Wireless Archives - John Sileo, Cyber Security Training

Is Your Wireless Carrier Tracking Your Surfing Habits (Maybe)

Oh what your mobile phone carrier knows and tracks about you! A one-page document from the Justice Department‘s cybercrime division shows how cell phone companies record and retain your call and surfing activity (calls, text messages, web surfing and approximate location). Here’s a summary of how each company retains your information (full details in the image below):

Verizon Wireless – rolling one-year records of cell tower usage & what phone accessed what web site
AT&T / Cingular – ongoing records of cell tower usage since July of 2008
T-Mobile USA – doesn’t keep any data on Web browsing activity
Sprint Nextel’s Virgin Mobile – 3 month record of text content
Other than Virgin Mobile and Verizon, none of the carriers keep texts but they keep records of who visited a particular web site.
Verizon keeps some information for up to a year that can be used to ascertain if a particular phone visited a particular Web site

Google Spying Cost Them $1

Some months ago, Google got caught sniffing the wireless connection in our homes as they photographed our houses to post on Google Street View. Although the case may be newsworthy, the settlement is only peanuts. Google has been found guilty of trespassing on Aaron and Christine Boring’s home and will have to pay them the astounding amount of $1 for punitive damages. The search engine giant admitted that they trespassed when they took a picture of the plaintiffs house for Google Street View and ended up settling the case. The couple were hoping to make a point, but also realized that they financially can’t take on the huge corporation.

5 Business Survival Lessons from Google’s Spying

A few months ago, Google got caught sniffing unencrypted wireless transmissions as its Street View photography vehicles drove around neighborhoods and businesses. It had been “accidentally” listening in on transmissions for more than 3 years – potentially viewing what websites you visit, reading your emails, and browsing the documents you edit and save in the cloud.

Public opinion blames Google, because Google is big and rich and and scarily omnipotent in the world of information domination. It’s fashionable to blame Google. What Google did was, to me, unethical, and they should eliminate both the collection practice and their archive of sniffed data.