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Companies tracking your location

O

oceanobsession

pfm Member
There was a time when I had done my days work and I was told to go home but 20 years on American company and trackers came into place , but its expensive and there were problems with costs , and now
comes the new Samsung a5 smart phone and an ap called caspa , anyway my main grip isn't caspa its my
company seeing my location and time route etc , apparently its all done on google , and if youre signed up
to google you can track all the gps information and whereabouts of your phones location , but our companys
managers can get detailed whereabouts of your position on this earth and history going back , it would be
beneficial to understand this technology , I would love to get into my own phone and find out were I have
been today , if you know what I mean . apparently you have to have a google account and an id to get into
your own location , but the company can get into all 500 or so employs , because they have the id maybe someone
can anyone help or offer any advice to beat the bastards . phil.
 
We all have company phones but many of us can leave them at work.
Usually they can access your photos, web sites etc.
If you are not doing anything you shouldn't be then you just have to accept this s a part of our lives like it or not.
Now I might be talking futuristic crap but about 12 years ago we trailed a normal looking swipe card that you didn't need to swipe, one of the lads carried it and when he drove in it was in his wallet and it set an alarm off in security 50 ft away, since then I have assumed our ID badges are tracking us too.
I believe shops can now send ads to you as you walk past!
 
Well, I don't have a company phone. (Hint: retired old fart) The mobile phone I do have is an old *phone*. Not a computer, tablet, iWotsit, etc. And even when I take the phone out with me I have it switched off unless I need to make a call. So tracking me this way might tend to come up dry most of the time.
 
One of the reasons I consider myself utterly unemployable in the modern workplace. The nearest I’ve seen to that is a large ISP technical call centre where the phone monkeys were treated like school kids and had to ask to go the toilet or whatever. I was a trainer/quality team manager so not subject to those rules beyond having to enforce them, which made me cringe so I bent them as much as possible. A horrible environment IMO. I swore never to set foot in another call centre for the rest of my life. I’m now so set in my ways I can’t imagine being able/prepared to put up with the authoritarianism of most modern semi-skilled or even skilled or management roles. I’d just tell them to stick it and walk out! Self-employment is my only realistic option!
 
The Data Protection Act might help. Your employer can't process personal information about you unless it has a good reason for doing so, and can't force you to consent to the processing (consent has to be freely-given, and the imbalance of power between employer and employee normally works in your favour here).

It would seem unlikely it has the need or right to track your movements outside your contracted working hours (unless it has good grounds to suspect you may be doing something in breach of your contract, and even then, its right to track would be pretty limited). You have the right to know a) whether it is collecting and using this data; b) the right to know what data it holds and obtain a copy; and c) the right to ask it to cease processing the data. It can only refuse in certain limited circumstances, and if you are just a normal employee going about your business, then it would seem unlikely that any of those circumstances would kick in. After May next year, when new data protection legislation comes into force, your rights are even stronger.

Finally, if you switch the phone off, the data aren't collected, so I'd have a private phone and a work phone, and switch off the work phone when I was not at work or on-call.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Finally, if you switch the phone off, the data aren't collected, so I'd have a private phone and a work phone, and switch off the work phone when I was not at work or on-call.
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This ^^^

When I had a blackberry it had a great timer that could switch off the phone at 1800 and switch it back on at 0800.

Work used to get a bit narky I wasn't available 24/7 but all the engineers used to share personal numbers so if you were having an issue out of hours you could call another engineer for advice. This worked much better as you would be guaranteed to get a call from one of the managers to fix something for them even when you weren't on call.

It does annoy me that employers assume that people should available to them as a resource 24/7 these days.
 
Jim Audiomisc said:
And even when I take the phone out with me I have it switched off unless I need to make a call.
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You are my Dad and I claim my £5!

Hint - telephones are quite handy in that in addition to making outgoing calls they allow other people to contact you if necessary, for example if you are picking them up at an airport or railway station and they are on a different flight or train.
 
both my Mother and MIL are guilty of keeping a mobile phone switched off. MIL has hers in the boot of the car. useless when we are trying to call her to change the arrangements on picking up kids from the school bus!

Older people still like to call a landline to a building, hoping the person they want is there, rather than calling the person they want to speak to!
 
Google tracking of a work phone for someone travelling for work is pretty standard these days. We called a taxi last night - we were able to track it on an app, to see when it arrived!
 
There are 2 sides to this coin - it is useful to have WiFi with geo-location so that when clients access our main building we know them and can have an automated reception function (direct client to meeting room with a map, call host, ask client if they’d like coffee, etc). I can’t remember which airport has done similar for a fully automated check in and flight boarding procedure.

If there is geolocation on your mobile connection, then you must be logging into or running a company service or application - simply log out or shut app at end of business day. Only your mobile provider, and government agencies with the power to command them, have unlimited access to you location at any time ( based on which mobile points your phone is talking to).
 
Oh, and why would anyone log into something like google nowadays - I’m pretty sure their T&Cs would now include being able to use your location data too!
 
JensenHealey said:
Older people still like to call a landline to a building, hoping the person they want is there, rather than calling the person they want to speak to!
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Quite right too, and best to use a land line when calling one, they have no idea where your are or where your head is at :)

Bloss
 
I do sometimes wonder why I even have a phone as when it rings its usually some one trying to get me to do something, sell something or just mither me
 
Dowser said:
If there is geolocation on your mobile connection, then you must be logging into or running a company service or application - simply log out or shut app at end of business day. Only your mobile provider, and government agencies with the power to command them, have unlimited access to you location at any time ( based on which mobile points your phone is talking to).
Click to expand...

I think geolocation these days more often makes use of the gps receiver built in to smartphones, rather than triangulation from mobile masts. It's true though that there may need to be a tracker app of some sort (unless you're logged in to a service like Google which you've granted location access to).
 
What's the simplest way to comprehensively knock it on the head- flight safe mode, power down or place in a Faraday cage?
 
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