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What Your Phone is Telling Wall Street (wsj.com)

Posted by msmash on from the how-about-that dept.

Your phone knows where you shop, where you work and where you sleep. Hedge funds are very interested in such data, so they are buying it. From a report: When Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said the car maker would work around the clock to boost production of its Model 3 sedan, the number crunchers at Thasos Group decided to watch. They circled Tesla's 370 acres in Fremont, Calif., on an online map, creating a digital corral to isolate smartphone location signals that emanated from within it. Thasos, which leases databases of trillions of geographic coordinates collected by smartphone apps, set its computers to find the pings created at Tesla's factory, then shared the data with its hedge-fund clients [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], showing the overnight shift swelled 30% from June to October.

Last month, many on Wall Street were surprised when Tesla disclosed a rare quarterly profit, the result of Model 3 production that had nearly doubled in three months. Shares shot up 9.1% the next day. Thasos is at the vanguard of companies trying to help traders get ahead of stock moves like that using so-called alternative data. Such suppliers might examine mine slag heaps from outer space, analyze credit-card spending data or sort through construction permits. Thasos's specialty is spewing out of your smartphone.

Thasos gets data from about 1,000 apps, many of which need to know a phone's location to be effective, like those providing weather forecasts, driving directions or the whereabouts of the nearest ATM. Smartphone users, wittingly or not, share their location when they use such apps. Before Thasos gets the data, suppliers scrub it of personally identifiable information, Mr. Skibiski said. It is just time-stamped strings of longitude and latitude. But with more than 100 million phones providing such coordinates, Thasos says it can paint detailed pictures of the ebb and flow of people, and thus their money.


108 comments

  1. Righto. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mr. Skibiski said. It is just time-stamped strings of longitude and latitude.

    And unique device identifiers. Funny how they leave that part off.

    1. Re:Righto. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mr. Skibiski said. It is just time-stamped strings of longitude and latitude.

      And unique device identifiers. Funny how they leave that part off.

      If you have a problem with that, then start contacting your lawmakers to include unique device identifiers within the category of PII. Seems sensible and obvious enough. And you'll certainly get their attention when you show them how their own data is used and abused.

    2. Re:Righto. by Joce640k · · Score: 1

      Next up: Driving around the area with a carfull of smartphones to skew the data.

      --
      No sig today...
  2. easy as hell to avoid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You can forbid each individual app from having location data. I do that for all apps, except for the rare occasion that I use navigation.

    1. Re:easy as hell to avoid by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 2

      Most people wouldn't know how to do that, though.

    2. Re:easy as hell to avoid by Trogre · · Score: 2, Insightful

      We are not most people.

      --
      "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
    3. Re: easy as hell to avoid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      These guys aren't just getting app data. They use a cell tower like gizmo to locate the cell phone MAC equivalent. They then buy the customer data off the cell phone company itself, either through BS "partner" agreements or through third party bribes to low level customer service staff.

      Nothing you can do about being tracked that way, unless you remove the battery from the cell while but home.

    4. Re: easy as hell to avoid by reanjr · · Score: 1

      Most people know how to click "No" when the app asks for permissions. Most people just don't care.

    5. Re: easy as hell to avoid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know what phone you use, but barebones Android phones (mostly pixel and Android One based phones, which are cheap btw) this is easy to do.

      Settings > Apps & notifications > Advanced > App permissions > Location.

      Untick all except the ones you want. Most importantly, untick all shitty Facebook apps.

    6. Re: easy as hell to avoid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I had a friend who invested in a small factory. He called the factory in the middle of the night pretending to call a friend and listened to the noises in the background to decide if the factory was running. One of the most difficult things in the world is building an electric car. Building the second car? Not so difficult.

    7. Re:easy as hell to avoid by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Interesting

      We are not most people.

      But we still are too dumb to RTFS.

      They are NOT using location data from apps. They are just counting cell phone transmissions.

      They are just trying to estimate the aggregate number of people in the factory, to see if they are really working late to ship product.

      Similar tactics have been used in the past. For instance, when satellite images first went on-line, hedge funds developed software to count cars in mall parking lots. This put them weeks ahead of other investors that were waiting for the Fed to release data based on retail surveys.

      Another tactic is to photograph cargo ships entering and leaving port. If they sit high in the water, that means many of the containers are going back empty, and the trade deficit is more likely to widen, which means a weaker dollar.

    8. Re: easy as hell to avoid by Cmdln+Daco · · Score: 1

      Facebook apps should already be uninstalled or disabled.

    9. Re:easy as hell to avoid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Keep telling yourself that.

    10. Re:easy as hell to avoid by aaarrrgggh · · Score: 2

      One I remember being famous back in the day was Iomega had released the Zip Drive, and online communities tracked the number of cars in the parking lot on the weekend.

      Certain companies do things to obscure their energy use to try to keep that from leaking information. It gets complicated...

    11. Re: easy as hell to avoid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just count car sales and estimate energy and you would probably arrive at a simpler number much more likely to be correct

    12. Re: easy as hell to avoid by astrofurter · · Score: 2

      "But we still are too dumb to RTFS."

      We're not dumb - the fucking story is paywalled. And unfortunately search result quality on Big Brother Google has for some time been downgraded to show only semi-official fake news sources. So a quick search turned up no liberated copy of the article.

      Anyways, the both summary says they are buying databases of surveillance data from smartphone malware/apps. "Thasos gets data from about 1,000 apps, many of which need to know a phone's location to be effective".

      Certainly sounds plausible. Why else would malware companies give away "free" shovelware apps, if they weren't planning to spy on and otherwise abuse their users?

    13. Re:easy as hell to avoid by taustin · · Score: 1

      That's not a problem with the app, and changing the app won't make "most people" any less stupid and gullible.

    14. Re:easy as hell to avoid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So:
      1. Operate some sort of manufacturing, such as Tesla
      2. Prepare a large-scale launch of some new product. Large enough that failure will be a disaster.
      3. Institute a strict policy that the hired extras turns off their phones while at work. (No facebook distraction, or some such). Have some of the regulars turn off phones as well.
      4. Buy stock while everybody else shorts - as declining phone usage clearly indicate a stalled factory
      5. cash in as the product launces on schedule.

    15. Re: easy as hell to avoid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Im pretty sure the "buy stock" is part is called "insider trading." it'll get you a fed visit if you're trading in big numbers or small. It's called materiality.

  3. Disinformation... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There needs to be a OS mod that randomizes location data that apps get within 5 to 10 miles. Only feed the navigation app (if open) the correct data. 5-10 miles should be enough precision for things like weather to work perfectly, while polluting the data streams that app provides sell to third parties.

    1. Re: Disinformation... by tsa · · Score: 1

      They didnâ(TM)t use location data from apps. Phones connect to telecommunication masts, so itâ(TM)s just a matter of counting the number of phones by analyzing how many are connected to the masts in a certain area

      --

      -- Cheers!

    2. Re: Disinformation... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 1

      No, they used location data leaked by apps. Tower location data has much poorer accuracy and also may not be public information.

    3. Re: Disinformation... by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 2

      . Tower location data has much poorer accuracy

      That used to be true. Towers are far more precise now than they used to be. Still might be worse than GPS (it depends), but good enough for this purpose.

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
    4. Re: Disinformation... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      These already exist on Android, but why bother when you can simply block the app from having location access anyways?

    5. Re: Disinformation... by Entrope · · Score: 1

      There's no way tower-based locations are as good as GPS, at least when GPS is available. (Inside buildings and under foliage might be a different question.) There just aren't enough towers to triangulate a phone's location using mobile network signals as well as a phone can triangulate its own location using GPS signals -- those are optimized for location performance, whereas mobile network signals are usually optimized for some data throughput measure.

    6. Re: Disinformation... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 2

      Because polluting a data pool is more amusing than just not adding your location to it. Active sabotage is always better than passive lack of participation.

    7. Re: Disinformation... by fred911 · · Score: 2

      The issue is GPS is permission based and the phone must be able to "see" the birds, and have network connectivity

      "aren't enough towers to triangulate a phone's location"

        The phone is constantly polling cells providing sending signal strength. Even if there's not sufficient signal to use, the network shares that information in order to make a handoff unnoticed. Triangulation of analogue signal was used extensively in WW2 with very accurate results.

      These days history is in the logs, and it's trivial to know position even more accurately in real time.

      --
      09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
    8. Re: Disinformation... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My phone is telling Wall Street nothing, unless they want to know where I buy coffee on the way to work.

    9. Re: Disinformation... by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      ) There just aren't enough towers to triangulate a phone's location using mobile network signals

      You don't even need multiple towers. There are many antennas on each tower, each of which has different sensitivities in different arcs. Towers now pass off from directional antenna to directional antenna.

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
    10. Re: Disinformation... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is dumb. They never snoop on the ford factory. Is it because Teslas are mysterious? Maybe they should make stupid commercials showing people who love driving Teslas and everybody would calm down.

    11. Re: Disinformation... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Something similar about residential Internet IP. I once checked mine and IT WAS PERFECTLY ACCURATE. And it was the IP I stolen from a neighbor's WEP. Came on a map where you can see building outlines - my country has had publicly available and accurate building outlines for about 200 years. The building is rather narrow and the IP was right in.

    12. Re: Disinformation... by Aristos+Mazer · · Score: 2

      a) Who says they never snoop on Ford?
      b) They snooped on Tesla because there was a specific reason to do so. If Ford was making similar claims about increasing hours, they'd have a reason to snoop on Ford.

    13. Re: Disinformation... by Aristos+Mazer · · Score: 1

      This is NOT about fooling some app. This is them having access to the *tower* data, which is always accurate regardless of how you spoof your phone because they're looking at the packets the devices send out to contact towers. You'd need a phone that didn't broadcast in order to avoid this kind of location detection.

    14. Re: Disinformation... by Entrope · · Score: 1

      Cell towers do have multiple sectors, but I find it hard to believe that the channel state information from two of them (because any given phone will not have a line of sight to three sectors) is enough to determine the phone's location. The environment is full of weird reflectors and obstructions that make the signal not just fall off with a power of the distance.

    15. Re:Disinformation... by mikael · · Score: 1

      You get GPS spoofers for mobile phones. They intercept the system call to retrieve the GPS location and provide a user supplied coordinate. I relocated to the Mongolian desert out of boredom and started getting Chinese SMS messages from manufacturing companies looking for new business.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    16. Re: Disinformation... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That really doesn't matter if you factor in time.

      Many phones (at least apple's) keep a log of the towers they've seen, not just associated with. If you can't get the log but can get the currently visible towers, just regularly poll and make your own log. Just walk through the log, match the cell tower numbers to locations, and you can infer quite nicely where the phone is or just about has to be.

      Even the reflections will be similar for multiple phones so you can factor them into your map. And again, you don't need accuracy down to the meter. A hundred meters or so will do. Tracking through the log will give you well better than that.

      It's the modern variant of that old intelligence trick: Count the cars in the parking lot. Lots of cars means lots of people inside means they're working on something big.

      You keep on complaining about individual phone locating accuracy when all that is needed for this purpose is an educated guess there's a good large number of people on the same rather largish compound. And for that, well, the leaked information is so much better than it strictly needs to be.

    17. Re:Disinformation... by xpiotr · · Score: 1

      There needs to be a smartphone OS that works for you,
      and does not send your location and your data to whoever is paying for it.
      And strict clear laws for how data collection can be done and used.
      Yes, the data is there, regardless what you do,
      even with a dumb-phone your operator will know which tower you are connected to.

    18. Re: Disinformation... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They can tell that you have a job and can afford a cup of coffee at a café, daily.

    19. Re: Disinformation... by Zak3056 · · Score: 1

      There just aren't enough towers to triangulate a phone's location using mobile network signals as well as a phone can triangulate its own location using GPS signals

      Wait for 5G to be widely deployed, the number of "towers" involved is insane. The planning looks more like a wireless mesh network than a traditional mobile network (lots of small installations on traffic lights/light poles rather than large installations in high spots).

      --
      What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
  4. Thats why by AHuxley · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The smarter nations don't allow their security cleared workers to bring consumer hardware in with them.
    What can't be seen from space can now be tracked per worker per shift from the ground.
    Who works in an office, who works on the mil/gov production line.
    The skilled workers that get the mil production line working after it stops.
    What areas of a mil production line still have the most visits by experts.

    Wonder what a nations top police, city government officials, mil contractors and mil do all day? Map it out and find out :)

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    1. Re:Thats why by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 2

      I think this was an issue recently, where US soldiers were using Strava while deployed abroad -- until someone realized it was possible to calculate deployment numbers by mining Strava data.

    2. Re:Thats why by OzPeter · · Score: 1

      The smarter nations don't allow their security cleared workers to bring consumer hardware in with them.

      Yeah, and just this year it took some random person looking at publicly published fitbit data to point out the error of the US government's ways.
      Remind me again how the proactive smart people banned the data uploads before this became an issue?

      --
      I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
    3. Re:Thats why by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Re 'Remind me again how the proactive smart people"
      That would be the security support offered by the NSA and GCHQ to ensure nothing was detectable from any interesting site?

      The next problem is the factories that make mil equipment.
      Then the police, governments, contractors.

      In the old days every worker was security cleared and the secure building was safe from look down, had no windows.

      Now everyone interesting wonders around with global tracking devices for their shift.
      Better quality walls to block the tracking of workers inside?

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    4. Re:Thats why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The smarter nations don't allow their security cleared workers to bring consumer hardware in with them.

      Yes, but the absence of consumer hardware gps checkins highlights the restricted govt areas :)

    5. Re:Thats why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, you mean a president shouldn't have a consumer iPhone with him ?

    6. Re:Thats why by Deep+Esophagus · · Score: 1

      That's one of many reasons I still use an app-free, text-and-voice-only TracFone. The loss of privacy far outweighs any convenience that a smartphone provides.

  5. Similar stories by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 5, Interesting
    One bond traders made millions by noting Alan Greenspan used a thicker briefcase on the day he announced rate hikes compared to the days he left the interest rate alone.

    The FedEX guy picking up the packages from our company in 1990s said he noted down the number of packages being shipped on the quarter ending evening. He always bought the stock if it showed significant jump over the previous quarter.

    For all that talk about these techniques, the day before Tesla announced its third quarter results, real old fashioned bean counting led a very notable short (named Left, some company called Citron) to reverse course and announce publicly he was no longer shorting Tesla. S3 partners calculated that announcement made 1 billion loss for the shorts.

    So, yes, novel methods are being discovered. But it is rounding error compared to old fashioned standard research.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  6. It back fires as often as it hits pay dirt. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 2
    Some shorts rented drones and private planes and counted the cars in transit and kept reporting Tesla is not selling the cars, it is being stock piled, and the demand is tanking and the company is probably committing fraud in Enron scale. Turned out to be totally bogus.

    Very funny to read about some photo showing one car with hood open, and these shorts speculating, "they are fixing something in the engine". (The frunk is empty, it is a small storage compartment and you open the hood to put the car in tow mode to load it on a carrier. )

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re: It back fires as often as it hits pay dirt. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Where I live a certain large store went out of business. Now that store's equally large parking lot is full of brand new Teslas. Hundreds of them. I have no idea if the stock is stagnant, and/or being replenished.

    2. Re: It back fires as often as it hits pay dirt. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1
      You do see lots of brand new cars on dealers lots right? Tesla has no dealers. It sells directly. It stores cars wherever it is cheap.

      Pick any car model that sells about 250,000 units a year. Subaru Legacy, Hyundai Sonata ... How many new cars you see in their dealership lots. Is the Tesla lot bigger or smaller?

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    3. Re: It back fires as often as it hits pay dirt. by Richard_at_work · · Score: 2

      Doesn't Tesla build to order though? Dealerships stock unsold vehicles but you currently need to be on a wait list for a Tesla vehicle, there's currently no way to buy a Tesla off the shelf, so shouldn't Tesla be shipping them as they come off the production line?

    4. Re: It back fires as often as it hits pay dirt. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Didn't "build to order" predate the Ford T? Or carried on for a couple decade on the high end.

    5. Re:It back fires as often as it hits pay dirt. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Worked for the IRAQ war for those that are old enough to remember. Still stands as one of the best examples of mass scale propaganda I've ever seen because it wasn't targeted for simpletons.

      Now anyone can alter an image, video, etc in somewhat realtime whereas that tech was fairly guarded. Jay Leno and Conan did a decent job letting people know what was possible even for them (both did segments with imposed video/audio).

    6. Re: It back fires as often as it hits pay dirt. by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      All it means is their delivery infrastructure hasn't scaled up properly to meet the new production rates.

    7. Re: It back fires as often as it hits pay dirt. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1
      This is probably true. Tesla is growing too fast, and they did had assembly line nightmare and production hell. Then when they cleared it, it was delivery nightmares and hell. Soon there will be , perhaps already is, service hell.

      All part of growing up. The production cost per vehicle dropped 30% from Q2 to Q3, due to training and experience of the workers. The started with such poor training and planning. Well, they will eventually sort it all out. Driving a BEV is like having gasoline at 80 cents a gallon. That will trump everything else, as price parity with ICE powertrain is within grasp.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    8. Re: It back fires as often as it hits pay dirt. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1
      No, Tesla does not build to order. The website lets you configure 'anything', but actual production is different.

      It collects orders, and uses some AI to predict the sales, and builds them in batches. It misfires, it under predicted the demand for AWD, and they had unsold RWD. Looks like it over predicted the performance version and they are clearing the inventory with price reductions and incentives. They have a huge 3750$ tax cut reduction coming on Dec 31. That will help them clear all the inventory. Already fan sites are talking about getting demo cars and inventory cars to get the full tax cut.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    9. Re:It back fires as often as it hits pay dirt. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some shorts rented drones and private planes and counted the cars in transit and kept reporting Tesla is not selling the cars, it is being stock piled,

      HAHA!
      If Tesla fails to sell in the US, there is a year-long waiting list here. Stockpiling can't happen these days.

  7. That's not gonna work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fundamentally the OS on those things is not your friend. No mod will fix that.

    Even if it was, it's dead easy to infer where the thing really is using suitable apps and other available info, given enough time. No mod will fix that either.

    Worse yet, the tower info exists outside your phone and is widely for sale (in the US at least), so no OS mod can possibly hope to fix that.

    This is the problem with broken architecture: You cannot just bolt on security or privacy later. Neither was designed-in from the start and now you can never have it UNLESS you replace the entire system. Other hardware, other software, including other OS, other apps, other app writing guidelines and acceptance tests, other controls on information available to apps, other firmware, other radio interface, other tower infrastructure, other backends, other privacy laws so that tower info isn't so readily available, and so on, and so forth.

    Meaning that you're going to be fscked this lifetime at least even should we all get started with replacing the current heap of leaky shit right away. You'd still want to get started now so at least your children can have something better at some point in their lives.

    1. Re: That's not gonna work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is the problem with broken architecture

      What makes you think it's broken? Sounds like it's working very lucratively for the people who control the system.

  8. I beg to differ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I spend most of my money in ways that this system wouldn't be able to track.

    1. Re:I beg to differ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have a store near me where I put groceries and shit on the stand and the wimmin behind the stand scans the shit like it's a normal store. Then she tells me I have to input my money and bills into an "automatic cashier" which accepts my coins and scan my bills. I have no proof but this shit might as well be scanning numbers on the euro bills and storing them. So next time I guess I'll shop there with high value coins I'll save up just to put in that fucking machine. Even supermarket manned cashiers treat me better. If this goes on I'll carry a bag of 2 euro coins, fuck bills.

  9. It doesn't NEED to be, you silly person. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The object is to count the total people running around the entire tesla compound. Cell phone location data is plenty good enough for that.

    GSM tower data (which is more accurate than CDMA tower data) gives you 1) location of the tower, 2) distance from the tower (protocol quirk: it needs the approximate distance to function), and 3) which antenna it's on. Those are sector antennas, so you get a 60 or 90 or 120 degree wide area wherein the handset is. (And, well, if you could look on other towers nearby for "we can see you even though the actual association is still on another tower", yes, then you can triangulate. They keep track to make for easy hand-over at need.) And it's quite possible that on the compound itself there are those low power fill-in towers, in which case it becomes a slam-dunk "yes this phone is on the tesla compound".

    That's all they need to know. Not the individual cubicle or toilet stall. Just "on the compound" is good enough. And for that, GSM tower location data will do very nicely indeed.

  10. "Alternative data" by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

    So it's made up, right? Like "alternative facts" are.

    --
    Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    1. Re:"Alternative data" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yeah, like "alternative music", it's fictional and doesn't exist.

      are you trying to be cute or are you really that obtuse?

    2. Re: "Alternative data" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Save it for someone who gives a hoot

  11. Re: Wrong: My program always disallowed portfilter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You keep impersonating Apk because you know you're wrong about port filters and can't win discussing tech. Apk has said many times that hosts do port filtering and he's right. Apk just made you look very stupid & you know it.

  12. Actually I do on a few levels... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Everybody in the stadium knows who's getting the ball" - Marcus Allen (for another TOUCHDOWN STRIKE WIN for "yours truly") https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... vs. your BS lies (all you HAVE is IMPERSONATING me or STALKING ME by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous).

    * "It IS attitude - but you also have to have INTELLIGENCE" - Marcus Allen (which I clearly do, see link above, vs. you WEAK DOLTS, lol).

    * See subject: ... & I actually WAS a 1st string NCAA starting Lacrosse player (as a freshman too no less) for a soon to be national champ (something in common, right there, that you MILKSOP weezils don't).

    APK

    P.S.=> "I was gonna SCORE & I always KNEW where the 'softspots' were" - Marcus Allen (you're the SOFT IN THE HEAD spots, lol - thanks, you continually SELF-DEFEAT yourselves vs. me as in the link above)... apk

  13. Next quarter by bobstreo · · Score: 1

    Tesla announces even more production, buys thousands of flip phones and randomly turns them on and off inside the factory all day long.

    1. Re: Next quarter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, now that they know people are that interested, why not?

    2. Re:Next quarter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Still cheaper than a Model 3.

    3. Re:Next quarter by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      That's illegal stock manipulation.

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
    4. Re: Next quarter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No. Trolling illegal surveillance is what it is

    5. Re: Next quarter by Aristos+Mazer · · Score: 1

      a) the surveillance is legal.
      b) It could be both trolling surveillance AND illegal stock manipulation.

    6. Re: Next quarter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The surveillance may be legal. But they have no legal right to expect a correlation between phone usage (or cars in the parking lot) and productivity/stock fluctuations.

      Going creative with quarterly reports is illegal stock manipulation. So is having the CEO talk about bogus plans.

      But renting out cheap parking space so the worker's parking lots seems fuller - or ordering a batch of 6000 cellphones and just keep them on the premises is not illegal stock manipulation. It is more like "legal stock manipulation", as such side-channels are not real statements. Those getting fooled relied on very unreliable information.

  14. Nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My phone is reporting nothing, it's all on the carrier side and they're probably reporting everything metadata and 2G location to my country which then forwards to the imperialists.
    So it should be safe, but maybe the NSA or Five Eyes or something sell that data to get grey or black money to spend on something. Like, whatever agency always can use some funding source to send money to the terrorists or something. Worse, they might be selling the data to Wall Street.

  15. SIMPLE TEST u FAIL & FACT U IMPERSONATE ME by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    0.0.0.0 test1.com:53
    0.0.0.0 test2.com:53
    0.0.0.0 jowie.com
    0.0.0.0 jealous.com
    0.0.0.0 jowie.com
    0.0.0.0 test3.com
    0.0.0.0 borlnd.com
    0.0.0.0 tester.com

    * RUN THAT DATASET THRU MY PROGRAM & WHAT RESULTS COME OUT THAT HAVE A "PORT FILTER" ATTACHED?

    NONE!

    Only borlnd.com, tester.com, test3.com, jealous.com & jowie.com (last 2 are for YOU, lol) REMAIN (no filters on them)

    MY PROGRAM EVEN PREVENTS THAT MISTAKE!

    APK

    P.S.=> THIS PROVES MY PROGRAM'S OUTPUT DOES NOT ALLOW "PORT FILTERING" ENTRIES IN HOSTS as I said!

    ALL DESPITE you IMPERSONATING ME & LYING (for YEARS now) saying hosts do + STALKING ME via UNIDENTIFIABLE ANONYMOUS too (loser weezil).

    It's LONG PROVEN YOU DO THAT c6gunner https://linux.slashdot.org/com...

    + your LIES saying I have a MacOS model (I don't YET) OR that hosts cure Spectre/Meltdown (hosts don't but you LIE impersonating ME saying they do - FILTERS in hosts too!)... apk

  16. IMPERSONATING me AGAIN? apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: Hope you're RIGHT (considering I'm only sure hosts stop portsmash vs. Spectre/Meltdown) https://tech.slashdot.org/comm...

    I pity c6gunner caught impersonating me (his name's the submitter signing "APK") https://linux.slashdot.org/com...

    * He tried to INSULT me & so I made him a COMPLETELY FAIR CHALLENGE he couldn't meet or beat by showing me he's done better work in the past prior to his impersonating me there.

    (You shouldn't throw stones when you live in a glass house boys - especially vs. me: RIGHT, ZIP? https://developers.slashdot.or... )

    APK

    P.S.=> Hosts stop portsmash (by blocking download sources of its mailcious exes doing it) https://it.slashdot.org/commen... not Spectre/Meltdown AFAIK @ least - & YOU FAIL THIS PORTFILTERING TEST liar https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... (my program won't allow that error) so cut your lies as you IMPERSONATE me you pitiful loser... apk

  17. Wrong: My program always disallowed portfilters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wrong: My program always disallowed portfilters - a unique feature (only hosts prog that does it) in valid tld/gtld check prevents portfilter mistakes (always has since day 1 in my program all versions).

    * It's what THOROUGH codework does - make sure NO MISTAKES OCCUR & I do clearly THOROUGH work.

    APK

    P.S.=> You FAIL still yet again (LOL - on REPOST vs. you TRYING TO "downmod hide" it & I won't ALLOW that, I easily DEFY you) https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... WITH PROOF... apk

  18. Fuck 'em. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

    I don't know about you but as far as I'm concerned, these Thanos guys can eat shit.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  19. How anononymous is the data? by Required+Snark · · Score: 1
    Why is everyone assuming the claim the data is anonymous is true? The people selling data have a long consistent history of lying their teeth out and they have obvious economic incentives to keep on lying. Why should anyone believe them about anything?

    Big data suppliers consistently ignore their published policies and often break the law and nothing serious happens to them. Just naming Facebook and Twitter proves the point.

    If you take this story at face value you deserve to be hoodwinked and manipulated. We live in the world of 1984 except the surveillance state combines the public and private sectors. Facebook and the NSA are part of a seamless whole.

    --
    Why is Snark Required?
  20. Phone companies are organized crime by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It is illegal in most jurisdictions around the world to use mobile phone location data for anything else but billing purpose. Yet many phone companies just walk right past the red line and sell your data zo whomever they can. Scumbags

  21. Mention iPhone in the headline! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I love the way the headline trumpets âoeiPhoneâ and the body of the story talks about smartphones in general, not even mentioning iPhone or Apple.

  22. Build To Stock vs Built To Order by sjbe · · Score: 1

    No, Tesla does not build to order.

    Sure they do. They also do some amount of Build To Stock. Doing one does not preclude doing the other, even with the same product going down the same assembly line. My company does some similar things. We mostly BTO but when we have good reason to suspect a customer will order more of a specific product we often will BTS some extras units so we can save money on setup costs and buy materials in bulk. We are taking a calculated risk by doing so but it usually works out in our favor. Tesla if they are smart is doing the same thing. If they have a model configuration that is popular they can save some money by building a few extras of that model when they are going down the line.

    1. Re:Build To Stock vs Built To Order by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1

      Yes, I stand corrected.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    2. Re:Build To Stock vs Built To Order by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No. You are not corrected. You were correct. Tesla only has a handful of models. It builds a bunch of each of them in batches and then matches purchase requests with the cars it builds. They use statistics to build more of the models that people purchase more often. This gets called "build to order" because they have a backlog so any car they build typically matches SOMEONES order.

      This why there are complaints of later orders getting cars first or CA customers getting priority over east cost order. This is why some over produced models are sitting around, waiting for an order to be placed. To Tesla a car produced is a fungible good that is allocated to an order as they see fit, not the other way around. Said another way, Tesla does not know what car is "yours" until they allocate it to you AFTER it is built. And they may change that decision later.

      Tesla is not like most car manufacturers. The number of options are very limited and several are just software triggers.

      It would actually be a really dumb (massively inefficient) business decision to actually identify and build each car to an order.

  23. Re:IMPERSONATING me AGAIN? apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your software is just crap - written in crayon, fictional... I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine as a punchline to a joke by mmell February 17, 2017

    Your premise that hostfiles are a good way to deal with advertising and malvertising is fucking insane - by JazzLad April 20, 2016

    his hosts "program" is actually a broken batch file by xenotransplant August 10 2015

    his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to be a laughingstock while consuming excessive amounts of alcohol by alexgieg September 25 2015

    I do use APK's host file in all my memes at home by OrangeTide December 01 2017

    I've never tried to belittle (APK's work), I've flat out said it's crap - by BronsCon (927697)

    I like your tinfoil hat by Karmashock September 09 2015

    that APK nut, I can't get him to stop talking about his piece of shit file by rogoshen1 Tuesday March 03, 2015

    I personally never would use a HOSTS file blocker produced from a retard called APK by 110010001000 October 27 2017

    APK

    P.S.=> When YOU do better than THAT by our /. registered peers, then talk (from behind your FAKE NAME for your FAKE LIE of a "so-called" WASTED life) - ok? apk

  24. APK is a proven lying retard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You really are total fucking retarded, aren't you.
    Let's see if you can follow along and discover why you are proven to be a lying retard.
    First you state multiple times that hosts does port filtering.
    Then when called out for clearly stating a lie you decided to double down on the lie and restate it.
    The when confronted about your now proven false statements that you failed to show any evidence for you declare that you won like a retard.
    So then several months go by and someone points out that you have stated that hosts does port filtering you deny that it does finally but at this point you bring your shit toy program into it trying to make it look like people were saying that your program did the filtering. You were the first person to tie the two together as no one else said or implied that but you attempted to lie by twisting what was actually said to try to make yourself look good.
    Now you post more of your bullshit like what is above in a further attempt to deflect and deceive people as you attempt to make yourself look good but the premise you started from was one of your many lies so that is also a lie.

    Face it your lies have been exposed many times before, this is just one of the most recent. Your failure has been documented for all to see. Now go away retard.

  25. Hey Whipslash: Thanks for the "TD"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject & Marcus Allen quoted (I'm doing it to you too): "I could tunnel my way thru, power my way thru" (which I have to here vs. Whipslash TRYING to stop me) "& THEN? I could SCORE BY AIR" https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

    * ... By using FACT to TOTAL "your kind" (the "ne'er-do-well" DO-NOTHING ZERO "not-men" of the world STALKING me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts LYING about me OR impersonating me as you have in the parent post here)!

    APK

    P.S.=> Inspiration from Marcus Allen shown here (just to RUB IT IN GOOD, lol) https://www.youtube.com/watch?... as I'm doing you LOSERS the same way, easily (as he always did & I'm just FORTUNATE you're all SO stupid, lol, making ME look GOOD & Yourselves by comparison? Well, you know (failures)) ... apk

  26. "There are 2 types of players..." apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "There are 2 types of players - those who KNOW" (me) https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... "& those who DON'T" (you & your kind UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous trolls CONSTANTLY LOSING to me, lol).

    * Quote Marcus Allen from https://www.youtube.com/watch?... TO RUB IT IN GOOD, lol!

    APK

    P.S.=> Marcus Allen technique in MOTION by "your truly" - how so? Ok another quote "I could tunnel my way thru, power my way thru" (which I have to here vs. Whipslash TRYING & FAILING to stop me, lol) "& THEN? I could SCORE BY AIR" https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... using FACT to TOTAL "your kind" (the "ne'er-do-well" DO-NOTHING ZERO "not-men" of the world STALKING me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts LYING about me OR impersonating me as you have in the parent post here)... apk

  27. Impersonating me again, c6gunner? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My program doesn't ALLOW PORTFILTER ERRORS so you LOSE https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... - period, despite your attempts to impersonate me saying hosts do portfilters (like you like I have a MacOS X model of my program & I do not).

    * ... & you've been CAUGHT impersonating me c6gunner (your name's the submitter signing "APK") https://linux.slashdot.org/com...

    APK

    P.S.=> c6gunner tried to INSULT me & so I made him a COMPLETELY FAIR CHALLENGE he couldn't meet or beat by showing me he's done better work in the past prior to his impersonating me there - he's impersonated me MANY more times apparently too from what you put out... apk

  28. ORIGINAL QUOTES you altered losers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your software is just fine - well written, functional... I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine by mmell February 17, 2017

    Your premise that hostfiles are a good way to deal with advertising and malvertising is quite valid - by JazzLad April 20, 2016

    his hosts program is actually pretty good by xenotransplant August 10 2015

    his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources by alexgieg September 25 2015

    I like your host file system by Karmashock September 09 2015

    that APK guy, I use his host file by rogoshen1 Tuesday March 03, 2015

    I personally use a HOSTS file blocker produced from a genius called APK by 110010001000 October 27 2017

    * See subject: THOSE ARE THE ORIGINAL QUOTES YOU ALTERED LOSERS!

    APK

    P.S.=> Losers w/ zero actual skills here impersonating me can't manage the same or better than the above, lol... apk

  29. Parallel Construction by Avidiax · · Score: 1

    Could this just be clever "parallel construction" to cover insider trading? Buy some satellite data or phone location data and use it to prove what you already know.