Can Too Much Privacy Be a Bad Thing?

Could Your Privacy Settings Kill You?

[incrediBILL]

I know that a lot of people are such privacy freaks that they disable everything and anything and often to their own detriment.

I won't go into all the details now but I personally know of an ongoing situation where someone with tracking software had certain aspects disabled, or just never enabled them, same thing really, and now that person is nowhere to be found and the only software that could have led to their last known location was disabled.

In this situation, and many others, too much privacy is a BAD THING. In the event that something happens to you that's unexpected or you succumb to foul prey or something, had those features in the phone and/or software been enabled, help would potentially rapidly come to your aid OR the authorities would know more clues to where the hell you are.

In the case I'm currently aware of there's not a trace of this person because the tracking was disabled.

When it's appropriate I might post more details, but all I know is from now on when I step out the door, my movements will be recorded and sent to a server every few minutes so my loved ones and/or the authorities can track my ass down to as close as they can to find me if I need to be found.

If you don't care about your personal safety over your privacy concerns, then just keep going about your business and hope you're not one of the many that go missing daily.

The stats I read claim just in the US alone:
Approximately 2,300 Americans are reported missing every day
Every 40 seconds, a child goes missing in the U.S.

So if your privacy is worth more than being one of those daily statistics then go ahead and roll the dice but me and mine are going to be tracked moving forward.

That's all I have to say about that!

YMMV

[Leosghost]

The U.S.A is not the world..those stats are not at all reflected in almost all other countries of the world..
Perhaps the problem is
a) Where you live..
b) Assuming everywhere else is the same or similar to where you live..

Most of the world ( I have travelled extensively ) is waaaaay safer than the U.S.A has become..

[incrediBILL]

Really? this was about privacy not about nationalities, but there's a lot of places in the world with War Lords and crap, civil unrest, tourists being snatched for ransom, etc.

How about these:

35,439 bodies found dead. All of them were unidentified. This was in India 2000.

Missing people reports show that 39,000 children go missing in France, 50,000 missing children in Germany,, 8,400 in Spain, 1,100 in Italy and 500 in Greece. Brazil is said to report up to 40,000 missing children a year. There were 4,802 in the UK alone reported missing. 88.5 reports per day go to the Metropolitan police.

Those numbers were from a bit dated material but it's been increasing, not declining.


FYI, the incident I'm referring to didn't even happen in the US, but the technology and issues are the same.

This is the last we'll speak of stats as this is a thread about PRIVACY to protect yourself, not a pissing contest about the US or any other country. Tons of stats out there on this topic, but that's not the point as I think it's obvious that a lot of people go missing annually all over the place with few exceptions.

The whole topic came about as I have intimate knowledge of a single person with a single app that might have saved that person, but they appear to have opted out of the single thing that might have led authorities closer to their whereabouts.

Bad idea turning tracking off unless you're doing something you don't want tracked for whatever reason, which probably means you're more at risk to need finding in the first place if you're doing something that shouldn't be traced! ;)

The whole point was the person I know of just went about doing their daily routine and fell of the planet without a trace for a few days now and a little bit of technology being enabled would have given the authorities a clue.

Thanks to all the fuss, the option to track and report is off by default, it only does local tracking in the phone which is a bit bunch of nothing if someone grabs you off the street.

So thanks to all the privacy fanatics making a fuss all the technologically inept, which is most of the masses, that don't understand this stuff in the first place have things that could save their lives or at least lead people to wherever they were last seen on the planet to hunt for clues, DISABLED BY DEFAULT!

Security should be ENABLED BY DEFAULT and if it's a problem for you, then turn it off for your own privacy but these default settings are putting everyone at risk that don't even realize the apps they buy to do some of these things opt-out by default. Maybe they thought it was on and didn't know and the elderly who could use it the most have no clue as most barely know how to turn it on in the first place

I'm just saying, based on what happened I think we listened to the wrong people and swung too far in the wrong direction as anyone concerned more about their privacy over security can learn enough to shut it off, but it shouldn't be disabled for those that are clueless their wonderful GPS device and track app DON'T by default.

Bad idea and someone and their family are now suffering because of it, no clue how many others as this was the first time I've even known about this happening.

[lucy24]

Huh. So you think children are safer if more people have access to more information about them? And that 35,439/35,439 Indians have cell phones with GPS?

[Leosghost]

The sources of those "country stats" are not only old, but highly unreliable and exaggerated ..( one has to wonder why they would exaggerate so )..but as you say..people go missing all the time, just not as often as some who would like to track our every move ( supposedly for "our own good" ) would like us to believe ..

Anyone with a cellphone is trackable..that is all the safety that one needs ( if one feels that one needs it )..

But bear in mind..the tracking of where you are always has the possibility to be used against you, as well as in your favor, or even to elucidate things..

Case in point..about 5 years ago someone was found dead on one of our local beaches ( there are two, we live about two minutes slow walk downhill from one of them, sight, sound, earshot and smell of the sea, sleepy little Breton French village..great )..they were found at the foot of the cliffs between "our beach" ( not "ours personally" unfortunately ) and the one that is further away from us ( about 800 metres ) ..Local press mentioned it, no more was heard about it..

Then 6 months later , my wife got a phone call from the local "Gendarmerie" ( kind of French state police in rural areas, they are actually a branch of the military ) ..they had establishd that her mobile phone was in the vicinity ( within 100 metres ) of the place where the body was found at the approximate time of death..and .."could she account for her whereabouts"..and "why was she within 100 metres of the scene at the time of death"..yes "the Gendarmerie" suspected maybe "foul play"..

Fortunately for her, she remembered she had been visiting a friend who lives about 100 metres from the cliff top ( residential cliff top road )..but whose house is seperated from the cliffs by a field, a fairly well used coastal road and a public footpath used by tourists..Time of death was around midday..

They interviewed her friend ( and also the doctor who was visiting her friend at the time ) ..her "alibi" checked out..

She asked how they knew where she was 6 months before..

They told her.."we know where everyone who was carrying a cellphone was that day, down to 100 metres, you are one of 40 people locally we are questioning, and there are another 200 or so who were passing in vehicles, whose cellphones showed up on the cell tower logs, we have their names, addresses, details etc , we'll be interviewing them too"..

She was extremely surprised that cellphones can be used for this, even months after the date, I wasn't..
the military ( in the UK at least ) used to get Comm's Eqpmt waaaay better and waaay before civvies even heard about it..

All you need if you want to be found..is a cellphone in range of a tower, tower ranges in Europe at least are a long way, some people in the UK regularly "roam" onto the French 3G networks when they are on the coast in the south of the UK..Straight line distance about 33km ..Even so, don't rely upon a cellphone if you are out in a boat, even if only going 1 km from the shore..
The other thing if you want to "be found", is to tell someone where you are going, and approximately when you'll be back..

If you don't want to be found..do neither of those..

Cellphones are not set to "do not track" by default..if they were you could neither call, nor be called, they have to know where si the nearest tower, and they look for one and talk to it all the time , that is how SMS works, it "piggybacks" on the cell to tower comms<= simplified version

Nothing to do with "privacy"..and certainly not avoiding tracking and privacy on the web..

You don't need to allow being tracked by Google, or facebook, or anyone else on the web in order to be safe and to be found if you went missing..Nor do you neeed any "app" to have tracking turned on by default..your phone , even with no "apps" installed is tracking you anyway..by default..

And you don't gain so much as one iota of "safety", nor ability to be "found for your own good", if you do allow Google or facebook or any other entity on the web to be tracking you..

[Leosghost]

BTW..if the only way that civilians can survive is to have GPS tracking in their apps and cellphones turned on by default..
How do you explain that before cellphones existed and before GPS and tracking apps existed that the human race survived..?

If the only way that stupid folks can survive nowadays is they and if the rest of us have to be tracked everywhere we go ..maybe you should think of the benefits of Darwinism..
You can't really fix stupid..you can try, but it is never going to work 100% of the time, because some people are..stupid..

Maybe we should spend more time worrying about how to help the brighter ones, before we do too many things that result in the lowering of the average intelligence of our species..

ps..A quick note re the figures you quoted above for "disappeared children in France"..I checked..
fewer than 500 of those were actual disappearances of a child under 18 years old ..the rest were "runaways" who were found, or returned safe and sound of their own accord..
pps..you said above that the person you have knowledge of turned off/ "opted out of" their tracking deliberately..

The whole topic came about as I have intimate knowledge of a single person with a single app that might have saved that person, but they appear to have opted out of the single thing that might have led authorities closer to their whereabouts.

So having it on by default ( but switchable ) would not have helped them..as it was on ( by default ? ) , but, they turned it off..

[incrediBILL]

Anyone with a cellphone is trackable..that is all the safety that one needs ( if one feels that one needs it )..

OK, if you would learn at the foot of Bill, instead of stepping on his toes, you would have a clue that we're not that trackable with a phone if it's OFF when they start looking for you so by the time they figure out to look, it's way too late.

In this case there was a fitness app being used during a fitness session and it wasn't sending data to the server during the session, only post-session, therefore the whereabouts during the day aren't known. Could simply have fallen off the path laying injured behind bushes, possibly knocked out, who knows, but the problem is we don't know and we should have known if the defaults had been switched.

So you think children are safer if more people have access to more information about them?

Reductio ad absurdum arguments really don't help your point because only the parents and the service provider would have the data which is the same as any phone app. Twitter exposes locations, point?

FWIW, many parent's deliberately install tracking software on their kids phones these days so they want to know where the kid is at all times for obvious reasons. In this case it's the parent, not the kid, that got lost.

There's privacy and there's privacy. Just because you allow yourself to be tracked doesn't mean it has to be publicly exposed, it can be private information. Tracking and transfer do not equal public viewing. You control who can view, if anyone at all which I'm sure you're aware of hence I wondered why the reductio ad absurdum. Just like Facebook, it has all sorts of privacy controls but the fact that the data isn't updating the server instead of staying local to the phone might have been someone's undoing and not their fault it appears.

As long as it was transferred, someone could later review it, but alas it's a privacy setting day late and user short in this case.

More importantly, if we can't trust those running the servers and services, which often have plain text emails, passwords, etc. that the people on the backend really don't need your GPS data to cause problems. Most people are creatures of habit and their documented comings and goings in FB, 4 Sq., Twitter, etc. leave them vulnerable already.

Problem in this instance was NONE of the exercise paths taken, and most people tend to use repeat paths or very similar paths all the time, was EVER uploaded. Just having a few past paths would give the authorities an idea where to go but they're mystified.

All I know is one specific app on that current missing person's phone could have made a huge difference except for that one little setting defaults to the wrong position.

Why people think having it default to off is a good thing should go talk to the family and authorities frantically searching without a clue, I'm sure they'd side with me on this issue so they knew where this person had been, or normally went, to get some sort of starting point.

Before GPS? Tons of people vanished without a trace, some eventually surfaced like Chandra Levy, but tracking apps could speed things up.

How hard is it to allow people to OPT-OUT instead of OPT-IN? If people are concerned about privacy they'll figure out how to OPT-OUT but most aren't even tech savvy enough to know what it's set to in the first place, they have no clue it's toothless out of the box, seems like such a shame the technology failed this person because they simply didn't know.

Tracking and viewing aren't the same thing. Allowing the tracking to be uploaded by default would at least let parents or whoever see what they need in an emergency. Besides, as I pointed out above, the data viewing isn't public by default so nobody would see it regardless unless the public viewing options were manually changed which isn't the issue.

Like I said before, I'll be reevaluating my tracking options and make sure my wife can find me at a moments notice in the event I don't show up where I'm supposed to be. I've got nothing to hide and want to be found at all times in case I go missing, or just slump over in a parking lot. If that status ever changes I'll dump my phone and get a burner, sheesh, get serious ;)

[graeme_p]

I doubt the value of phone tracking in most bad situations:

1) if someone disappears deliberately, then they will turn it off
2) if someone is forcibly abducted then the abductor is unlikely to let them keep their phone.
3) as leosghost pointed out, phones are always tracked fairly accurately when on anyway, regardless of privacy settings. These days I believe it is usually to within a few meters.
4) as for identifying bodies, most people carry other things that can identify them (credit cards, driving licences, ID cards, keys, business cards, teeth...). It is unlikely that these would be removed but a phone left.

[engine]

To support the concept iBill is referring to, I have a friend with an elderly relative that suffers from Alzheimer's, and, without going into too much detail, that person has gone missing a few times. Thanks to the tracking on the phone the person has been found in pretty good time.

My point in this is, it can also be a good thing, too.

As to privacy, which is what the topic is about, the fact there is an off/on function, it gives individuals the choice.

Bearing in mind that cell phone tracking is possible, but not really as accurate as you may think, especially in rural areas or notspots.
GPS tracking is the most accurate, and that's on a smartphone. Anyone with a feature phone will have to rely on cellphone triangulation.

We have a choice, which I fully support.

The answer is to turn off your phone, or leave it at home.

[birdbrain]

Can Too Much Privacy Be a Bad Thing?

No.

Could Your Privacy Settings Kill You?

No.

The above questions are, like my answers, totally subjective.

With a different personal philosophy my replies could have been...

1. Yes.
   
2. No.
   

...or...

1. Yes.
   
2. Yes.
   

...or...

1. No..
   
2. Yes.
   

I sincerely hope that this helps in some small way.

birdbrain

[tangor]

I'll keep my reply short:

Don't have a cell phone, so you can't track me anyway. :) Why do I not have a cell phone? I like my privacy.

The not short part of my reply"

While the concern for a friend as expressed by the OP is admirable, the first thing that nefarious actors would do is take away that device, disable it, turn it off, or destroy it, or sell/give to some idiot to cart around and mislead the "authorities". (The latter has happened in Texas)

Privacy concerns, in some countries (USA in particular) are very pertinent where a general, warrant-less surveillance is in place, particularly in large urban areas. (Recall the NSA revelations in recent days?)

Sorry your friend is missing. but I don't think an app/privacy setting, has anything to do with it, nor could have changed whatever has happened.

When the "Leaders" have finally achieved "World Control" and all "Citizens" are implanted with a non-removable ID Chip linked to the "Grid" 24/7/365 there will still be privacy nuts who won't partake of that "Society" and rather live in a sewer than give up personal freedoms.

[blend27]

No.

Foo <-- ask any Russian what the the actual meaning of the sound is.

Privacy? In a public forum, from You?

Bill, get a grip man.

[lawman]

Can I get a grip too?

[bird]

People do go missing "all the time", but when viewed in context (eg. relative to population figures), it still happens very rarely. And people staying missing are a really extremely rare exception. This is clearly shown by the cited figures, even though most of them are completely made up and exaggerated, as has already been mentioned.

Of course, knowing that doesn't help anyone caught in one of those rare events. And since those cases make spectacular news, they tend to get exploited by the media, leading to exaggerated fears.

Allowing other people to track you is a very two-edged sword, to say the least. Asking everybody to give up their privacy because of some rare special cases seems rather problematic. If someone really just "drops off the planet" during their daily routine, then what additional information would a tracking phone give you? Either the person themselves (as seems to be the case in the situation discussed here) or any third party could easily silence the phone if desired. And if you don't have a specialized app installed sending your GPS data to friends and family, it may take a few days to actually identify your last location though official channels (cell tower data). A standard mobile phone is therefore not something I would rely on for my safety in life-and-death situations.

For people with a perceived risk, carrying an extra device for such purposes would be much more effective without risking their privacy at the same time. Children (or Alzheimer's patients etc.) can carry some unconspicuous gadget around their neck, which sends an SMS with their position every hour or so. Someone travelling away from civilisation should carry a specialized wide area tracking device anyway.

I don't think this is a question of "privacy vs. safety". It's rather a question of using the right tools for the right purpose. And even if we take all the reasonable measures, we still need to accept that life is unpredictable, and death even more so. Do you really want to force a sane adult person to allow you tracking them against their will? I understand you're angry at the specific situation, but in the end you will have to accept each individuals own choice in such matters.

[Rob_Banks]

I go "off the beaten path" on a regular basis to places where there is no phone coverage. I always take an emergency kit with extra water and food and always make sure someone knows the general area where I'll be. One time I came across a person wearing a helmet, knee and elbow pads, which I thought was a bit extreme, but to each their own.

If a person has existing health issues or spends time alone I think it makes perfect sense to use tracking technology if they aren't currently letting anyone know their plans.