5 Terrifying Ways Your Own Gadgets Can Be Used to Spy On You
Thanks to the Bush administration and one Will Smith movie, we all have a fairly justifiable fear of government surveillance. But it turns out you should be just as paranoid about your boss, your overly affectionate uncle and that stuttering blinky guy who lingers by your garbage cans on trash days. Because thanks to modern technology, the details of your life are openly accessible to pretty much anybody who wants them.
#5.
Tracking Your Movements
Imagine it's Saturday night and you're doing your usual Saturday night thing, when your webcam secretly clicks on. And somewhere, somebody starts watching you while you wipe Dorito dusted fingers on your whitey tighties and bob your head to Nickelback. They could be secretly uploading videos of you on to YouTube, taking notes for anthropological purposes or, if you're lucky, masturbating.
And you'd never even know they're there.
Wait, What?
By now you've almost certainly heard about that high school in Pennsylvania that got in trouble for issuing its students laptops, and then spying on them in their bedrooms, remotely, by controlling their webcams.
We're going to bet that, before that story broke, you didn't know there was even such a thing as turning on somebody else's webcam against their will from across town. And maybe you thought the school had done some weird modification to the laptops, and that it was just an isolated incident by a somewhat insane school district.
Class outside? What the fuck is going on here?
The truth is, it took basically no effort on their part. All sorts of programs are available to let you remotely commandeer a webcam, and many of them are free. Simple versions will just take photos or videos when they detect movement, but more complex software will send you an e-mail when the computer you've installed the program on is in use, so you can immediately login and control the webcam without the hassle of having to stare at an empty room until the person you're stalking shows up. Convenient!
Leaving creeps free time to work on their Harry Potter/Starfox slash fiction.
One of the creepier uses of this technology came back in 2008, when a University of Florida student, who was known for helpfully fixing the computer problems of strangers, not so helpfully installed programs onto some of the computers he repaired so he could use the webcam to capture nude pictures of the girls who owned them.
This is a sad example of what would be hilarious in a wacky college movie being disturbing in real life, and we also have to wonder how someone that proficient with computers was unaware you could find plenty of naked women on the Internet in roughly three seconds.
#4.
Tracking Your Movements
Let's say that like most Cracked readers during this recession, you're a custodian. And your boss gives you a cool cell phone with a clippy thing that you attach to your waist while you're working, which you assume is so he can phone you when there's some macaroni vomit you've got to take care of. What you wouldn't assume is that he's using that cool cell phone to track and log your every custodiony movement.
9:35 a.m. - Retreated into "janitor's lounge."
For some companies, it's not enough to know what sleazy shit you're totally into on the Internet. What they really want to know is what sleazy shit you're into at the workplace. For these guys, the logical next step in employee surveillance is using GPS technology to track your every move while you're on the job.
Wait, What?
Japanese company KDDI has developed technology for cell phones that uses something called accelerometers to track precise movements, then beams all that info back to a central location. And we're not throwing the word "precise" around willy-nilly here. These guys can tell if whoever wearing the phone is sweeping versus scrubbing, walking versus running, doing number two in the bathroom versus doing number two in the secretary's filing cabinet. It's that sophisticated.
And anyone with access to your phone can secretly upload the software. Your mom. Your girlfriend. A grudge-holding, time-traveling Alexander Graham Bell... anyone.
For those of you who think that this would never be used in America, it sort of already is, just in a simpler form. Called geofencing, it's used by businesses whose employees are constantly on the move, like FedEx drivers. A GPS enabled cell phone with some software installed on it lets bosses know where their drivers are at all times, and they'll get e-mail alerts if their employees are speeding, loitering or entering "prohibited areas," like a bar, or cockfighting arenas, or their home, or whatever they feel like labeling as prohibited.
"Get back to work. Those pizzas aren't going to deliver themselves."
But, hey, it's not like they're listening in on your calls or anything...
#3.
Listening to Your Phone Calls
If you told us 20 years ago that there would be places where cell phones would be more ubiquitous than toilets, we would have shat our Girbauds and done a spit-take into your mirrored Oakleys. But here we are, in 2010, with just about every schmo carting a cell phone around like it's no big thing. Hey! You know what else is "no big thing"? Using that same ubiquitous device to to listen to your conversations, read your text messages and monitor your online browsing.
Wait, What?
Companies like Mobile Spy are on the cutting edge of the turning cell phones into secret, psycho nanny devices business. For just about $100, customers can get software that records the phone number and length of every outgoing and incoming call, all text messages sent and received, and the phone's Internet browsing history. All of that info then gets sent to a database run by the good people behind Mobile Spy, and can be perused by users at their leisure.
"Don't worry, everybody. She said she'd be right back."
Fancier programs also let you listen in on and record live phone conversations.
Now, this doesn't mean you should get all paranoid and start sending all your text messages in Esperanto, but the fact that so many different kinds of software for spying on cell phones exist suggests that there's a pretty serious market for this sort of thing.
On the plus side, none of these programs can be used unless the perpetrator has access to your phone. On the down side, anyone who does have access to your phone can monitor you like you're a dissatisfied Soviet dissident and they're the KGB.
But no untrustworthy person will ever be alone with your phone, right?
welcome paranoia
Replyomegaspy use gps all free, fully functional only $ 4.99. positioning function works very well. not too expensive for me
ReplyUnless it allows me to track you down and terminate your spamming, I'm not interested.
Damn you KDDI. I must throw away my 2005 cellphone which is somehow still more advanced than current American cellphones!
ReplyBig brother is watching
ReplyThousands of office workers just looked at a tree's dick. Welcome to the Internet.
ReplyI laughed so hard. That is one well endowed tree.
(Also, there was an ad for that same vehicle tracking service under this article. Time to do some stalking!)
#4 sounds pretty benign to me, given that all of the examples were from the context of employers keeping track of what their employees do on company time. As long as they keep that s**t to your clocked-in hours, it sounds fair at worst. In the case of something like UPS or FedEx, or even the Postal Service, it would be nice if they can tell the customer how far away you are. I would have loved to be tracked when I was doing pizza delivery, actually. Customers always assume that you’re slacking off if their food takes any longer than it would to drive down to the restaurant, but if my boss were tracking me, he could show them that I was waiting for their food at one restaurant, then another, then running red lights to get everyone their food on time. There’s nothing more frustrating than busting your ass to deliver 5 orders and the third, fourth and fifth people are like “WTF, this totally took 46 minutes, no tip for you.” Especially when you have to pay for your own gas and insurance on minimum wage or less. Sign me up for the tracking!
ReplyOf course, it’s not so great to have your movements tracked by the local PD’s political division, the FBI, your psycho stalker ex, your partner’s psycho stalker ex, etc. And it’s super easy, since an insane court decision last year gave the FBI the right to walk right up to your driveway, shimmy under your car and place a GPS device with no warrant or notification. (Check behind your bumper, BTW.) As long as your car is outside, the reasoning goes, you have no expectation to privacy. Since, you know, you totally expect people to come up and stick GPS trackers on your car. If you think about it, it’s actually kinda classist, since most people don’t have a garage and almost no one has a choice whether to park inside or outside.
the good thing is at least my parents cant spy on me with technoligy they dont have computers or cellphones and they barely know how 2 use a tv remote
ReplyDo they have access to the local computer repairman?
Oh god. It looks like I'm going to have to murder my service providers and my boss.
ReplyWow. I was about to suggest that.
i went to that website to look at peoples ciminal records and im worried....i apperently live around a s**tload of pervs.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesI live in rapeville.
Those can be for anything though. Flashing, streaking, 19 having sex with his 17 year old girlfriend with a*****e parents. You never know the whole story or even if the dude deserves to be on there. Some of them are rapists sure, some are just dudes with s**tty luck.
According to that site I live in a surprisingly safe neighborhood. But ya I've known people to get on lists like that for the stupidest of reasons. They're always so vague too. Criminal use of a firearm like this one dude here could mean anything from shooting at people to popping cans off his fence in his backyard.
In what third-world, wierd contry with messed-up laws is it illegal for a 19 yo to have sex with a consenting 17 yo?
Along with an ad offering me free phone recording software.
ReplyTerrifying.
time to use this for my personal gains.
ReplySo how many of you have now turned your webcams away from you?
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesI rarely ever hook mine up, I haven't used it in about a year.
I've never owned a webcam, I've been paranoid of this happening since they were invented. I'm a paranoid nut about some things.
I keep a short strip of painter’s tape over the camera on my macbook, with the part over the camera blacked out by a Sharpie. If I ever decide to use the webcam (I haven’t yet), I can easily tear off the tape without doing any damage to the computer. I wouldn’t even own a macbook except I got a great deal on a used one and I like having a unix terminal built in to my OS. It’s crazy how many activists have an apple webcam pointing right at them while they do everything.
I also did the tape-over-builtin-webcam trick. Not just for privacy (okay, mostly privacy), but since I basically won't ever be able to use it even if I wanted to (which I don't). The most I could do in terms of "removing" it is disabling the webcam in Device Manager (uninstalling it makes it reinstall *and* reactivate on next reboot), and redirecting all microphone recording lines to Stereo Mix (loopback for speaker output). If a hacker tried accessing my webcam now, all they'd get would be darkness and whatever music I was listening to at the time.
mine is built into the computer, i can't turn it away
First thing to do when buying a laptop that came with a webcam? Put opaque tape over it.
Something totally effed up, I think- The government completely and totally can monitor your cell phone, the calls and text messages (and probably web usage) for no good reason what so ever. I have no criminal record. The local police were doing this to my two cell phones on my account because... I don't know why. Nothing ever came out of it, because I did nothing wrong. But it is still totally f**ked up and I don't trust s**t anymore.
Reply Hide All See All 8 RepliesI'm a 20-something, white, middle class, live in small town New England... not like there is anything sus**cious about me at all. Born and raised and still live in the same town. I got rid of the phones as soon as I was told (after about 3 months) and now just have crappy pre-paid phones. I have nothing to hide, but it is creepy and disturbing, not to mention a huge violation of rights. They're still fighting in courts about if text messages can even be used as evidence, since you would think they have a reasonable expectation of privacy. They don't even need a warrant to do this.
So, uh. Yeah. Don't really have a point in this rambling, except that it is really screwed up.
The same thing happened to me for no reason. Also one time I was sitting around playing bass and I notice my web cam randomly turned on! I don't understand what their interest is in me driving granny to wal-mart is...but it's ridiculous. An everyone thinks I'm just paranoid. My friend's ipod tracked where we went one day, we found the information online. Told us what town we were in, what time, which parking space. It was messed up.
While it sucks that the police were intruding on your privacy, I think it's funny that you think the fact that you're white and middle class means you should be above sus**cion. Not like all those sus**cious poor colored folks, right? Invading THEIR privacy is TOTES understandable.
HA!! right in her ass for being an entitled white chick
I think that the point is that the FBI doesn't normally spy on people without good reason to be sus**cious, but when you do hear about them doing it, its normally on some Arab dude who travels back to the middle east every few months. It still doesn't justify spying, but that's the average story.
Sigh. After reading the "I'm white" part, I knew it was a matter of time until some retard called her racist.
She merely meant that that she's part of the majority group and thus an average citizen, not that non-white people are sus**cious and deserve to have their privacy invaded. F***tard.
Thanks largely to sellout Democrats, you have no inalienable right to privacy and security anymore. Especially not that pinko 4th amendment crap.
LadyLilyMunster, there’s an iPhone app that turns your GPS output into a randomized fractal that gives no useful information to people who would track you, just looks frustratingly pretty. I forget the name of it, and I don’t know if it works on iPods (why do iPods have GPS anyway??), but you might find it useful.
Archzodiac, there are tons of stories of the FBI spying on dissidents regardless of race. I won’t argue the fact that you don’t hear about it much, but a simple google search will fill you in. Just look up FBI car tracking device, and you’ll see a ton of stories from bloggers and just random people who get a GPS slapped under their car (usually behind the bumper), which the FBI can legally do thanks to a court ruling last year that says you have no expectation to privacy if you park outside.
ESE, the middle class is not a majority group, at least not anymore. It’s a privileged group. Like white people, except we still have the majority in many parts of the country. The thing is, white people are a minority where I live (which is in the USA), and yet Mexican people (the majority) will tell you they still get the bulk of the sus**cion from cops, retail managers, basically anyone in the sus**cion-having business. BTW, nobody called SugarStarzKill “a racist”. mickeyten said “I think it’s funny that you think [you’re] above sus**cion”. That’s easily the most benign accusation I’ve seen on the internet this month.
The point is not that SugarStarzKill herself is "racist" (who isn't?), but that we have a false sense of security around whiteness and class in this country which is rapidly crumbling under post-Bush continuation/escalation policies that make "Orwellian" an understatement.
A girl mentions she's "white" in describing herself and that suddenly makes her racist? Those of you who've made such comments are the racists. And you're absolute idiots as well.
Lol,jumpinjack. The Patriot Act wasen't voted by democrats. They failed to undo the massive damage done to basic rights of citizens just like the other major party.
Second, Mexicans are white. They are. You're just xenophobic as a nation you felt the need to make a new sub-category for them and call it ''Hispanics''.
But all this is irrelevant, enjoy your growing fascist state next time you get your junk investigated by private militia/TSA.
on second thought i like the idea of someone spending 50 bucks to purchase a list containing all of my alias' because not counting unrealistic sounding gamer tags, i have a different alias for every day of the year.
ReplyI agree, one must be an interesting person to have someone pay for their info.
Yeah, it's all fun and games until your employer, your partner, your family or the IRS start getting anonymous phone calls with details about you that may or may not have a kernel of truth.
I really think 5 only counts as a problem to woman, so i don't know why Cracked readers would be scared.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesNot necessarily. Law enforcement will probably use it soon, if they aren't already. In hopes that they can catch you doing something illegal on the web cam. They can already get your cell phone records and text messages without even a warrant or an actual good reason (I don't see my long ass comment I made, it disappeared I thnk. but his happened to me. I have NO criminal record and didn't do anything wrong. It amounted to nothing after months of surveillance. Really f**ked up).
I can't figure out if this comment is trolling or just stunningly ignorant. Oh internets, you make it so hard to tell.
Our culture does a pretty good job of obscuring the history of police surveillance and repression from the McCarthy Era, assassinations of Black Panthers, and so on, as well as distracting people from looking it up. We have a false sense of security.
omg, GREAT!
Replydammit now I'm getting paranoid, google has sh*t on everybody
ReplyI wasn't even surprised at all. Does that make me a schizo-paranoid freak?
*becomes paranoid* Well, I guess at this point in the game, our best bet's prolly just to be candid. No sense trying to hide what would be found anyway. Not saying to broadcast everything, but if you're to come under any heat or scrutiny, best not to arouse any undue sus**cious and just fess up to your oddities or explain your one-offs, eh?
Reply@Blankstair: zOMGz!
According to the site mentioned on #2, there's a murderer living in the middle of our lake.
ReplyTo be fair, Mr. Voorhees was there before you.
One dude on my map is apparently located in the center of the park, wtf? Convictions: menacing in the 1st degree, which I didn't even know was a thing until just now. My best guess is we have a scary bum wandering our park :/
How can someone be located in the middle of a lake though, lol
#5 is probably going to be illegalized within the decade (besides which you can just turn the camera around or throw a tissue over it to neutralize it for most cameras), #4 IIRC is illegal to use without informing you, #3 has been a felony since they invented the phone as far as I know, almost anything gained from #2 is either already freely available or requires that the company steals from the government, and #1 is actually astoundingly easy to detect and bypass if you know what you're doing (glance at Task Manager's processes list every now and then, run a rootkit detector, avoid shady providers like Comcast). In other words, none of these are serious threats if you just don't do anything stupid.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesIf you think the task manager or rook kit detectors can keep you safe you're a tool. You've probably got s**t on your PC right now you don't know about. Ass.
I don't think it matters if it's illegal or not, that point of this is that people will do it anyways. I highly doubt something like "the law" will stop them.
Law enforcement can do all the monitoring s**t with your cell phone, read text messages and all. Without a warrant. Or even a reason. If they had one, they never told me what it was.
WTF... if this turns into a double post I appologize. Law enforcement can already monitor your cell phone calls and texts, without a warrant. But it is having trouble standing up in court. It happened to me. I have no record what so ever, and they had no reason to do it. They were listening to my calls and reading my texts for months, and if they had a reason they never told me what it was. Nothing ever came of it because I did nothing wrong.
Illegal != not a serious threat