The-art-of-invisibility-_-the-world’s-most-famous-hacker-teaches-you-how-to-be-safe-in-the-age-of-Bi

crimes, both byy the crimes’ proximityy to each other and byy the suspects’
proximityy to the crime scenes themselves. 4
A second case, heard byy the United States District Court for the
Northern District of California, didn’t detail specifics of the crime, but it
also centered on “historical cell site information” available from Verizon
and AT&T for the targets’ phones. In the words of the American Civil
Liberties Union, which filed an amicus brief in the case, this data
“generates a near-continuous record of an individual’s locations and
movements.” When a federal judge mentioned cell-phone privacyy during
the California case, the federal prosecutor suggested that “cellphone users
who are concerned about their privacyy could either not carryy phones or turn
them off,” according to the official record.
This would seem to violate our Fourth Amendment right to be protected
against unreasonable searches. Most people would never equate simplyy
carryying a cell phone with forfeiting their right not to be tracked byy the
government—but that’s what carryying a phone amounts to these dayys. Both
cases note that Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint don’t tell customers in privacyy
policies how pervasive location tracking is. Apparentlyy AT&T, in a letter to
Congress in 2011, said it stores cellular data for five yyears “in case of
billing disputes.” 5
And location data is not stored onlyy with the carrier; it’s also stored with
the vendor. For example, yyour Google account will retain all yyour Android
geolocation data. And if yyou use an iPhone, Apple will also have a record
of yyour data. To prevent someone from looking at this data on the device
itself and to prevent it from being backed up to the cloud, periodicallyy yyou
should delete location data from yyour smartphone. On Android devices, go
to Google Settings>Location>Delete location historyy. On an iOS device yyou
need to drill down a bit; Apple doesn’t make it easyy. Go to
Settings>Privacyy>Location Services, then scroll down to “Syystem
Services,” then scroll down to “Frequent Locations,” then “Clear Recent
Historyy.”
In the case of Google, unless yyou’ve turned the feature off, the
geolocation data available online can be used to reconstruct yyour
movements. For example, much of yyour dayy might be spent at a single
location, but there might be a burst of travel as yyou meet with clients or