serious debate.
Are you willing to give up your cell phone to get privacy? You can easily do so if this is that important to you. EZPass can be used to track you location and movement, but some states are better than others in removing this information quickly, limiting access, and storing only the barest minimum of personal data. Look at how NH treats EZPass.
Are you proposing a way to manage this data or venting?
Yes, you are tracked in multiple ways and something close to continuously. What’s more, you actively assist this tracking in many ways, because you’ve been induced to by both real and phantom economic lures.
Anyone who has access to OnStar’s data feed can find you. I should hope they control access to this data, but the truth of the matter is that anybody carrying a GPS or cellular device can be located by whoever has access to the data.
If you want your phone to work, then yes, it is a good thing.
Not really sure what this means. People buy vehicles with embedded GPS because (1) navigation devices are more convenient than paper maps, (2) GPS is useful if your car is stolen, (3) OnStar is useful if you have an emergency in a weird place. If this really freaks you out, I suggest you buy a horse-drawn carriage.
No.
As far as we want them to. Nobody is forcing you to buy one.
Most people think the advantages of using GPS enabled devices far outweighs the remote possibility that “someone” would use it for nefarious purposes. Anyone who uses my GPS to spy on me is going to be very bored by what they find. Unless you are a foreign spy or plan on committing a crime, there’s really no reason to be so concerned.
In a technical sense, though, I think there is a difference between something like a cell phone (which by design is a two-way transmitting and receiving device and in constant communication with a network unless switched off–not just “asleep” but powered down–or put in “airplane mode”) and a stand-alone GPS receiver (like a Garmin or TomTom). In order to track someone who is using an unmodified stand-alone GPS receiver, I think you’d have to have physical access to the device. At which point, you probably could pull up a record of everywhere the device had been during the periods when the device was switched on.
But if someone leaves their smart phone at home, I think to really track them, you’d have to attach a device that has both a GPS receiver and some kind of transmitter to them (or at any rate to their car), and even if they used their own stand-alone GPS navigator, you’d have to get access to it, probably by actually taking physical possession of the GPS and using the appropriate cable to connect it to a computer. (You might be able to install some kind of malware in a stand-alone GPS device so that it would automatically upload a log of everywhere the device had been while switched on–but you also might have to wait quite a while to get that data, until the user bothered to attach the GPS unit to an Internet-connected computer in order to download new maps and software updates.)
Eventually all cars might have some sort of Onstar
No way do I want to manage it! Not venting. Been wondering this for a while
No way! :eek:
Anyway, what I am basically talking about, is this the future? Is this something we wont be aware of?
Oh and the person talking about the cars not having something installed in them for the police to easily know you’re speeding instead of having to use a speed detector is what I was saying-its possible right?
How does anyone know what is being installed in cars or phones.
Yes no one has to buy any thing electronic but more and more one would have to go completely off grid not to be tracked.
As far as civil liberties are concerned, who will really know if we are being tracked? Look at the grocery stores, if you use a debit card or charge card even, they are tracking what you buy every time you use those cards.
What I want to know is how a cop knows whether you’re wearing seat belts??? I was told they get special training…:dubious::dubious:
I’ve had a stalker for so long now I simply assume EVERYTHING I DO is not private , fairly sucks so I yearn for the slight discomfort of a vague electronic tracking fear, ha ha wah
My grocery store does track my spending, which I find terribly convenient. I get coupons custom tailored to my usual shopping habits, which is pretty nice! So the end result of the grocery-techno-illuminati tracking me is that I get to continue to buy the stuff I normally buy, but at a lower price.
Soon every car will have standard what is available as an option now for parents of teenagers - tracking installed in your car that records speed, braking patterns, locations and all sorts of other stuff.
I’m fairly confident that the endgame of all this tracking will be something that makes somebody money, meaning either advertisement, or taxation. I know that the government is interested in some way of making money off of cars, and with hybrids and eventually pure electric cars becoming more common, they’re going to have to find some alternative to the gas tax. So you should expect a mileage tax or something like it in the not-too-distant future.
That, and gobs of targeted advertising. Whatever makes somebody money.
Do you know how Google maps tells if you have slow traffic in your area?
By tracking the speed of their Android subscribers as they drive through the area and comparing that speed to what’s in the database for that particular stretch of road.
Not necessarily tracked in a physical location, real time sense, but definitely tracked in terms of actions over time. What do you think store membership and loyalty cards are for?