Does technology really track your every move…?

It is very concerning, though I worry far more about commercial interests than any governmental agency.

How do I protect myself as far as possible? Firstly by not living on the wretched instrument from rising in the morning to going to bed at night!

Then by it being a simple 'phone on PAYG and without Internet access.


So what of tracking?

I am not too bothered that B&Q, say, knows I have bought a tin of paint and box of screws; or that Lidls has noted my electric screwdriver among the tins of beans and bag of spuds.

I am more concerned about what may happen to my name and personal details - there is a vast and flourishing international trade in those and by no means all of it is innocent.

However, whilst the systems can track your 'phone and where, when and how you use it; it is tracking the instrument. It has to know where it is in order to work!

If it spots that I used it at one day at home then once a week later 300 miles away then a few days after that back home; it does not know when and why I travelled, what I was doing there, whom I met beyond noting that one called number, where we went, why, etc. Nor what I may have bought, because I do not use it for buying anything. The network simply knows the telephone went on an excursion.

That example is based on some separate but real breaks, and is about my normal rate of use.

In between my use for it, and especially when I am driving (obviously), the telephone is switched off, and it often left behind even if I go out for a day. I have read that the instrument still transmits homing signals to its own network even when nominally "off", but not from authoritative sources, and I am not convinced. The battery drain seems too low for that, although any such signal might be only milliseconds long, at fairly long intervals.

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If I were ever to buy what was until fairly recently described as a "smart"-'phone I'd follow the same practices.

Further to using it only as and when necessary to me, I'd use its on-line services as little as possible, or even not at all, load as few so-called "apps" (sloppy term) as possible, and delete any already installed that I neither want nor need - including social-media site links. I have a computer on a broadband service for that.

(I assume the communications companies do allow users to do this.... I have occasionally noticed users scroll through screenful after screenful of symbols to find the one they want!)

I'd also not use it as a substitute bank-card. That is asking for trouble.


In other words, be as unco-operative with the data-harvesters as possible.

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One wise precaution.... if you use your 'phone to pay car-park meters be aware that phishing gangs are known to put their own QR code stickers over the official ones....

Another: do not make it clear you own one by wandering around the streets waffling vaguely towards it, or carrying it protruding from a pocket!

I worry more about the likes of Google; Yahoo; Amazon; Facebook etc.

Just because they wave the 'anti hate speech' at you as the reason given for seemingly endless changes to terms and conditions of service that often include waiving your right to anonymity somewhere among it's latest 40 page legalise update that you have to agree to in order to continue to use it.