Shmoocon 2015 from afar

I watched this over the stream.

I find it interesting that location services, even when the user says to turn them off, are often still transmitted. I don’t know that there’s an easy way to fix this if the vendors still allow location data to be transmitted even after the user says to turn it off.

Such a feature would be rather easy for Apple to add to the API, but it’d be up to the folks who police the app store to enforce use of it. It might slow application approval, since someone would have to verify that the application is using the correct faculty, etc..

In the disaster that is Android, there’d be no way of enforcing it. With things that I’ve read that say the spyware infection rate being somewhere north of 70% on Android devices, it might well be impossible.

I understand the paranoia, but I don’t share it. I’m okay with my location being tracked. Maybe when I was young and healthy, I would have cared more about being able to just disappear, but I don’t now.

Secrecy and surprise really don’t afford you that much protection if you’re still a lumbering target. I’ll eschew my normal allusions to football, but they’re very appropriate.

I am not at Shmoocon this year, because I couldn’t get a ticket. I am watching from home via the stream. Do with that what you will.