Sharing your location dot with spouse

Pseudonym said:

With regard to smart phones, regardless of whether or not you turn off GPS, your cell phone location can be tracked and triangulated very accurately based on the cell towers with which it interacts.

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Interesting. So, the only way to prevent all of this is to turn off the cell phone. I used to do that in my early cell phone days. I'd only turn it on when I needed to make a call when out of the house. I affirmatively didn't want to be bothered by receiving phone calls. After all, I had already lived 50 years without any ability to make or receive phone calls when away from a home or business land line, which seemed perfectly normal. And I still mostly feel that way 30 years of cell phones later, especially now that I no longer need one for business.

My wife turns off her cell phone when driving with me so that our nosy insurance tracking app doesn't think she is driving. Maybe that also shields us a bit from Big China, Big Tech and Big Government.

In regard of all this, note my new hat:

Glenn MacGrady said:

Interesting. So, the only way to prevent all of this is to turn off the cell phone. [Snip]

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That helps, but no, it doesn't eliminate ALL of it. Find My App and Find My Device still allow recovery (and discovery) of powered-down devices using the virtual network of nearby devices to "tattle" on your devices location.

You can do all kinds of stuff to an "off" device remotely. Change passcodes, display screen messages, wipe the internal storage, etc. Off is NOT off. RF-secure containers are the only real solution, and that doesn't really matter because as soon as you remove the device from the container outside of an RF-sterile environment, it's back to square one.

I limit the COMMERCIAL utilization of my location data as much as possible, which is generally done through app permissions. But to actually disable tracking? Chuck the phone and cards into an electronics shredder and plan to work odd jobs for cash. Without a vehicle. Wearing a mask.

My wife can track my iPhone. I don't bring it with me on the water, but she can at least tell where my car is.

The only true way to (maybe) turn off tracking on a cell phone is to turn it off and remove the SIM card. Even that might not be sufficient since even without a SIM card most phones can still be used for 911 calls (if available in your area).

My understanding is that smartphones ping the network about every 10 secs to check for new messages.

Caveat: I own a phone but it has no SIM card, I use it for wi-fi so I can check my email without getting up and going to my computer.

Bit off topic, but those worried about cell phones tracking you should not read up on what Flock cameras are and can do.

the volume of data available from cell phone is overwhelming, and I seriously doubt anyone at all is looking at it in detail. (source - used to work at Chief of Staff Intelligence, Electronic Warfare). The LLMs that are masquerading as AI and/or machine learning might change this, but again the expense of running those things is high..

most of my trips don't have cell phone coverage. My wife has made it clear I need to start carrying an inReach on long solo trips..
Last BWCA trip, a friend had an inReach for evening updates to his wife. It was also very helpful with weather, the forecasts were incredibly accurate down to the hour. That let us avoid the two major storms that came through, being battened down in camp by 2pm before they hit.. they moved through fast luckily.
The next day we cleared 3-4 blowdowns on each portage, it was impressive how much damage a good wind can do.
Post storm from camp..

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/b...rd-volkswagen-and-toyota-flunks-privacy-test/

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Good luck talking to my '94 Ranger.

Like others, I use Garmin's InReach to send breadcrumbs to a map so she can see where I was at last if something unexpected happens, such as being overdue, etc. On one occasion, we handled a vehicle situation with my daughter over the texting feature. She feels better if there is a way to locate me if needed. It's not a "checking in on me" type thing, and I'm happy to do it. The benefit of tracking my trips is there for me to look at afterward as well. I tell people I send the breadcrumbs up so she can tell my insurance agent where I am so that a body can be located and a death benefit paid out more quickly. No body, no check.

Tsuga8 said:

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-on-wheels-every-car-brand-reviewed-by-mozilla-including-ford-volkswagen-and-toyota-flunks-privacy-test/

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This is indeed Orwellian.

Gamma1214 said:

Good luck talking to my '94 Ranger.

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Yeah, I'm going to get my '97 Dodge van repaired.

Gamma1214 said:

Good luck talking to my '94 Ranger.

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Yes, hanging on to my 2012 is seeming more and more attractive the more I hear about new cars - I don't believe it has any capacity to connect to the internet, though I could be wrong.

All the intimate details of my life are still being usurped by my pocket computer ("smart phone"), but I keep the GPS off unless I need it (like during a canoe trip). One easy thing that folks can do to protect a modicum of privacy is turn off the setting that records GPS coordinates to every picture you take on your phone or many modern digital cameras, coordinates which can be viewed if you share any pics online.

And remember, everything on CT is public to non-members (ie to the whole internet, including the bots constantly scraping data like photo geotags). This is why I tend to be vague on public threads and only share personal details like my name in private messages on this site.

Here’s one of the many images I have of “sharing my location dot” (spot) with my spouse. This one waiting for our pickup on Lynx Lake in the Northwest Territories: our last wilderness canoe trip in 2023.

The older I get (60 last year), the more this conversation resonates... I remember a pretty heated discussion on the old SoloTripping forum, maybe 12 years or more ago, on the very same topic... iirc, the older you are, the more likely you are to approve of a tracking device, for the dual purpose of relieving a loved one's anxiety, and to guide the search team to your carcass. A lot of the older paddlers at the time seemed to understand that at some point, their desire for independence was trumped by common courtesy to a loved one. I didn't get it when I was 45 or 50... but I get it now (married 39 years this year).

I had a retinal detachment and several tears 2 years ago, which interferes with my depth perception, and makes me a bit unsteady while walking. I almost always have to use a staff now, in the woods. I fell a couple times, including a slide with pack and canoe down an 8' mossy rock, on my last traverse of the Turtle to Clamshell portage in the St Regis... my ability to safely walk in the woods with a pack and canoe is no longer something I can take for granted. On my last trip in the area, I decided to stay on the Hoel/Turtle/Slang/Long Pond route because I'd pulled a muscle down here in MD hiking South Mountain months earlier, it still hadn't healed entirely, and I didn't want to over-do it. This April, I plan to go back to Fish Pond; I left some stuff in the area, and it may be time to recover it... any trip could be my last one there. I'll just have to go slower.

My neighbor is 72, and still rides a motorcycle with his group every Saturday morning... wife worries. He says when he can't do it anymore, he'll trade in for a trike. He asked my wife if she worries about my solo canoeing... I wasn't there for the whole thing, but the gist of it was "I'm concerned, but I know he knows what he's doing because I've been out with him, and have seen that he can take care of himself." So I still have that; but with technology being what it is, I think I'll eventually get something that allows me to just send a daily msg that I'm ok and uninjured. The StarLink system will probably become a more affordable means of "satellite cell phone" comms in the very near future, just in time for that.

What I currently do is simply leave a detailed plan, expected time of return, and time at which my wife should be very concerned and call S&R. The plan is basically a map of the area, the route in/out, or loop, and planned/expected campsites. I have a few legal but not designated campsites (Adirondacks is lovely for this), and for those, I provide a 10-digit MGRS coordinate for her to pass on to the Rangers. I also religiously sign in/out of trail registers.