Here's how Russia could track your every move – without even hacking your phone
geekslop.comAm I the only one getting tired of these "there's a Russian under American's bed" stories?
I would be too if Russian agents weren't actively infiltrating our political groups:
Sorry man, but there's a lot of truth to that. I noticed Russian-based attacks against the website within minutes of publication. I guarantee you by the end of the day, they'll be hammering it.
> noticed Russian-based attacks against the website within minutes of publication
Providing some proof of these things is part of the story, but instead we just get an "I guarantee you".
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Please provide us with some.
Top IP attacker: 85.173.126.145
Logged IP addresses aren't a reliable indicator of an attacker's point of origin.
Yes, Russia is probably the greatest and most dangerous nation on Earth.
Maybe it’s just a counter narrative to TikTok is a security threat. Everyone has their bogeyperson.
Nope. But it keeps people busy from noticing their own government's bleep-ups. Somebody just earned a bowl of soup.
Ha, I have to agree. But never will I claim our government is perfect. In fact, right now, it is embarrassing for us Americans.
Fortunately, if Russia tracks my every move, it will have no effect on anything at all.
BUT if Russia (or just pick any foreign govt agency that is capable of this, pick your favorite enemy foreign or domestic) can do this to a HUGE number of people, this makes us all less private/safe/secure. I actually don't know what the best word is to use. Using these apps certainly impacts our privacy in ways we don't fully understand. It probably makes use less safe/secure as well? Also is ways we can't always know. These things don't impact a person very often, but when we're talking millions of people, the impact could be pretty huge.
> BUT if Russia (or just pick any foreign govt agency that is capable of this, pick your favorite enemy foreign or domestic) can do this to a HUGE number of people, this makes us all less private/safe/secure.
How?
It doesn't. Russia doesn't care what a huge number of people are doing; trying to keep track of them would do nothing but waste their time and resources. They want to target a few specific people.
Good question!
I can't say I have a good answer. I guess I'm thinking it's a numbers game? I don't know really what an agency could do, but it certainly makes whatever they're up to much worse.
> I don't know really what an agency could do, but it certainly makes whatever they're up to much worse.
Being flooded with information generally doesn't help you. You can ignore it, in which case it isn't helping by definition, or you can try to do something with it, in which case it's generally actively making you worse off.
You know how people complain about not knowing what to think when a product has 30 reviews online? Imagine you're supposed to read fifty million reviews, and then use them to form an educated opinion on the product.
I think one of the main problems is lack of good OS security protections on mobile phones. For example, there can be different kinds of GPS accuracy available to applications. A weather application obviously doesn’t need high accuracy gps location, stuff like this should be made clear to user through OS.
What geek doesn’t like a good conspiracy theory? Well, I’ve got one for you – a follow-the-money chain that leads from the head of Russian state to an app that is installed on millions of personal phones - one that you probably use every day.
> What geek doesn’t like a good conspiracy theory?
Well, a good geek doesn't want this type of "slop" content, because we label it "click bait". It's click bait because you only indicate social connections exist between entities of question and use excessive hype to build to the idea. It only raises more questions and does nothing to answer anything concrete about the "situation".
> If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
That's from the posting guidelines on HN. We like answers here, not more questions.
No, that's incorrect. I linked the Wall Street Journal article in the post. There are hard business connections, not just social connections. I didn't got into them in depth to keep the article short. Read the Journal article.