jhelps
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Comment · 1 year ago
Comment · 3 years ago
The cellphone companies have been selling the realtime location of all subscribers since at least 2018. It doesn't depend on whether you have location enabled either, since it figures out your location from the towers! On top of that, one of them had an unauthenticated API, meaning anyone in the world could track the realtime location of any US phone #[0].
If all of this bothers you, contact your state legislators. Most state privacy laws don't protect against ISPs selling your location & browsing info, even though that would be the common expectation. Maine's law is simple and does a good job[1][2].
0: https://www.wired.com/story/locationsmart-securus-location-d...
1: https://www.natlawreview.com/article/maine-s-new-internet-pr...
2: Maine's law survived a federal challenge, and ISPs have dropped their appeals: https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/377285/broadb...
But now that CVEs form the basis of a very lucrative ~$16b/year industry[0], wouldn't it make sense to let those companies take over?
Privatizing the Internet enabled much more innovation than if it had stayed govt-funded.
0: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/security...