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Comment on 13 Creepy Things Your Smartphone Knows About You

Out of all that, the one that really bothers me is one they didn’t even list: it knows all of your friends and associates. They have your location data. They have the location data of everyone around you. If you and several other people are in the same location frequently, you’ll start seeing Facebook and other apps suggest them as friends.

Fifteen years ago, I was among a community of people who primarily used aliases within the community to isolate their personal lives and identities from their community identity and activities. Facebook outed everyone to each other through friend suggestions.

All the rest of these things don’t bother me all that much, but by knowing your associations, they can infer things like political affiliation, and currently it seems like being in a database of people who hang out with “the enemy” is very dangerous for folks who take action behind the scenes while keeping a neutral face in public.

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swampdownloader@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Sounds kinky

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- MagicShel@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Sure but it doesn’t matter if it was bdsm clubs, gay bars, Freemasons, book clubs, worship, or 4H, I should be able to have an expectation of privacy in my associations.
  
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  - swampdownloader@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    Agreed, that’s an awful feature
    
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    MagicShel@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    (It was totally kinky.)
    
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WalnutLum@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
It’s pretty scary what information you can infer from geolocational data, it’s why you should try your best to not use it as much as possible.

When an app asks for your location only give it the minimum geolocation and time if you’re absolutely sure it needs it (for delivery make sure there’s not a place you can manually enter the dropoff location first, etc).

Also, “fine location” is a much more invasive technology than people think. Apple and Google have giant databases of Wifi broadcast locations and associated positions, which is what gives you the “more accurate location.”

If you want to help do your part to mitigate that turn off your router’s SSID broadcast and make sure none of your devices attempt to “auto connect” to your wifi.

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- sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  It really is a trade-off with convenience because auto connecting to Wi-Fi is wonderful, and Wi-Fi-corrected location data is much better for navigating in urban areas.
  
  Is it wrong to want the convenience and the privacy, both?
  
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