Human Rights Concerns About Tracking Technology

Tracking technology is an increasingly common tool for tracing contacts, enforcing quarantine rules, and allocating medical resources. However, it often contains sensitive and revealing information about individuals, raising human rights concerns.

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Find out as much as you can about the person before starting a search. Write down their full name and any nicknames they may use. Note their employer and other professional associations.

Location 광주흥신소

Whether you are tracking your kids, spouse or a cheating partner, the location of their cell phone is an important piece of information. The ability to track a person’s location is one of the primary reasons that people use apps such as Life360, which is marketed as a tool for parents to keep an eye on their children. However, privacy experts say such apps can be easily abused by stalkers.

Location data can also be tracked through other means, such as IP (Internet Protocol) addresses, nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers. Moreover, the data collected by these companies is often sold to third parties, such as advertisers.

Governments and businesses have been experimenting with location tracking technologies to contain the outbreak of COVID-19, including contact tracing, quarantine enforcement and allocating medical resources. While these innovations are helping save lives, they also raise significant privacy concerns.

For example, a recent study found that it is possible to track a mobile phone’s location even when th 광주흥신소 e app’s GPS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are turned off. The researchers, from Princeton University, combined information from non-phone sources, such as time zones and air pressure, with publicly available maps to determine a device’s approximate location. They then used this data to create a virtual footprint of the user’s movements. They concluded that this method could identify a person “with high accuracy.” Furthermore, disparities in mobile phone use and digital literacy can exclude certain groups from government-led efforts to trace contacts or conduct broader big data analysis of the public’s movements.

Contacts

During the coronavirus pandemic, governments have been using mobile location data and tracking technology to identify contacts with potential exposure. The goal of these tracking tools is to encourage affected people to isolate themselves and to get tested and treated promptly.

For example, in Israel, an emergency regulation authorized Shin Bet, the country’s internal security agency, to access and collect “technological data,” including location information, from Telcos without users’ consent, to predict which citizens have been exposed to COVID-19 and to prompt them to self-quarantine. This program has been criticized for violating privacy and human rights.

While some researchers and companies are developing new systems that claim to be more privacy-preserving than centralized contact tracing apps, it’s unclear whether these systems will address the abuse of such technologies by government and private actors. Additionally, disparities in Internet access, digital literacy, and tech uptake could exclude vulnerable and marginalized populations from public health responses that unduly rely on mobile contact tracing technology.

The first step in tracking someone is to collect as much information about their current location as possible, such as their work, home, and social contacts. Try to find their social media profiles, blog, and professional network accounts to track them on those sites. Also, use search engines to track them on websites that list special interest networks or clubs.

Social Networking

Social networking websites allow people to keep in contact with old friends, find lost ones, and connect with unknown individuals who share their interests. Young people are especially likely to divulge intimate details of their lives online. Schools that block these sites deprive students of valuable learning experiences and prevent them from developing digital literacy skills.

Global Positioning System (GPS) capabilities built into mobile phones can track a phone’s location to within 5 to 10 feet (3 to 3 meters). Many apps (including maps, games, shopping and utility apps) log this information. This data is also sold to data brokers. Governments that access this information in the name of tracing contacts and quarantine enforcement are violating international human rights standards.

Researchers have demonstrated that it is possible to trace a person’s movements with surprising accuracy by analyzing data from location-sharing apps like Brightkite and Foursquare, call-data records, and GPS data. This is known as big data analytics. It can help forecast the spread of a disease, determine how effective social distancing measures are, and identify ways to better allocate testing and medical resources.

The Israeli government used such an algorithm to identify and notify Covid-19 cases in the country, despite concerns over privacy. In addition, an emergency regulation approved in March authorized the Shin Bet security agency to obtain Telco data without consent to predict which citizens have been exposed to the virus and order them to self-quarantine.

Phone Calls

Despite the many benefits of phone calls for consumers, it is possible for criminals to use them to track their targets. Whether someone is a stalker, a financial fraudster or just trying to scam you out of your money, they can use information like the caller ID and cell signal triangulation to locate you.

Whenever you make or receive a phone call, the call is logged in data sets that are stored at voice service providers (also called carriers) and telephone exchanges (also known as switches). These data sets contain basic metadata about the call, such as its origin and destination. Some carriers partner with analytics engine vendors to analyze this data and look for patterns that suggest a robocall or spam call. These systems look at reach, how often a number is dialed, and frequency to identify suspicious numbers, Mike Rudolph, chief technology officer of YouMail, says. Some third-party apps like YouMail, RoboKiller and CallApp and those offered by AT&T, Verizon and TNS also have built-in features that allow users to mark calls as spam.

In addition to a phone’s caller ID, which can be spoofed, the number is logged in billing records at the originating telco and via automatic number identification, which can also be spoofed. If you get a call asking for personal information, such as account numbers, credit card or bank PINs, Social Security numbers, mother’s maiden names or passwords, hang up and contact the number on your account statement or in your phone book, or on the company or government agency’s website.