Mobe-slurping Wi-Fi SPY BINS banned from London's streets Electronic BINS in the heart of London must stop tracking hundreds of thousands of passing smartphones, officials have demanded. A dozen or so high-tech rubbish cans - which display adverts and information on built-in flat-screens and are dotted around the capital's financial district's pavements - were set up to collect data …
The best thing to do when this sort of thing happens in future (and in this situation) is for everyone concerned about this sort of thing to send Subject Access Requests to the allegedly infringing companies.
Not only is it your right to have the data but the margins that these companies will be running on per user mean that it'll only take a few requests to render the whole personal data-harvesting exercise unprofitable.
OK, a failure by the company to respond to such a request is enforced by the cuddly ICO, but it's a slam dunk violation. While they only got Capone for tax evasion, it finished him.
http://www.ico.org.uk/for_the_public/personal_information shows you how to do it.
AC, because, well....
WiFi off: check
GPS off: check
Snub location requests from websites: check
Password to unlock phone: check
Having those on is the same as leaving your house and car unlocked.
My phone will only show me via Maps as located at the nearest tower. Which is interesting when I am located near several towers as this also shows me the one the phone is actually using.
Now, as I was saying about not just the NSA spying on you...
Either you've got a really fancy damn phone or a really shitty house and car. Maybe your car is your house and it doesn't run?
I'm not sure what you're getting at, or who you're planning to assassinate, but the value you place on your phone seems exceptionally misguided and possibly indicative of a serious underlying condition.
I'm not sure what you are getting at, Don. I switch off everything (GPS, wifi, mobile data) on my phone unless I actually want any of those things - basically, most of the time it is just a mobile phone (or as close as I can make it). I also have a passably good lock on the home-screen. Does this make me someone with a "serious underlying condition" too? If so, which, and why is it a problem to you?
Previous stories (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/28/riotact_goes_berserk_over_bluetooth/) have made it clear that this kind of thing is already widespread. (See for example the map in http://www.atrf11.unisa.edu.au/Assets/Papers/ATRF11_0129_final.pdf). Presumabley widespread in London too, for the same reason, by the same kind of people.
Also, although the term "WiFi" is used everywhere, the only details I have seen use only the term "MAC", which suggests that, like the earlier stories, this is using standard bluetooth tracking equipment.
BTW, how irritating that el register no longer provides links to related stories? Irritated. Don't like you. Don't like your advertisers either. Irritated.
Can I just say how flattered I feel that these people are prepared to waste so much money, and so many resources, just to show me adverts that I'll ignore, or more usually, subconsciously filter out. I'm also rather flattered that they think I am so rich that just because I bought an expensive widget yesterday, I'll be buying another one tomorrow. I wonder what planet they come from ?
If your already spent your widget budget then those adverts aren't aimed at you. They're aimed at the next guy to come down the street with money to burn in his pocket. Advertising is a numbers game with a very, very small target for a given advert. If you get .5% increase with a campaign then it was worth the investment.
The downside of all that is that everybody is simultaneously trying to get the attention of that .5% so it seems overwhelming but the truth of the matter is you don't really filter it out. Your subconscious does remember it and it does affect you, and everyone else...
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