patrick.net

richwicks says

HeadSet says

So you are guessing.

Dude, believe whatever you fucking like. Fuck all of you, you want to be slaves, be fucking slaves then. I'm DONE trying to explain to you motherfuckers what can and WILL be done to you.

Whoa, calm down. We were talking about a specific - that you said When you are moving around with your phone with GPS and Wi-Fi on, your phone is collecting which location and wifi signals it can connect to.

Just admit that you do not know if this is true instead of launching into your Special Theory of GoogleEvilty.

stereotomy says

I suspect that even off, the phone is probably spying, or could be periodically woken up by the NSA to eavesdrop, who knows?

100% does. It's not even a debate. One of the many reasons I won't buy a Tesla. My 2012 Armada has a remote air bag sensor. I get a postcard every week to get the airbag fixed. Takata bull shit. We're on the front end of EV's. I'm talking a 12 year old car. The lawsuits on EV's really haven't even started.

Back to phones. They for sure can track you when off. I can hold down one button on almost any phone I know of and contact 911 How is that? If you don't want to be tracked, I just wouldn't own a phone. Or at minimum fuck with them so the data is trash.

richwicks says

HeadSet says

Why does the tower need 100 watts power when the phone answering back only needs well under a watt?

Well, it's been a while since I've worked on anything remotely connected to cell phone communication, like 20 years, but it was because it wasn't a shaped waveform at all. You broadcast completely non directional. That's changed.

Well, beam formed a little since there was no point in a tower broadcasting upward. But the mobile phones are not beamed formed at all, so the question remains - Why does the tower need 100 watts power when the phone answering back only needs well under a watt?

stereotomy says

I should clarify: I would turn the phone off, then measure charge after about a week. I suspect that even off, the phone is probably spying, or could be periodically woken up by the NSA to eavesdrop, who knows?

Well, I've had a phone off for months immediately return to life. I don't think you'll notice a difference.

I'm certain phones can fake being "off", I know cameras and microphones can't be guaranteed to be disabled, but turning it off, that's easy to notice.

HeadSet says

Whoa, calm down. We were talking about a specific - that you said When you are moving around with your phone with GPS and Wi-Fi on, your phone is collecting which location and wifi signals it can connect to.

The data is there, Google has collected information through their vehicles that map streets, Google is right now getting sued over the fact that "Icognito mode" on Chrome does NOTHING, they have placed microphones into thermostats - they're scum.

I'm just telling you how TRIVIAL it is to do, and I know what companies do when it's trivial to do. They don't have to add hardware. I don't think there is much reason to do it now. Everybody has a cell phone, you probably have a router, there done. They know your location when you turn your phone on, they know your router that you connect to with your phone - finished. Why would they collect this information? I don't know, but I do know all they do as a company is collect information.

HeadSet says

Just admit that you do not know if this is true instead of launching into your Special Theory of GoogleEvilty.

Let me re-iterate, they were collecting information from the Google cars on WiFi Hotspots, and they quit when they started producing phones and all Google does is collect information.

The very first Android phone was in 2008, they stopped collecting information in 2010 from their cars.

If the information is there, they will collect it, why not? I admit I cannot see it as being too useful. They can identify metadata with it, but it's a crude way of doing it. The fact they can do it, given Google's history, means they do. They have a 100% track record of this. They are a data collection company, a private intelligence firm, although not really that private.

richwicks says

If your phone is on and cannot reach a cell tower, it will expend a lot of power trying to find one. I've had this happen to me once, so I'm in the habit now when I'm in an area without good cell coverage, I just turn the phone off. Seems like a bad design, but I don't know the specifics of how modern phones work.

If you're in an area with poor signal. Enjoy it. Turn it off. With kids I need it. If I was a bachelor I wouldn't have the thing turned on outside of work hours. I don't answer the phone anyway. Lawyer in me, I'd just never answer the phone. Never say/acknowledge your name. Be a dick. I love phone arguments.

HeadSet says

Well, beam formed a little since there was no point in a tower broadcasting upward. But the mobile phones are not beamed formed at all, so the question remains - Why does the tower need 100 watts power when the phone answering back only needs well under a watt?

Look, I'm not an expert in cell technology but a tower is a lot more active than a phone. Your phone is MOSTLY doing nothing, even during a conversation.

I'm just giving you a HYPOTHESIS of why they may have been collecting data on GPS and WiFi. It could have just been research. I have thought of this myself, why not replace the vast majority of cell towers with modems? Voice data isn't large in comparison to most of what we do on the Internet now, which is video. Why not just use another frequency to handle telephone calls and let any owner of a wifi network (which is everybody now), do it?

Maybe the data is useless, but I know Google collects ALL DATA THEY CAN, because you don't know what might be useful later.

I know, for a FACT, every search and ip address associated with that search, has been stored by Google. How is this useful? Well, perhaps to build up a psychological profile of the user over time, or the IP address, or a family? Who knows? I bet Google doesn't know, but 30 years of data, maybe they can make a product out of all this information?

richwicks says

Voice data isn't large in comparison to most of what we do on the Internet now, which is video.

Ah, but remember that cable company modems now have competition from Verizon et al 5g "internet" that can deliver 100meg bandwidth. Lots of 4k video will be passed over that, it will hardly be restricted to voice. The future of the internet in many areas will be from cell towers.

HeadSet says

The future of the internet in many areas will be from cell towers.

Possibly. We use QAM for data transmission, and we're beyond where I thought we could go, and there's shaped wave forms, it's impossible to tell.

I can tell you this, if we do move to a society that only accesses the internet through cell technology, you'll be behind a NAT and you will be dependent on a 3rd party to connect to anybody. You will have to go through some sort of authority for EVERYTHING, every communication. If we go there, freedom of speech is dead.

I have my own website on my own computer, sitting away from me 2 feet away. I can't lose it because of a 3rd party says they won't host it. I have 100% control over this. That will go away if I'm placed behind a NAT router I cannot control.