# Postage stamp conspiracy theory **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 17, 2019, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/postage-stamp-conspiracy-theory/845007 "2019-12-17T22:34:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 28
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2019, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/postage-stamp-conspiracy-theory/845007/28 "2019-12-18T18:44:17Z")
**mixdenny** , you’re Post Office Conspiracy only scratches the surface!!! (But you all knew that already, right?) > [@bob\_2](#): > > Get used to it… We live in a surveillance society and it will get more so in the coming years. Cameras on street corners, HMA’s recording all cars in their areas, cameras in shops and offices. As we all use cards more and more, so we leave a trail of data about what we buy and where. No shit, Sherlock! Geoffrey A. Fowler, Technology Columnist at Washington Post, and some others, have been writing a series of columns under the general heading “The Secret Life of Your Data”, the most recent being published just today (Dec. 17, 2019): [What does your car know about you? We hacked a Chevy to find out.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/17/what-does-your-car-know-about-you-we-hacked-chevy-find-out/) > [@](#): > > Behind the wheel, it’s nothing but you, the open road — and your car quietly recording your every move. > > On a recent drive, a 2017 Chevrolet collected my precise location. It stored my phone’s ID and the people I called. It judged my acceleration and braking style, beaming back reports to its maker General Motors over an always-on Internet connection. At the bottom of the above article (or somewhere on the page) are links to a whole bunch of other articles in the series, with titles such as: [ul][li] Alexa has been eavesdropping on you this whole time[/li][li] It’s the middle of the night. Do you know who your iPhone is talking to?[/li][li] The spy in your wallet: Credit cards have a privacy problem[/li][li] Goodbye, Chrome: Google’s Web browser has become spy software[/li][li] I found your data. It’s for sale.[/li][li] You watch TV. Your TV watches back.[/li][li] Think you’re anonymous online? A third of popular websites are ‘fingerprinting’ you.[/ul][/li] An earlier article on the same topic (about your car spying on you): [Big Brother on wheels: Why your car company may know more about you than your spouse.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2018/01/15/big-brother-on-wheels-why-your-car-company-may-know-more-about-you-than-your-spouse/) by Peter Holley, from January 15, 2018. > [@](#): > > Dunn may consider his everyday driving habits mundane, but auto and privacy experts suspect that big automakers like Honda see them as anything but. By monitoring his everyday movements, an automaker can vacuum up a massive amount of personal information about someone like Dunn, everything from how fast he drives and how hard he brakes to how much fuel his car uses and the entertainment he prefers. The company can determine where he shops, the weather on his street, how often he wears his seat belt, what he was doing moments before a wreck — even where he likes to eat and how much he weighs. The one about your iPhone is especially interesting: [It’s the middle of the night. Do you know who your iPhone is talking to?](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/28/its-middle-night-do-you-know-who-your-iphone-is-talking/), from May 28, 2019. > [@](#): > > Apple says, “What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone.” Our privacy experiment showed 5,400 hidden app trackers guzzled our data — in a single week. > > It’s 3 a.m. Do you know what your iPhone is doing? > > Mine has been alarmingly busy. Even though the screen is off and I’m snoring, apps are beaming out lots of information about me to companies I’ve never heard of. Your iPhone probably is doing the same — and Apple could be doing more to stop it. > On a recent Monday night, a dozen marketing companies, research firms and other personal data guzzlers got reports from my iPhone. At 11:43 p.m., a company called Amplitude learned my phone number, email and exact location. At 3:58 a.m., another called Appboy got a digital fingerprint of my phone. At 6:25 a.m., a tracker called Demdex received a way to identify my phone and sent back a list of other trackers to pair up with. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/postage-stamp-conspiracy-theory/845007)._