Intro

Do you know where you are? Your cell phone does. if you are familiar with the concept of Big Brother, an all seeing, all knowing entity watching our every move, then you might want to think about what big brother and your cell phone know about you. In this video we will talk about Tech and how to better protect your privacy. We will also talk about Siri and how she isn’t who she used to be. Like, Subscribe, and hit the bell if you want to watch videos like this on my channel.

I’m Roy Richardson and this is the live edition of my podcast, the One-Off Tech Podcast now in season 3 and available on all your favorite podcast platforms. I have been in the tech industry for over 25 years and here we talk about Tech in plain language and how it can affect you. Does Big Brother and your cell phone spy on you? The answer is probably. But the Big Brother in this scenario isn’t some big government entity (unless you live in a country that tightly controls the Internet or have some conspiracy theory to fill in some gaps here. I believe for the most part the US Government is “Chaotic Good”. For the purposes of our discussion, the Big Brother in this case is Tech companies and sometimes hackers. And the Tech companies only want to make a buck, okay, actually that is also the hackers goal too. But the Tech companies want to target what you do, where you go, and what you like to send you relevant ads.

So if you have listened to any of my previous podcasts or my first live stream (don’t watch it, I will recap it and save you some misery) you know cookies play a big role in your experience on different websites you visit, session cookies keep up with the fact you have visited that site before and also make it where you don’t have to login to their websites very often because based on these text files on your computer they know you are the person who previously visited and a session variable says you were authenticated. 

And we talked about Google’s new way of tracking users FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) basically an attempt to track you but make the info more anonymous. See the show notes for a link to read about that in more detail or watch the first show.

Okay, so how does it have anything to do with my cell phone? So your browsers are telling who you are, some of your favorite apps have asked you for permissions at some point and you may or may not have allowed some of your apps “location tracking”. What?!?

Your phone is constantly pinging cell towers saying “Hey, here I am!” and if you have allowed apps to be able to do location tracking, then they will ask for and receive this information. So what does it mean when apps know where you are? Simple, say you are at Walmart. You pull into the parking lot and the app knows you are at a certain Walmart store. How does it know this? You allowed this app to do location tracking. On iPhone, go to Settings, Privacy, Location Services and you will see what access you have given these apps. 

Ever get an ad in an app that is so local? Wow, that lawyer is down the street from me and well, there is his ad. I am always bugged when I visit a site and it says welcome to you coming from  company Mirror Abstract Productions, which is my fictional company. They do a lookup of the IP address I am coming from just to try and personalize what they are advertising. I find it more annoying than informative.

The point of this all is that you are being tracked and you either knowingly or unknowingly gave these apps permission to know where you are. Some apps it is an easy decision. Why does the grocery store app or Clash of the Titans need to know where I am? That is a question you have to answer.

Recently with the release of Apple iOS 14.5, Apps that previously didn’t as even though they were supposed to ask if it was okay to track you suddenly are having to ask if they can track you. Facebook is the most upset by this. Why? Because the location targeting and tracking allowed them to tailor ads to your specific location and based on where it knows you are browsing. 

So next time your apps update they are supposed to ask your permission to track you and if you say no, they can’t. 

Settings, Privacy, Tracking on iOS. Sadly you have to answer this one by one on Android for each app. You have to go to Settings, Apps, and select each App one by one and then go to Permissions (as Android phones are not all the same, it may be different on yours) and there are all of the permissions those apps say they require. Some apps will stop working correctly if you turn off location tracking while others will keep working but nag you about setting it back.

Want to know where Google thinks you are? If you have enabled it to know everything about you?

Go here: https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?pli=1 (after the show of course)

https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/30/22358287/privacy-ads-google-chrome-floc-cookies-cookiepocalypse-finger-printing

More detail on how apps can track your location and how location tracking works on phones.

https://ssd.eff.org/en/playlist/privacy-breakdown-mobile-phones#mobile-phones-location-tracking

Chapter 2

So with the release of iOS 14.5, Siri got an update as well. I first noticed then when I asked Siri a question in the car and it had a decidedly male sounding voice. I thought it was a fluke because it was in the car, but checking my settings the Siri voice I have come to know and love was gone. I was really sad because the original voice of Siri and I follow each other on Twitter. Why I do not know but yeah. So how do I get her back? Well it seems you can’t. The goal for Apple is to allow voice selection to not be noted as gender specific. And you have more variety in nationality selections as well. I love it but I am really missing Siri’s original voice. You have to manually go in and download each voice to have more selections that the two it gives you for American voices. Currently I am using an Australian voice. Not me, Siri. as my default Siri voice. Android has had similar but strangely when I changed Android to British, my Google Maps went metric and I wasn’t ready to do how many kilometers I am going before I turn unless I am running a 5k or 10k race and usually I know the route before I enter the race. 

Also strangely if you spent time downloading them all, with iOS update 14.5.1, you have to download them all over again, so if you haven’t played around with this, good, Happy Downloading.

Google I/O was May 18 (today as I am steaming here) and they have announced many cool things. Next week we will talk about them and also I will tell you why I bought a Mac Mini rather than an iMac. Practical reasons mostly but you will understand better when I explain next week.

Be sure to like and subscribe to this channel to see more videos like this. Following the “Atomic Habits” philosophy, if I change one thing every week eventually I will improve by percentages. I am shooting for 1% a week. Let me know in the comments how I am doing.

Thanks for listening. If you are a fan of audio podcasts, look for the audio version of this show wherever you listen to podcasts. Look for the One-Off Tech Podcast.

Have a great day!


The Live Stream version on YouTube

https://youtu.be/HgT3R0QfCjE