“The device in your purse or jeans that you think is a cellphone—guess again. It is a tracking device that happens to make calls. Let’s stop calling them phones. They are trackers. Thanks to the explosion of GPS technology and smartphone apps, these devices are also taking note of what we buy, where and when we buy it, how much money we have in the bank, whom we text and email—and more. Cellular systems constantly check and record the location of all phones in their networks. If someone knows exactly where you are, they probably know what you are doing. People should call them trackers. We can love or hate these devices—or love and hate them—but it would make sense to call them what they are so we can fully understand what they do.”
Peter Maass and Megha Rajagopalan in The New York Times
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