In a redacted acquisition document obtained by the tech news site 404 Media, the immigration agency proposes entering into a contract to buy “all-in-one” tools from a company called PenLink that will allow agents to “compile, process, and validate billions of daily location signals from hundreds of millions of mobile devices.” The document also mentions payments for services involving “face detection,” “advanced face search,” and a “dark web data feed.”
I’m a bit confused by your question…
GPS definitely requires communication between your phone and a satellite (i.e. can’t track you if your GPS unit is off - maybe you’re thinking of satellite imaging?).EDIT: This is actually incorrect, see comments belowWith wifi calling, yes, data is being sent to the carrier, but not via a signal that can be triangulated, so the most accurate location data they can gather is your IP address, which a VPN can easily hide.
Or do you mean in terms of generalized location tracking? In which case yes, highly accurate location data is shared by your phone with your carrier by default, just by way of how cellular networks function; no GPS required.
My understanding of GPS is your phone uses satellite positions to figure out it’s location. The satellites are not receiving info from your phone/Garmin.
iirc phones supplement satellite GPS with other indicators to be more accurate and reliable, maybe distance from cell towers is one of those
I think the problem is that once your phone knows its location from GPS, google and apps can access this data. The data is then shared with advertisers and also, you know, government agencies.
Unfortunately, even just the names of nearby WiFi networks and Bluetooth connections can be used to determine location. If apps and google services have access to this info, they still have location data on you, even with your cell and GPS radios disabled.
Supposedly GOS doesn’t allow google or apps to access the location data unless you allow it, which is nice.
This isn’t an issue if you don’t install gapps and if you deny apps location data
I think the point was that its an issue on phones with a standard android setup.
Gapps isn’t installed by default when you install Android.
I’m definitely not an expert here and it sounds like you probably know more about this than I do. In my experience, android phones I’ve bought come with google play already installed and cell carrier bloatware. When you turn on the phone for the first time, one of the first steps is setting up your Google account.
If your point is that you can get around all this with stock android and you don’t specifically need grapheneOS, you’re probably right.
Not just Graphene. Install any Android OS on your phone, and it won’t have gapps.
It requires a manual step to install the google proprietary spyware crap. By default it’s excluded.
I think most IT departments strip off the OS that comes with laptops, due to spyware and bloatware that comes stock from the OEM install. I’ll never understand why its normalized to reinstall the OS on laptops but not for mobile. I always wipe and reinstall as soon as I open the box. It’s best practice.
Pretty sure that is accurate
No. GPS is you listening to signals. Your phone can’t communicate with sattelites unless you have a satellite phone lol
Well I learned something new today - thanks for pointing that out, honestly it makes a lot of sense. Sorry for the misinformation