Technology

59963 readers

3495 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

944

Inside the U.S. Government-Bought Tool That Can Track Phones at Abortion Clinics (www.404media.co)

submitted 1 month ago by otter@lemmy.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world

246 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Privacy advocates got access to Locate X, a phone tracking tool which multiple U.S. agencies have bought access to, and showed me and other journalists exactly what it was capable of. Tracking a phone from one state to another to an abortion clinic. Multiple places of worship. A school. Following a likely juror to a residence. And all of this tracking is possible without a warrant, and instead just a few clicks of a mouse.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Odds are good it’s using facebook or some other cancer to perform this evil.

You really need to read the entire article. Turning off your WiFi and deleting Facebook isn't going to fix this.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It's a good start tho

This sort of surveillance is only possible because of the mobile advertising ecosystem. Location data is sometimes used to build profiles on device users and better target advertisements to them. Much of that advertising relies on a MAID, the unique advertising ID, on a phone. The MAID acts as the digital glue between a device and its associated data.

But that same underlying system, of Google and Apple linking a unique identifier on the phone to a user’s activity, allows Babel Street and others to build their mass monitoring products. In many cases, a device’s MAID is also displayed inside Babel Street.

So periodically refresh / replace your ad id as well.