rumrunn6

yup & the bad guys know it

Maelochs

And every bit of that is illusory security. Sorry to tell you, but if people Really want your info ... they have it already.

sawyerge

I really don't mind as long as myself is safe.

Maelochs

Also .... my ideal ride involves a lot fo thoughtless, pure-experience, "Zen"-like time ... and I have RideWithGPS running on my phone.

Confusing what I think with what others think, want me to think, want to think others think ... and confusing the ability for high-tech surveillance with personal freedom ..... Well, apparently, according to this thread, a lot of people do confuse those things.

Simple fact---no matter which browser you use, no matter if you buy fake ID, wear six layers of tinfoil .... you can be tracked. You almost certainly won't be, but you can be.

Simple fact---we always and have always lived in a huge and uncontrollable environment. Survivors deal with it and thrive. Others live in fear and fake feelings of resistance .... some folks think they can control the entire cosmos if they don't use credit cards. Not my problem.

Freedom is a state of mind. Peace of mind also, though I shouldn't have to say it. Those are things you have if you can ... if you can manage your own mind. And in this day and age, more people have more opportunities for freedom----the ability to do what one wants when and how one wants---than probably at any time prior.

Those guys who go live in Alaska or become "off-the-grid" (I guess they don't understand satellites) subsistence farmers/scavengers are imprisoned in a desperate struggle for survival. The survivalistsubsitence farmer isn't going for a bike ride whenever he wants ... in fact, he probably can't have a bike because he cannot build it himself. The survivalist in Alaska needs to spend all day and night struggling against enormous elemental threats to survival, from starvation to frostbite to the predation of animals. A minor injury (for which I could simply go to a hospital or first-aid center for immediate treatment) could be fatal. Is that "freedom"?

And even if it is, people can find them and track them.

Me, i can go for a ride, or take a nap, or eat (a huge variety of foods) or call a friend anywhere around the world ....anytime I want. I can access the knowledge and wisdom of the smartest people throughout history and those alive today ... any time I want. If I want to know how to build a bike wheel or a whole bike, or a computer, or a compost toilet, I can get that information almost instantly ... any time I want.

But you guys can believe that which internet browser you use makes you safer. I need a good chuckle now and then.

If I have a major medical emergency I can probably get rapid-response medical personnel on scene in enough time to save my life. For lesser emergencies, I can drive myself, call a friend, or even calla cab or an Uber ....

And also, beyond food, anything else I think will improve my quality of life, I can pretty much order and have delivered to my door in at most a month ....

Anyone who thinks these things make me Less free .... well, you go on thinking, pal.

If "Freedom" is freedom to determine one's own course, the more options one has, the greater the freedom. If "Freedom" is needing to get up at dawn every day to tend the crops and livestock, knowing that any accident, and untoward weather, and animal disease, rabbits, deer, and insects, can end your life easily ... well, good for you.

Funniest thing is ... all those "freedom" advocates are posting on the internet. It's like the guy who thinks turning off his cell phone makes him invisible. Or the guy who thinks not wearing lycra shorts makes him invisible. or any of the countless other ridiculous ideas all these supposedly modern, critical-thinking, well-informed people have.

As I said in one of my early posts here ... you are in prison in your mind. Freeing one's mind is the only ture freedom, and it is Much harder than simply using a browser promoted by people getting rich from people thinking that browser is s somehow not owned by "Them," They," or "The Man," or the Deep State, or the Illuminati, or the Bilderbergers, or the Grays, or whatever fantasy one chooses.

Hey, you are free to choose to live in a prison of your own making. In some sense, we all do (as a long-time student of Buddha School philosophy, I can attest that I certainly have tremendously strong walls constraining my thought---only difference is I know they are of my own construction and that I can deconstruct them with effort.) But we are all free to invent an understanding of the world around us and then think that invention is a real, external world, and not just our own interpretation. We are free to live in our own fantasies, either to be imprisoned there or to be entertained there.

The real issue of "Freedom" is "Who controls my mind"? And if you think all those people are tracking you with the most intricate, technologically advanced, alien-inspired methods ever devised---and that even so you can fool them by using a foil-lined credit car sleeve---well .... alrighty then ......

Clyde1820

The point is, quite simply, that such digital devices capture the triangulation/connectivity over time. Such "traffic" data has been used since telephony began. A phone, for example, merely in one's pocket that's constantly "pinging" nearby cell towers creates a digital log on those towers ... which is captured by those companies' systems ... which (as everyone must realize by this point) the NSA/GCHQ equipment grabs. If the data and analysis out there is any guide, it's authorized to do it, since it's ostensibly not personally identifiable. (But tell that to anybody who gets accused of something where a raft of such detail gets presented in court showing the location of that person's vehicle at X and Y times, and so forth.)

GPS isn't all that different. Those devices that triangulate satellite signals almost certainly create a "ping" record of that triangulation, much like a cell phone does with passing towers. It's not hard to surmise that a similar digital trail is captured and logged in systems. For further future analysis, if desired.


Not that "they" are always tracing a specific device or person, of course. But that's not the point. The systems, themselves, enable such. And neither you nor I crafted those systems, those analytical tools scrubbing such data. Far craftier people than most have developed such things. And, at least for now, it's all "above" (beyond) the law and thus dutifully captured for potential analysis.

I'm not disregarding that some devices have some utility. I'm merely pointing out that these digital systems DO IN FACT leave digital trails, and that tracking/tracking systems out there DO IN FACT have the ability to eval the various records. Given that it's been at least 20yrs since the NSA began tapping AT&T (and others'?) network data facilities, and at least another ~5yrs before then that scrubbing of internet data packets (at the "traffic" analysis level) was being used to zero-in on specific targets, it's not a stretch to say that today's methods and mechanisms have to be more-robust and -capable.

It is what it is, such digital trails. And no amount of usefulness changes that aspect of such. Though, clearly it does lull many into imagining it's nothing to worry about. (I suspect many people in urban China would have much to say about that concept, in today's tracking&tracing world.)

PeteHski

Tell me that you are paranoid without telling me you are paranoid!

Smaug1

Does anyone care? Probably. Criminals, for example.

Me? No. As someone else said, I carry my cell phone and keep it on the air, so I'm trackable anyway. I'd rather not leave my cell phone behind; much better chance I'd need it and not have it than I'd be tracked without my wanting to be.

tomato coupe

Incorrect.

PeteHski

I literally post all my rides on Strava with a public profile, so I am aware of the tracking. But the thing is I just don't care. If the government or anyone else wants to know my riding habits they are most welcome. I also carry a cellphone, which can obviously be tracked. Again I don't care as it has no adverse effect on my life. It might even save my life one day.

The question is what are you doing that makes you so concerned about being tracked? Or is it just the principle of it?

Clyde1820

All a matter of perspective.

My own problem with it? That it's allowable and done with the degree of disregard and pervasiveness that exists. I suppose, the principle of that defilement.

Again, I appreciate the utility aspects. But I also appreciate the risks.

phughes

wheelreason

Because there is no such thing as a closed system?...

tomato coupe

What’s wrong with heat transfer?

seypat

Secrecy on a bike could be important if you cycle to fight club.

Chuck M 

As far as whoever mentioned that they keep location services turned off on their cell phone. That should work to prevent apps on the phone from knowing the phone's location, but not the cellular service carrier. The cellular company can track you from tower to tower. And these companies share these towers.

Best just keep your phone off if you are so paranoid to think "they" want to know where you are.

PeteHski

So like I said, it’s only an issue if it bothers you. That is entirely your own choice.

indyfabz

I’m on my deck hanging with my cat right now, and I don’t care who knows it because I don’t have an overinflated sense of significance. Only my cat cares.

Some of y’all need to recognize.

veganbikes

Captured a photo of the evening from our secret drones above Indy's house:

downtube42

Are all you bike secrecy naysayers claiming you don't have a secret plan to stash your phone in a bud's pack to establish an alibi, bike across the country riding nights and wild-camping days, eating found fruit and fresh road kill, to murder an old nemesis? Yeah, right.

downtube42

But seriously. The risk isn't so much about the government having details about your daily life, but that that information will eventually, through one data breach or another, become essentially public. All of it. Everything out there. Accounts, posts, location, purchases. Everything. It's not about if you're doing anything bad, or anything special. It's whether there's any value that can be extracted from the minutiae of the day to day lives of a population of relatively wealthy people. Pretty clearly, based on the number of companies willing to give you services for free, there is value. People with more nefarious intentions than Strava will also try to find some value in that data.

If you have assets, it's worth realizing there are many clever people with time on their hands and the word's computing power at their disposal, who want to separate you from your assets. Will all that data help them get it done? :shrug:


"The thing I've noticed about people is, the more money they have, the more they care about money and the less they care about people" - 20 y/o Zulu bike tour guide, Johannesburg, ~2010.

Maelochs

Dude .... ALL your data is at risk, and anyone who wants it can get it. if major banks--if the freaking Defense Department---can be hacked, so can everyone else. Your purchasing habits, your travel habits, your personal hobbies if they involve anything you have to buy ... anything ... can be had. Right Now, not in some future scary dystopia.

Some people try to cause harm, and more try to run scams on the gullible ... but only the gullible think Anything is safe.

And you know what ... you are probably at greater risk of a low-tech, old-school burglars cleaning out your home, than of any high-tech crime. Further fact, most people never really encounter Crime ... besides their own traffic infractions.

So man y people are giving away free paranoia and so many people seem glad to accept it, while at the same time warning everyone not to take bad things from bad people. I'd laugh if it weren't so pitiful.

And you know who are the biggest scammers? The folks who encourage paranoia and sell you their own personal style of tin-foil ... emergency rations, survivalist gear, non-functional data protection, whatever .... the people to be scared of are the ones telling you to be scared of others.

People would be comical if I didn't have to live among them.

Duragrouch

On the first day of class in Fluid Dynamics and Heat Transfer, the prof will tell you that "heat" means by definition the transfer of thermal energy. So heat transfer is redundant. So is means by definition.

tomato coupe

That's probably the most obscure, nerdiest pet peeve I've ever heard.

With my apologies to non-nerds ... That's not a universally accepted definition of heat. Heat is also commonly defined as a form of energy that is transferred between bodies at different temperatures, i.e heat is a thing that is transferred, not the transfer itself. With this definition, it's reasonable to use the term heat transfer. (I've never met a physicist that had a problem with the term and, given the title of the class, the Physics/Engineering Department that offered the class didn't seem to either.)

Clyde1820

Yup.

And it's not problematic merely because someone's bothered by the situation. It's because there are indeed those out there who gather such data, analyze it, track and trace the goings-on of people, capitalize on leaks and breaches, etc. The NSA's not whistlin' Dixie and twiddlin' thumbs, out there. Nor are the bad actors who break into such info as entities have gathered. It's all occurring despite our regard for that fact, irrespective of what we say about it. And so long as we keep creating a digital trail, the more questionable the survivability of such data (and what remains of privacy) becomes.

seypat

Yet here we are, typing away on a voluntary forum. Uploading our info to places such a Strava. Why do we do that exactly?