Posted on 12/03/2011 7:56:05 AM PST by Kaslin
If you are like us, every day you pick up a smartphone and you send email, visit with friends on Facebook, send a text message or even log into your bank's website and pay a bill. These modern day conveniences have become routine.
We all believe that our passwords are secure, our data is protected, and life is easier if we don't have to write a check to pay a bill or dig around and find a stamp to send a friend a quick note.
But this morning we are no longer sure. The tech world is in a fury, which we believe will soon break out into society at large, about a little-known software program call Carrier IQ. Over the Thanksgiving weekend a 25-year-old programmer by the name of Trevor Eckhart posted a video on YouTube which graphically displays how our naïve beliefs of privacy are just plain wrong.
The video, which lasts 17 minutes and starts slowly because he methodically goes through the privacy statements on his cell phone, is frightening. If you watch it, you will never look at your smartphone the same again. We have posted the video at Floydreports.com if you want to watch.
The program, Carrier IQ cannot be turned off. But it tracks your every move. Dial a friend's phone, it sends the number off to someone. Send or receive a text message and the message is recorded and sent off. Call up your bank or another website in the allegedly secure https: mode which we have been told is secure, and Carrier IQ is there recording your username, password and any other move you make on your phone.
Rather than calling them smartphones, we should be calling them people monitors. The only action you take which it cannot record is a thought in your head that you refuse to express. These phones are even capable of recording what you say. Scary is not the word for it.
Trevor Eckhart even takes pains to turn of the GPS function for use by Google maps and search and then he demonstrates how Carrier IQ still is logging your position.
Now what can you do about it? The program can only be removed if you hack or as they say "root" your phone. But beware – rooting your phone likely violates the contract you have signed with your carrier, and it clearly voids any manufacturers’ warranty you may have on the device.
Since the video was first posted, others have gone to work and exposed how in addition to Android phones, the Carrier IQ software is also present on I Phones with iOS3 operating system and above.
The privacy issues surrounding smartphones have been numerous, but the exposure of Carrier IQ brings the threat to an entirely new level. Chances are if you have a smartphone, you have no privacy around or while using the device. Be careful.
Makes you understand why criminals all use burner phones.
SCAREy scary! Ultimate creep-out for me; ultimate excellent tool for a psycho stalker/mentally ill stalkers, like the one I once obtained a R.O. against and pray that the thought of me never flickers though his sick synapses again... but if it did, wow, he gets my address, a map and a photo of my house. Brilliant.
Too scared to do that but what does it say about you? Most any free people search will give your name, age, address, phone number, map of your house, and a list of your relatives. Paying a fee would get all your legal documents. Doing a search on your name brings up more.
Went to Spokeo.com. Lotta of information on me - most of it WRONG!!!
I sneaked over there, too. Typed in a relative and, yeah, most of it was wrong. Most all these type searches have people we don’t know living with us.
>>>Every time you requet a URL and visit a website a record of your visit is kept by your ISP.
This is only as private as it takes someone who knows what they are doing to hack it or for the IPS to give it up.
Is anyone surprised at this? You shouldn’t be.<<<
I’m not. My assumption is that everything that I do on the Internet, including this post, is being done in public. This post, like everything else I do, is the ethically equivalent to standing in the street and talking to someone, and if another person is close by, they can overhear me... except this technology allows anyone to be close by me, and I don’t get to see them. On the other hand, there is a rough equivalence in that I can get to stand by anyone else I want, too, and remain unseen.
So I don’t expect privacy online. Nowhere. And I make sure that whatever I do online is something that I can defend in court, at work, or to my wife, since I understanding that it’s in public - like taking a pretty girl to a restaurant and having a neighbor see me, or being stinking drunk on Saturday and someone telling my boss on Monday.
However... there’s that little bit about “being secure in your person and papers,” if I recall my Fourth Amendment well. That’s the legal frontier we’re looking at here. What’s the limit of state intrusion? Sadly, since I agree with Mark Levin that we’re already in a post-Constitutional republic, my fear is that there is no limit. How that will wash out is anyone’s guess, but the guesses are often scary as hell. My personal guess is that at some point we’ll have virtual avatars guarding our cybernetic (cute old word) selves against intrusion and attack, the same way I have that old shotgun propped up behind the door. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.
I have never owned a cell phone & I won’t.
Only had a pager once & that was for only a year. One client drove me nuts calling me when he knew darn well I wasn’t available. He always thought he had an ‘emergency’. He wasn’t happy when I quit using the pager. But his bookkeeping still got done.
Don’t do ANY financial transactions on the internet—no banking or purchasing.
I sometimes CALL someone & get something shipped, but certainly no more than 6 times a year. W-2’s, particular ribbons for my 20 y/o tractor feed printer, etc.
I don’t TEXT—Don’t belong to Facebook or any other ‘social network’.
I have a nice circle of friends & I talk to them in person or on a land line. I don’t need to find ‘friends’ in Facebook.
I do have a fax, which uses a land line.
They aren’t going to know much about me.
Also:
Don’t have a built in phone in my 1976 Chevy truck & my 1979 Buick station wagon.
Don’t have “ON STAR” I like maps. I have some maps that are over 40 years old. They work just fine.
When a decent USA Atlas at Wal-Mart is less than $5, I don’t need ONSTAR.
I have tried to convince a friend that his Suburban with ONSTAR knows where he is at all times & he scoffs. I ask him: “When you have any kind of impact, how do they call you and tell you that you did so on Route XXX!?? He cannot answer me. I will be notifying him about this thread here on FR.
I'm happy to say that, although I found myself there, the data was inaccurate and out of date. Of course, I didn't pay the subscription fee to see all of the data.
>>>Want to really get creeped out/ go to Spokeo.com and type in your name....<<<
Which I did! And the information was fabulously wrong on so many levels that it was funny, starting with getting my birthday wrong and working up from there.
I have bad news for you. Everything on that website could have been obtained in the pre-Internet era with a good set of walking shoes and a legal pad. Back in the old day, pre-Internet, I was a reporter (I’m ashamed of it as well), and getting all of the info on Spokeo.com was already available for someone who knew how get it. And it’s just as accurate as the media usually is about these things! LOL
Seriously... everything I saw is public record, and someone has always had the ability to take a photo of your house from the street. What creeps me out is living in a post-Constitutional republic with that information available to the state.
I do all my banking and bill paying on line. I’ve never had a problem but then I do take precautions. I don’t trust the USPS.
I had never heard of that site until reading your post. It even has a picture of the house that we used to rent. And that’s just some of it. That freaked me out.
>>>Yep, many things are public record; marriages, divorces, buying a home, selling a home, bankruptcy. Back in pre-internet and smart phone days, it might have taken a bit more foot work but were still available to anyone who wanted to find out.<<<
Here’s an example from the time I was hired to work on a newspaper in Alaska. I drove up the Alaska Highway, got into town, and called my boss, who said I could stay at his home until I got a place for myself. All I had was his name and a phone number. When I arrived, I called. No one was home. Within 30 minutes of stopping at the right places, I had his address and I was waiting on his doorstep when he and his wife got back from the restaurant.
Since he had hired me as a reporter, he was glad I could comb public records and do that. He was later the best man at my wedding. Good guy - conservative, honest, God-fearing. Sadly, also fired when the new company took over the paper a while later.
My husband, son and daughter had their cell phones for over 5 years when I finally decided to get me one. I very seldom use it. For one thing I am not much of a talker and limit my calls to not more then 10 minutes on a land line and less then that on a cell phone. I take it with me whenever I go somewhere. Just in case I need to call my husband or my son. I’ve tried texting, but found out that is not for me
That’s why we have PROXPN on our pc and laptops...
IT’S FREE AND BLOCKS ALL THE ISP AND GOOGLE EYES.
spooky techno ping
I’m the same except for LinkedIn. I use Startpage for searches, and have a pretty old cell phone (refuse to let my husband upgrade mine) that I rarely have on, usually the battery is out. I still feel “their eyes” on me everywhere.
LOL, good idea about the pistol range.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.