An alternative to GAFAM tracking
10/05/2020
We press for an even more precise and generalized surveillance of the position of all thanks to our smartphones, yes, again them.
And to think that we willingly spend considerable sums to equip ourselves with these precious devices that threaten our freedoms and our private life !
So it is highly probable that we will soon all be closely followed officially. It is just as certain that we already are unofficially, but we could have continued to prefer not to notice it.
Despite everything, geolocation has its good sides and we should not deprive ourselves of benefiting from it. The solutions to do it are very numerous but those "offered" by the GAFAM or affiliates are even more suspect than numerous.
Then numerunique proposes a service with as main concern the respect of private life and as initial motivations two use cases:
- reassure your close ones on the good progression of a displacement,
- make a appointment wait.
The second consists in giving visibility on the imminent arrival for an appointment. Rather than saying "But what is he doing ?" the person who is waiting for you can see where you are.
The point first use case is the one that was used as a real situation test of the service on the occasion of a recent route: a trip from the Alps to the North. Who hasn't wanted to reassure his mother, his wife and his son on the good progress of a long solo trip? And it's precisely the context of this trip.
It is simply the home page of an Internet site (https://geo.nun.tf) that allows exploiting the geolocation accessible to all browsers (Firefox in this case).
A local treatment recovers the position obtained with the GPS of the smartphone and transmits it to the server that hosts geo.nun.tf.
This one records in a database the successive positions and restitutes the progression on a map on simple request of visualization of the page associated with the follow-up (geo.nun.tf/123.2133 for the example above).
It's as simple as that and the best to get an idea is to try it by going on https://geo.nun.tf (archived in March 2023; reactivable on request).
But how does this respect the private life of its user ?
Well:
- The positions transmitted between the smartphone and the server are encrypted.
- The server that hosts this service is located in France and is out of control of the GAFAM, of course.
- The mapping is provided by OpenStreeMap, a free and open system.
- This service does not use cookies,
- does not ask for login,
- does not collect any personal data,
- does not share anything with any other company,
- does no commercial exploitation of the recorded follow-ups.
- It only works if the smartphone location is active and authorized for the browser, if the page for the data transmission is active and if the smartphone is not in standby. It's moreover precisely because of this last constraint that the first part of the inaugural trip is in dotted lines.
- Only those with whom the unique link to the follow-up map has been shared have access to the follow-up.
- And finally, the positions recorded for more than 24 hours and the traces without position for more than 12 hours are deleted every day.
And in addition it is possible to use this service freely and without extra cost since there is currently no way to pay for it !