Why Are Some of Us Not Threated by the Web's Location Feature?

I suppose if you were being stalked or threatened by someone with access to this information you might feel uncomfortable with it.

Who is it that you believe actually has access to this information, that would know you personally out of the ten's of millions of users, and who has criminal intentions?

Having anyone but the parent know where their children are might be an issue for some.

Where I am is a little bit of who I am. Therefore I feel very uncomfortable that someone might track on where I am going and possibly what I am doing.

I switch location on when I need it, but switch it off right after the need arises.

My movement map has just spots and short lines.

If authorities really need to know where I am, they can still triangulate my signal.

In reality I also think that this feature takes way too much battery life and is simply unwanted for it!

Over on this side of the pond, we have far more CCTV cameras than almost anywhere else. I think that's great: the more I feel that at any time someone can track back and find out where someone was at any time prior to an incident the better. But other people hate it: I can only assume that it's because they can never predict when they might do something that they don't want other people to know about, but it's impossible to make that point to one of them, they start going on about civil liberties and things which I can't quite seem to grasp. Perhaps we've lived in true freedom for too long to appreciate what others see as a threat.

I have mixed feelings. As a mountain biker with a fat bike that allows me to go where no road has gone before, or hasn't for 40 years or more, it is good to be able to use map functions and see where I really am, not where I think I am. While I'm not out in the true "wilds" and can always find my way back, it can save a lot of pedaling in the wrong direction at times when I'm tired and I really need to get to that gravel road over there somewhere, that I can't see. I've tested it, and it is usually within 5' of my correct location. I know I could buy a GPS only device, but if I already have that function with internet on my phone, why carry 2 devices? However it also uses up battery life, and I really don't need some company creating a log of my traveling pattern. They already know enough about me from storing my search habits. I usually only use it when necessary.

I, on the other hand, totally 100% don't care if "someone" (not sure exactly who that might be, other than some ubiquitous generic "they") has a log of my traveling pattern. I can not imagine how that would negatively affect my life in any way. In a practical sense, it just doesn't matter; any more than my license plate number can be seen by anyone who cares to look at it.

And my search habits... again, it makes no practical difference to me. And I don't think "they" care about me, except in maybe some algorithm choosing to send me one ad instead of another ad. I just don't believe there is a human being connecting my life to my search habits. And if they are... big deal.

No, I'm just not concerned at all about it. What if one of those tiller ads they sent me turned out to be the tiller I needed? I was after all searching for them. They are just commercials, like we see on TV. I delete them among the thousands of other things I delete.

It just doesn't have any negative effect on my life. Certainly nothing worth getting stressed over. The "enemy" who is watching, always seems so ambiguous whenever anyone talks about them. And I just can't connect google info with government info. Google is pretty stingy with what they collect. They aren't giving terabytes of consumer info to the government. It's valuable to them.

Not trying to convince you... just saying why none of this bothers me. Any threat is perceived and ambiguous. Never actual and specific. I prefer actual and specific before I put any weight to it.

You're skipping the J.Edgar connection - history will repeat itself. Maybe not identically, but basically the same. Too much knowledge in a few hands creates an ominous power. Remember, Hoover owned many politicians with his little files on them. Do you want some corporation holding the same power?

You're trying to apply your logic of why you fear this, to me.

I still don't buy it. Still don't fear it. Still don't care. My life is not being negatively affected in any way because of any of these perceived dangers. It's a non-issue to me.

Some paranoids really do have enemies.

Give me a name and I can tell you where they live and work and show you a picture of them and their house and tell you who their children are and where they go to school.

So can almost anybody with a computer.

Leo Spurling...

If you have a benevolent view of government and big business, I suppose you might not care.

Some people don't see the 'powers that be' as so benevolent: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/irs-admits-targeting-conservatives-for-tax-scrutiny-in-2012-election/2013/05/10/3b6a0ada-b987-11e2-92f3-f291801936b8_story.html

This time ^ it was conservative groups who were threatened. Was the IRS threat enough to affect the 2012 election? I don't know. Probably not. But the next time, it might be your group targeted for mistreatment.

I'm not paranoid, nor am I naive. I know I leave a internet trail that can be followed. But I prefer not to leave an obvious trail of cookies for them to follow, if I can avoid it.

The location feature is useful for finding out where you really went after leaving the pub.

As long as you don't fall into the canal, does it matter.

You're making the a priori assumption that only authorized (you define authorized) personnel have access to the data, or that you alone are the POI (Person of Interest) in the data mining. You might feel differently if it's a business or family member that's the real target and you are the pathway to it/them.

We are already accept that we live in a transparent society, but that transparency is really a one way mirror; i.e., we know we can be watched but we don't know who is doing the watching. It's not a problem until it becomes one, like having your identity stolen. I'll bet that you lock your doors at night, deleting tracking cookies and opting out are the internet's equivalent.

So what I think you're saying is that you acknowledge that it's not the people collecting this information that you necessarily fear, but rather those who may steal it from them? Okay, I see there may be something to that. But I still don't see what big danger there is from even those thieves knowing my location, particularly my previous locations, since we are not talking real time here, just a compilation of where I have been.

No, it still doesn't bother me. But I'm understanding some of your logic, I suppose.

As someone who went through college and the military during a time when both institutions were using one's SSN as their ID#, I have come to accept that I am in a generation that is walking around this planet with our identities completely exposed to the world⁽¹⁾. Their reasoning at the time was sound "There's TONS of databases, they're not connected to each other, and even if they were, it would take an inhuman level of speed and patience to piece all the tidbits together on anyone." Now the computers ARE connected, and there ARE 'creatures' with 'inhuman speed and patience' to 'data-mine' all the servers, but nobody expected such progress to be possible.

[insert 'Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition' still from Monty Python here]

I do encourage my younger relatives to keep their personal data safe, pointing out (for those old enough to understand) that the only people who nee to know their Social Security Number are themselves, their parents, The IRS, and their employer. And all of them are supposed to keep that information confidential.

Notes:

1. Sometimes it makes putting on pants seem like a futile gesture, there's probably already complete information on my butt pimples in some database somewhere, keyed to my SSN.

That's valid. I was in the military back in the day as well, and yelled out my last 4 thousands of times. There is a lot of data on us out there now.

But my original post is specifically about the location feature on your phone or PC, which I don't bother to worry about at all, but many do. There seems to be a "the sky is falling" panic about PCs and phones asking if it's okay to note your location... normally for some task you asked your PC or phone to do. It seems to me that the location aspect is just being lumped in generally with all the other info that is being gathered electronically by one company or other, in their reasoning. But on its own... I truly don't see what the big deal is. I often find that those who worry about such things in general have selective hearing, and when asked something like "why is location noting by your PC bad?", they don't seem to answer the question, but merely reply that all information gathering is bad, and go on about all the databases that some secret agency has about every living person and how it's a danger to us all... so this must be bad too. But I don't see the valid logic and facts behind being scared of locations, specifically.

I've read the entire thread so far, so let me add my two cents worth, hopefully specific enough you'll understand ME (Note, if it doesn't apply to you, or you still don't find reason personally to care, mo'par to ya!)

My 9 years in the military, and the next 20, were in US Government and military intelligence and secure communications. As such, we were always targets of hostile intelligence efforts. I KNOW of three times I was targeted personally (because they were so clumsy, that though I'm not "tradecraft slick" I caught on quickly, and when I reported the contact, as required, I was given very specific information who they worked for, and for whom I should be on the lookout) by agents of three different government entities. I would not be at all surprised to learn there were others. At least two were as a direct result of my being shadowed until contact could be made. GPS (or "location") makes this much easier now, as two of these were before GPS was available to businesses, or the common man. The third was after that period, but may not have involved use of GPS.

During a portion of the same period, my parents were working in Nigeria when they were attacked by a crew of hired assassins and left for dead. Both thankfully survived. But the immediate question, because of my employment at the time, revolved around the cause. It turned out to be unrelated to my work, and directly because of theirs, but be that as it may, if someone wanted to track them to "bend them" to get information from me, then or now, LOCATION would indeed be a danger. And not just to me, as I have 5 grown children, 4 with families of their own, and 15 grandchildren.

And I don't want any ears of fingers delivered to me with a demand for information. Perhaps, for you, it would be money, or some service which someone has determined you are uniquely qualified, but would be disinclined, to perform?

Perhaps it will someday be your government, or some rogue entity within it which will desire such service?

Well, you must admit, yours is a rather extreme example, working in the intelligence services. The normal American who is a zucchini farmer, or owns a gelato shop, or works as a receptionist at a Quicky Print... they won't have similar issues. But as you said... your story applies to you. Fair enough. But it seems if someone wanted to follow you or know where you are... they would just follow you and they'd know where you are.

Anyway, I'm beginning to see a common thread run through all those who fear the location aspect of PCs and phones. So, I guess my original question is getting partially answered. Thanks for your input.

"It use to be "Mind Your Own Business" was an acceptable end to any inquiry. Now you come here asking why people want to hide their location..... MYOB"

Unfortunately, there are too many ways for unscrupulous people to Mind Other Peoples Business to for people to take a 'blah' attitude to their own personal data. As I said earlier, I was born in the 'bad era' of personal identity protection, everything was being computerized, but back then it took humans to do the searching through the data, and the computers weren't networked together to the scale they are now, so 'needle in a haystack' security was 'good enough.' Now not only are all the needles in all the haystacks cross-referenced against each other, there's tracking information on every piece of straw in the haystacks as well, so much of my 'personal date' is as well protected as if it were on a scrolling marque in Times Square. Nothing I can do to change the past, but I encourage my younger relatives to protect their personal information whenever they can.

Although what we REALLY need are GPS tracking collars on all politicians, so the public can see where they actually are when they're supposed to be 'in chambers' or in their office doing their job. It'd probably come as a big shock to most Americans that their Congressmen spend more time in a 'call center,' ringing up Deep-Pocket campaign donors to fund the war chest for their respective Party, than they do working on what we sent them to do.

"The normal American who is a zucchini farmer, or owns a gelato shop, or works as a receptionist at a Quicky Print..."

I have basically fit that picture throughout my working life. but 20+ years ago during the Cold War, I had a relative in the service with access to confidential information.

Do you shred or otherwise render illegible documents or portions thereof that contain specific information?

Why?

Well, some people might be concerned because the location tracking can be used to map out their 'daily habits,' such as their route to and from work, their 'agregated average speed' on the highway (over a month, to they tend to drive over or under the speed limit?), and their favorite hangouts ("you said you gave up drinking, why are you still hanging out at that bar for two hours every Thursday?"). Or it can be used to detect 'breaks' in the normal routine ("Tracking data shows both adults from 123 main st are together in Florida, this matches last year, so it must be a family vacation, time to go burgling the place.")

Or they may be concerned that some federal agency might be spying on them through their phones and computers, and considering the revealed actions of some agencies, they're probably not wrong⁽¹⁾. In the old days, pre-'massive, deep-search' search engines, the joke about Chineese surveilence of their citezens was "The bad news: The Chineese government reads all of everyone's emails. the good news: they read all of EVERYONE'S emails." Meaning that yes, they were looking, but the data was just so big and deep that they'd never find anything useful. Nowadays, the search engines can spot and flag key words or phrases, separating the wheat from the chaff.

Notes:

1. By the way, Agent NSA and Agent FBI, F--k you both! I'd link a goatse pic here, but that would be offensive to the people using this forum legitimately.
   

"you said you gave up drinking, why are you still hanging out at that bar for two hours every Thursday"
Hell, two hours at a bar, once a week? That's not drinking.

No, that's not "not drinking" that's "drinking less."

I'm reminded of an old joke:

A cop pulls a man over for blowing through a stop sign on a country road. The man says, "What's the problem, Officer?" and the cop responds, "You failed to stop at that stop sign back there."

The man protests, "I could see down the crossroad for a half mile in each direction and the road was clear. And besides, I did slow down at the sign."

"Let me demonstrate something," the cop says. He then pulls the man out of the car and begins beating on him with his nightstick, "Now, sir, so you want me to STOP, or to SLOW DOWN?"

'Cos we :-

a) Don't have a fancy modern phone.
b) We don't do anything naughty enough to incur the wrath of intelligence/crime agencies.
c) We Simple don't give a rat's arse care... or we have real problems to worry about
Del

Author of "Catch 22"

Hear Hear.

If your suspicion of everyone is hurting the people close to you, then you're probably too paranoid.

If you trust of others is getting YOU hurt, you're not paranoid enough.

-(Probably said by a wiser man than me, I can't be the first one to come up with that pearl.)

Because there is a HUGE difference between people:

There are LAMBS who cower and blindly FOLLOW...and...there are LIONS who venture and boldly LEAD (...the lambs to slaughter)...metaphorically speaking, of course.

And which are which?

Is it the lions who don't care who knows where they are, or, the lambs who who like the idea of being guided.

Is it the lions or the lambs who feel threatened by web location.

Yes.

"...the lions who don't care who knows where they are, or, the lambs who who like the idea of being guided."

Given the breadth and depth of this forum, at times I find myself in either position - either sharing what I do know (or think I know), or learning about something beyond my experience (or learning that I was wrong about something).

Since everything today resides in a computer file somewhere, available to someone to use in the wrong perspective, I believe the lack of specific location allows one to express his/her responses with the minimum fear of retribution by "powers that be".

Since this seems to me to have biblical undertones, why don't we just let God sort them all out?

Logical observation.

Do you think God (or whatever deity, or lack thereof) have to give a physical location?

God does. He is Omnipresent, which means "EVERYWHERE". So I guess He doesn't NEED to give a location, He just does.

THIS thread brings up a good question in reply.

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/107174

Why is it necessary to feel "Threat(en)ed" by the location feature. Why cannot I just want to keep what little privacy, however transient it may be, I am able to have?

I don't WANT people constantly looking at me, even if they are only looking at the MetaData surrounding me (such as where I am, where I was, which direction I'm traveling, etc.)

Not necessarily threatened. Just irritated.