Yes, telcos have an error of a few km. Google tells me, from another country, where exactly I came from, where exactly I went, and how (walking, driving, ...)
The accelerometer in most phones is accurate enough to detect individual footsteps. Phones also include a barometer that is sensitive enough to detect which floor of a building you are on. With dead reckoning based on accelerometers, calibrated by GPS, compass, WiFi, and barometric data, people can be located to within centimeters. Activity detection, mode of transport--ha, child's play!
If you run Android, turn off "high location accuracy". It uses all of these features.
:) I really don't care that Google knows what I'm doing. What I do find amazing is that people are usually afraid of telcos for tracking, when it's more like you have to be afraid of Google and apps like Candy Crush...
You realize that with a NSL the US government can compel Google to disclose information on anyone and that the contents of NSLs are completely secret, right? Oh yeah, and Google operates globally and no one really knows what arrangements they have with the various governments around the world.
Or even worse, arrangements with criminal and terrorist organizations, committing warcrimes all over. They now love to shoot you down with a drone based on Android High Accuracy Location Tracking, without any due process. They also love to block free travel without due process. It's called freedom (of civil rights, to block and terminate).
One of the hardest problems, a few years back, to solve was getting data to determine which traffic lane you were in. It was to provide targeted ads on billboards, that through reflection, could show different ads to people in different lanes based on "external" searches such as browsing patterns. To my knowledge the problem was not solvable using wireless telco data.
I've got a bunch of the privacy stuff on my Android phone, and even when I use Google Maps while driving I'll ask "where's the nearest grocery store" and it will regularly think I'm hundreds of miles from where I am. I can't even figure out why. It once thought I was in the ocean.
To be clear, when I am asking this, the phone has access to my location data and everything else it asks for.
Huh. I didn't know about that. Thanks for the info.
I don't know anything about the current maintainer or any of these disputes but I hope WOS keeps going; it's been going for over 20 years and amassed a lot of good stuff in that time.
Looks that the original maintainer get out, and the actual maintainer is in middle of the Vega plus torment.
At least archive.org would keep a copy of WoS
