On Tue, 02 May 2006 14:21:38 -0500, Jon Elson
wrote:



E. Walter Le Roy wrote:

Joe bought his wife a cell phone for her birthday. This was her first
experience with one. Next day he called her and said "how do you like it/"
"Fine", she replied, "but how did you know I was at Wal-Mart?"




You think this is funny! For 911 response purposes, the cell phone
companies are
required to triangulate the location of all phones every couple of
minutes from
the several cell sites that can "hear" the phone, whenever it is turned
on to be
able to receive calls. (The newer phones have GPS receivers in them,
and the
cell sites interrogate the phones for location every couple of minutes.)
The cell
phone companies are required to keep this location tracking data for 7
years for
law enforcement purposes.

Well, the phone co's have this data laying around, what can they do to
make money off it?
So, they sell it to data banking outfits, who figured out even the
triangulation data
is good enough to tell which store a consumer is visiting, and the GPS
data is
good enough to tell when you are in the cosmetics aisle, and when you
are in the
pet food one. Then, they combine this with credit card info, and they
can figure
out what you bought, and when!

Jon
I wonder what the market in older cell phones is going to be like.
Mine is a Nokia 6188 dgital/analog and I have no plans to get into the
new camera, MP3, internet, self fornicating models. This phone is
giving excellent service on a "pay and talk" plan which includes
redundant emergency road service. I don't use this much as indicated
by my carryover air time of over 14 hours of local calling time.
Gerry :-)}
London, Canada