Google Tracks You with Location History Off

[Zarathustra[H]]

You don't seem to get it. It's more than just social media. Every single service out there is collecting your data and trying to monetize it these days.

Have a cell phone? Even an old dumb flip phone? Your cell carrier is collecting and monetizing your location and call/text metadata.

Go even further? Do you have a smartphone? Any smartphone? It's probably listening to sounds around you and attempting to build a profile on you, even if you don't use any third party apps.

Ever go on the internet? Your ISP is tracking your metadata, and even attaching unique tracking information to every TCP packet leaving your home.

Your email provider is also collecting data from every email you send and receive.

Watch TV? Your cable box is collecting data on your viewing habits.

Want to partake in popular culture and stream shows from the likes of Netflix or other services? More data collection. Oh and the device or smart TV you use to stream that content is probably listening to you as well.

You can't even make a goddamned restaurant reservation many places without being tracked somehow these days.

Do you ever buy anything in a store? Unless you only use cash you are being tracked there as well.

Do you ever call a customer service line of any business? You know that statement about "this call may be recorded". Yeah, that's BS. Your call IS being recorded, and turned into speech to text data for collection and analysis, and it's not just for training their customer service representatives.

So no, it's not just about avoiding using social media. It's gotten to the point where it is so pervasive and built into everything that even a conscientious person trying to avoid being tracked could spend every waking hour researching and disabling things and would still be unable to prevent their data from being harvested by someone somewhere. You can't even avoid being tracked by the social media giants by not using social media. They are buying data on you from other sources too to complete their models.

And this article proves the point. Even if you think you are being proactive and disabling location history, you are still being tracked.

You'd literally need to completely go off the grid, not have a bank account and use only cash and become some sort of weirdo hermit.

I'm dealing with this problem right now.

I logged on to Stubhub in order to buy tickets for an MLB game tomorrow. I have used Stubhuib many times before from my desktop without a problem. You log on, you buy the tickets, you go home and print them, and bring your printout to the gate, where it is scanned and you get in, no problem.

This time all I get on their website is this:

In other words, the ONLY way I can use the hundreds of dollars worth of tickets I just bought is by submitting and installing their spyware app on my phone and using it at the gate.

I have contacted their customer support, and they are not budging. So I can forfeit my hundreds of dollars worth of tickets or submit to their spyware.

That's one hell of a choice.

I can't even go to a fucking sports game without submitting to spyware.

Someone needs to set these people on fire!