Skyhook Wireless, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Big Brother

Posted by on Jan 16, 2008 in Privacy | 5 comments

Interesting takeaway from Macworld today:

Skyhook Wireless has driven around the US and Canada, mapping 23 million Wi-Fi hot spots to a GPS. Even if you’re not connected to the hot spot, the beacon service knows which hot spots you’re near, so when you use the Maps application on the iPod Touch or iPhone, you still get location data.

Neat, huh? Cool, huh? as Steve Jobs said.

Wireless is bidirectional.

You know what hot spots are near, and Skyhook’s service can triangulate on that.

The hot spots know you’re near. When you turn on your Wi-Fi enabled device, the grid knows where YOU are. All the time. As soon as that Wi-Fi laptop, iPod, iPhone, or other device powers on and starts looking for access points.

Food for thought.

Why it’s not really my birthday

Posted by on Oct 1, 2007 in Privacy | 26 comments

More than a few people were posting birthday wishes this morning as soon as I logged on. That’s very kind of everyone, and I appreciate it… but it’s not my birthday.

October 4, 1975 (for MySpacers) and October 23, 1975 (Facebookers) are relatively close to my birthday, but not in fact my birthdays. I use these online in lots of places because it’s convenient, easy to remember, and most importantly, it allows me to know which companies online have compromised my privacy.

Date of birth is one of the holy trinity of identity fraud. Name, date of birth, and social security number will get you VERY far as an identity thief. Combine it with an address, and you’ve got just about everything you need. It’s also a highly-prized piece of marketing data.

Do you trust social networking companies like MySpace and Facebook to not resell your information? I certainly don’t, especially given recent privacy breaches. I wholly expect them to compromise my privacy and then cite some obscure clause buried deep in the terms of service that allows them to do so. I trade with them. You can compromise my online privacy and resell my data, and in return, I’ll give you bad data. We’re both happy that way, and chances are your marketing partners won’t know the difference anyway.

Is it my intent to deceive my online friends? Not at all. It’s to deceive the companies that aggregate personal data online – including the major social networking services. Hence, thanks to everyone for the UnBirthday wishes.

What are YOU telling data aggregators?

What is Podshow doing with your kids?

Posted by on May 29, 2007 in Privacy, Rant | 8 comments

This is a serious question. After hearing their promos for the Suck Less program, which appears to be listener demographics, I decided, what the heck, I’ll fill out the survey just for fun. So far, standard stuff – where do you live, what do you do for work, how much money do you make, all things you’d want to do to target marketing to someone. Then we get to the odd questions:

  • Are you of Spanish/Hispanic/Latino origin?
  • Please indicate your racial/ethnic background (select one or more)
  • How many children do you have: [insert number]
  • Please enter the following information for each of your children:
  • Child #1 Year of birth: [input] This child lives with me [ ]
  • How many children live with you other than the above:
  • Child #1 Year of birth: [input]

A couple of things. Why not put Hispanic/Latino in the racial background instead of splitting it out? Probably just survey design.

But this is the big one: Why do you need to know the date of a survey respondents’ childrens birth, and why do you need to know whether they live with you or not?

If I were a parent, that’s not information I’d willingly divulge to even casual acquaintances, mainly for security reasons. God knows the headlines are full of stories about kids being abducted. Certainly, it’s not information that a security-minded parent would want to divulge on a faceless survey (privacy policy be damned), especially after being asked where you live.

Even stranger, if I had kids living with me who were not mine, as a responsible custodian, why would I reveal both their presence AND their age?

What -is- Podshow doing with this information, and who gets access to it?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Updated: Download a printout of the survey here.