> For the sum of 35,000 NOK (3,300 EUR / 4,000 USD), we got access to location data showing where tens of thousands of Norwegians had travelled in 2019.

> One of them was 31-year-old Karl Bjarne Bernhardsen from Stavanger. The information made it easy for us to identify him in the data that – according to the data provider – had been anonymised.

Here’s that article:

https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?tl=en&u=...

And the HN thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23136612

What causes me the most irritation (to put it mildly) is that I bought the Sygic navigator that seems to be the source of this data. And still they sell my data? Just last week they forced me to agree to some new rules to be able to use the app but I already bought it 7 years ago. I will be requesting my money back as stated by that agreement, and request a GDPR data dump for moving my data to another provider.

Link for anyone else wanting their money back:

https://www.sygic.com/company/eula-gps-navigation-google-pla...

Unsurprisingly, they're refusing my request.

So, essentially, I'm now locked into this agreement with Sygic for the duration of my "lifetime" license.

This is one of those situations where I'd wish I had some "fuck you" money to throw at an expensive law firm.

Sygic don't even have a Privacy Policy link on their homepage, you have to dig for it a buried legal documents page.

Your privacy is not something they care about except as something to sell to others.

Thanks, I don't like Twitter for long form content. It's not designed for this.

There's also nitter, it's slightly better than the twitter interface

https://nitter.net/martingund

Thanks.

I agree with you, but a hacky workaround is @mythreadreader

Yeah, hacky and annoying af when fifty people use it on the same thread, as is usually the case. Makes Twitter’s long-form readability and usability even worse.

Thanks.

That is a fantastic but very unsettling article. It's a somewhat dystopian present we live in

There are way to fight back. If you choose to. Convenience usually comes first it seems.

How? What are the best ways to fight back?

I don't have a smartphone. That alone will prevent browsing habits being picked up by parasitic apps etc on a phone. What I browse at home I have more control over with blocklists etc and disabling js.

I rarely carry my dumphone around, if someone needs me they can leave a message. That takes care of tracking by cell station.

There are times I'd like to have a dumphone on me, eg. when meeting people, so at some point I'll get dumphone #2 not linked to me.

If possible, pay cash rather than a credit card. I have done this before but in the uk this was getting more difficult and may not be possible, I don't know. There are always ways around that with grey areas.

At higher levels pressure your government or use the local regulations to push back when a company seems to be behaving unethically.

I'm sure there's more.

But convenience triumphs and all you can see is "I need smartphone". You won't do any of this. People who ask how will never do, or they wouldn't be asking the question to which the answer(s) are obvious.

GPS chip in the car? License plate readers all around you? Face recognition cameras? Chip in the credit card that you are not using? Friends with a iphone that have your number? ID cards that swipe you into places?

I'll try and answer your questions but please answer me this, what is the psychology of people like you who see failure not as an option but as a destination?

You seem absolutely determined to be both resentful of society and completely powerless against it, and not willing to actually do anything to change anything?

Well, I was talking about smartphones so you seem to have moved the goalposts with your questions so that my answers don't apply -- deliberately, to emphasise helplessness?

But okay, let's try

> GPS chip in car

I don't know anything about this so, don't buy such a car. If you do, is the chip enabled without drivers control? I'd be surprised at that.

> License plate readers?

To some extent I guess these are necessary, but they are a usable so you have to deal with this at the level of government rather than directly.

> Face recognition cameras

This has to be tackled at the legal level, and yes, it does concern me. Fortunately in a democracy you have some say. Unfortunately I don't think you will make the effort.

> Chip in the credit card...

Oh for heaven's sake, it's not broadcasting your location it's RFID, and if you want to disable it you can find instructions online. You basically make a small cut into the side of the card which breaks the antenna loop (or whatever it's called). I literally have done that and it took me a few minutes.

> Friends with my phone that have your number

Is this a serious objection? They can't track you via somebody else's phone -- did you even think about this before writing it?

> ID cards that swept into places

This really is scraping the bottom of the barrel. I've had worked cards like this, they simply let you in and out little more than an old-fashioned metal key, with a record being made. You can't be tracked by them other than when swiped.

You seem to have embraced failure while resenting it but it's clearly what you want.

I typically give the following link to such people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-in-depth and say that perfection is not achievable, but it does not mean you should give up absolutely everything.

Thanks for that.

The problem isn't DID or anything like that but a strange attitude that they want nice things but will put in zero effort to achieve that even if shown basic steps, and have a mindset that they're totally fucked, everything's against them, they can't win. It's a kind of learned helplessness.

This is a great illustration of why the GDPR - and enforcement of it - is so important. The average user has absolutely no chance of navigating the digital advertising sewer without all of their data eventually being sold to the US military.

Much more readable in Thread reader form:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1334465877153095680.html

So we have a very successful short messages app, that now resulted in another service to be successful, which combines the short messages into a long format. Innovation and evolution aren't always straightforward I guess!

Or you can just read the article on the website https://nrkbeta.no/2020/12/03/my-phone-was-spying-on-me-so-i...

I hacked the tweet thread together in 15 min so I think the article might be a better (although longer) read.