General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Amazon keeps pushing the envelope... [View all]Silent3
(15,212 posts)...but my car does have built-in GPS. I assume that, whether I'm actively consulting the GPS or not, that it's probably running all the time, and that there's a "black box" recording of everywhere I go.
It's a bit creepy, but I'm not going to rip out the GPS to stop it.
One thing I thought was interesting is that years ago, when I got my first EZ-Pass (a device for automatically paying tools in various states) it came with a little metalized plastic bag. No one explained the bag to me, but I think the idea was to offer optional privacy -- if you didn't want to be tracked on a particular occasion, you could pop the EZ-Pass into the bag, and it wouldn't get scanned, and you'd just pay your tolls with cash.
Of course most toll booths these days record license plates, so if your plate is spotted, but your EZ-Pass isn't scanned, I wouldn't be surprised if that would be considered a sign of suspicious activity.
At this point I think the only privacy of personal location often possible is to hope that reasonable safeguards are in place to make sure your private location data is only available to the appropriate people via a properly issued warrant -- something I wouldn't be that sure of.