Tim RichardsWalking through Melbourne Airport, Telstra texted me with a link about roaming access rates. Bit creepy. How did it know where I was, and how do I turn that off? (It doesn’t appear to be the My Telstra app, location services are off on that.)
Tatham Oddie@timrichards
Your telco knows which cell you are connected to. Cell data is stored as part of mandatory metadata retention legislation. You can request copies of your own data, e.g. via https://www.telstra.com.au/privacy/customer-access, but you can't turn this off as it's part of a) how the network functions, and b) legislation. The proactive texts are about avoiding bill shock, and are aligned to the Telecommunications Code of Practice, which is a regulatory instrument.
Your telco knows which cell you are connected to. Cell data is stored as part of mandatory metadata retention legislation. You can request copies of your own data, e.g. via https://www.telstra.com.au/privacy/customer-access, but you can't turn this off as it's part of a) how the network functions, and b) legislation. The proactive texts are about avoiding bill shock, and are aligned to the Telecommunications Code of Practice, which is a regulatory instrument.
@tatham Hmm I can see the point, but it still seems a bit creepy
@timrichards Well, now it does.
Your ye olde Nokia 3310 would have shown the "cell info" on screen, so you'd see something like "Telstra Melb Air" on the actual handset.
Now, you see a per-day breakdown of data usage on your bill. Wind back a few years ago, and each of those data sessions were basically phone calls, so your bill would have shown "12 Jan - Melbourne Airport - 10min14sec - 18234kb", and so on and so on. Your bill slowly became a minute-by-minute tracker of everywhere you'd been.
This position has wound back a *lot* over the last decade or so, as lots of those things have been intentionally constrained/removed.
These days, the other main usage for cell-targeted messaging is emergency alerting. Government-triggered alerts are delivered via SMS to targeted geographic areas for things like fire and flood evacuations. This is powered by similar infrastructure as what you just hit on. https://www.emergencyalert.gov.au/home
Lots of things to balance...
@timrichards In the opposite direction, something that's new(-ish) is actually grabbing your GPS data when you call 000.
https://exchange.telstra.com.au/triple-zero-advanced-mobile-location/
When you call 000, your phone will now also activate the GPS, grab your lat/long, and then automatically shoot it off to 000 as a text message. On the call centre side, we correlate the phone call and the text message back together, and then hand that location data off to police/fire/ambulance. This is way more precise than using the cell tower information to guess within a few km.
It does go in the opposite direction though of capturing more data rather than less. Again, lots to balance.
