Even with gps off, they can get rudimentary location data based on pings to cell towers. It’s not pin point obviously, but it roughly tells how many people are in a given area with a phone on them, smart or dumb.
There’s some security researchers that have done this before as well, and some “grey hats” that reportedly used this technique to get Google to route traffic away from them during their commute by spinning up a whole bunch of phones in their car like this.
Of course you’re right, historically. But since the word hacker came to mean both good and bad in the general publics mind, this is where we are in 2024. We can’t fight it.
Do you recall any of the names? I’d love to read those papers and see how effective it was. Depending on the city and the route, people might have no choice but to go over a bridge like that regardless of traffic reports.
While I don’t remember his name, I remember there was a Darknet Diaries episode about the researcher who first investigated the problem. The episode was very thorough, I liked it a lot. I also don’t remember the name of the episode, so I guess this comment is kinda useless
Props for self-awareness and yet still smashing that “reply” button, but I still think your comment is slightly useful. I often just click the “cancel” button once the “useless comment” realization hits me.
Edit: I am wrestling with it now, just after I clicked reply.
Your comment was not useless. I learned about a new podcast that I checked out, plus you got to talk about something you liked in a way that made me go look for the episode - haven’t found it yet, but found some other, interesting things along the way.
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