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Coronavirus - Part Two.

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13 minutes ago, RollingJ said:

You are not telling me anything I don't already know - possibly less - but I don't see a problem with it myself. Admittedly, I only visit shops in town (or anywhere else, for that matter) if I need to, and if I was that paranoid I could turn the phone, and/or tablet off, but tbh it's more faff than it's worth.

 

I've read some of those stories - and laughed.

If you knew where the idea came from then why did you ask?

 

I have no problem with people knowingly agreeing to being tracked in exchange for free Wi-Fi. It should be an opt in thing though - no tracking unless people have signed into the system.

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41 minutes ago, altus said:

If you knew where the idea came from then why did you ask?

 

I have no problem with people knowingly agreeing to being tracked in exchange for free Wi-Fi. It should be an opt in thing though - no tracking unless people have signed into the system.

I don't quite understand your first point - just didn't/still don't understand your 'dark intent' comment.

 

How the hell do you 'opt-in' to free Wi-Fi - other than using it, of course? As I said, unless you totally disable your phone/tablet, it is transmitting location data anyway.

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1 minute ago, RollingJ said:

I don't quite understand your first point - just didn't/still don't understand your 'dark intent' comment.

The 'dark intent' is tracking people without their consent.

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How the hell do you 'opt-in' to free Wi-Fi - other than using it, of course?

Have some sort of consent system, with some form of persistent method of recording that consent if need be. Just don't track people unless you've made it explicit that is what you'll be doing and got their informed consent to do so.

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As I said, unless you totally disable your phone/tablet, it is transmitting location data anyway.

It's not about whether it's technically possible, it's about whether companies should be allowed to do it and what restrictions should be placed on placed on them if they do. It's technically possible to have a stranger follow someone around town noting down everywhere they go, would people be happy about that?

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2 minutes ago, altus said:

The 'dark intent' is tracking people without their consent.

Have some sort of consent system, with some form of persistent method of recording that consent if need be. Just don't track people unless you've made it explicit that is what you'll be doing and got their informed consent to do so.

It's not about whether it's technically possible, it's about whether companies should be allowed to do it and what restrictions should be placed on placed on them if they do. It's technically possible to have a stranger follow someone around town noting down everywhere they go, would people be happy about that?

I'm fairly technically up on this - been using computers before the interweb was around, and have spent a while on application development/commissioning, but I suspect you would find your idea - laudable as it may be - is somewhat unworkable. To be honest, it sounds like paranoia to me - is you own home system so locked down you can't be tracked if you trawl the web, and do you notice any strange 'behaviour'

 

My home network is reasonably secure, and although I have ad-blocking controls in place, so rarely see them anyway, I am unaware of anything 'following me'.

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1 hour ago, altus said:

The 'dark intent' is tracking people without their consent.

Have some sort of consent system, with some form of persistent method of recording that consent if need be. Just don't track people unless you've made it explicit that is what you'll be doing and got their informed consent to do so.

It's not about whether it's technically possible, it's about whether companies should be allowed to do it and what restrictions should be placed on placed on them if they do. It's technically possible to have a stranger follow someone around town noting down everywhere they go, would people be happy about that?

The people are consenting to it. They consent to it everytime they sign up to a newsletter to get a 20% discount. They consent to it everytime they sign up to a free Wi-Fi service in a store or train station or shopping centre. They consent to it through their home broadband service.....   oh, they may think that they have a right to privacy but at the end of the day it is not their network - it is not there server - it is not their broadband. They are renting it from somebody else who behind the scenes has full control to track monitor and observe anything that happens on that network.

 

It's all there in black and white.  Set out in the contract information. All explained in the terms and conditions agreement.   But I bet most people don't bother looking at it before they hit the big green accept button.

 

Many years ago they tried to restrict what companies could do with their use of sneaky cookies. When GDPR came into force they actually took quite a hard line over here and msde it very clear that companies have to get your consent for when they want to use tracking. That resulted in every single website and every single page popping up with annoying banbers asking you to consent or opt-out or select what levels of cookies and tracking you wish them to have..... what happened after 5-minutes, people got so fed up with it they just fell back into the habit of just hitting the I accept all  button.

 

Trying to control companies is one thing but actually getting joe public to pay attention and give a toss is an even bigger thing.

Edited by ECCOnoob

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Covid  vaccines start to lose their protection after six to seven months according to research studies and booster jabs will be required .  So will the government give us all not just people with immunity problems a booster jab  and will we need this for the rest of our lifes and are people born now looking at life of needing regular boosters as the virus changes? 

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2 hours ago, RollingJ said:

I'm fairly technically up on this - been using computers before the interweb was around, and have spent a while on application development/commissioning, but I suspect you would find your idea - laudable as it may be - is somewhat unworkable. To be honest, it sounds like paranoia to me - is you own home system so locked down you can't be tracked if you trawl the web, and do you notice any strange 'behaviour'

 

My home network is reasonably secure, and although I have ad-blocking controls in place, so rarely see them anyway, I am unaware of anything 'following me'.

I'm also fairly technically up on this - my involvement with computer networking includes adding IP networking support to an operating system and advising a multinational corporation on its IP networking strategy.

 

We regulate what telecoms companies are allowed to do with location data obtained from operating mobile phone networks, not doing so for shopping mall/city centre Wi-Fi networks is a political decision not a technical one.

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6 minutes ago, altus said:

I'm also fairly technically up on this - my involvement with computer networking includes adding IP networking support to an operating system and advising a multinational corporation on its IP networking strategy.

 

We regulate what telecoms companies are allowed to do with location data obtained from operating mobile phone networks, not doing so for shopping mall/city centre Wi-Fi networks is a political decision not a technical one.

This is the wrong topic for this discussion - but I still think a Wi-Fi network is a different environment to an internal (albeit 'international') one.

Edited by RollingJ

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1 hour ago, ECCOnoob said:

The people are consenting to it. They consent to it everytime they sign up to a newsletter to get a 20% discount. They consent to it everytime they sign up to a free Wi-Fi service in a store or train station or shopping centre. They consent to it through their home broadband service.....   oh, they may think that they have a right to privacy but at the end of the day it is not their network - it is not there server - it is not their broadband. They are renting it from somebody else who behind the scenes has full control to track monitor and observe anything that happens on that network.

 

It's all there in black and white.  Set out in the contract information. All explained in the terms and conditions agreement.   But I bet most people don't bother looking at it before they hit the big green accept button.

You misunderstand what I'm talking about. This is not about people signing up to and using a service. This is about someone walking down the street with their mobile phone in their pocket sending periodic 'are there any Wi-Fi networks about' messages. Nobody has signed up to or into anything at that point.

Quote

Many years ago they tried to restrict what companies could do with their use of sneaky cookies. When GDPR came into force they actually took quite a hard line over here and msde it very clear that companies have to get your consent for when they want to use tracking. That resulted in every single website and every single page popping up with annoying banbers asking you to consent or opt-out or select what levels of cookies and tracking you wish them to have..... what happened after 5-minutes, people got so fed up with it they just fell back into the habit of just hitting the I accept all  button.

 

Trying to control companies is one thing but actually getting joe public to pay attention and give a toss is an even bigger thing.

That bit of GDPR only exists because companies refused to respect HTTP do not track headers. 'These people agree to companies doing things without understanding the implications so you shouldn't be allowed to object to those companies doing the same thing to you' isn't a convincing argument. Particularly when there is already a readily supportable mechanism for them knowing your wishes.

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42 minutes ago, GabrielC said:

Covid  vaccines start to lose their protection after six to seven months according to research studies and booster jabs will be required .  So will the government give us all not just people with immunity problems a booster jab  and will we need this for the rest of our lifes and are people born now looking at life of needing regular boosters as the virus changes? 

What research studies are you looking at? I know the Israelis are clear they have seen waning immunity and have made booster jabs available to older members of the population. But I am not sure one should generalise from this because they have only used the Pfizer vaccine and only with the four week interval between the first two doses. Have you seen other stuff?

 

In the medium term, one possibility is that a few years from now covid just looks like another variant of common cold. Everybody's immune system has seen it a few times and it's just not very serious if you catch it again. It's a possibility at least.

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Good news and sense that the ridiculous vaccine passport idea has been scrapped in England (for now).

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