Amazon planning on using unmanned aerial drones to deliver your stuff

Nooo...it's the pink feathery scarf

 

I'm a bit disapointed, thought we'd have Droids by now, drones are just boysey bees.

 

How do you get stuff delivered if you don't tell anyone your address?

 

It's not the delivery per se, I don't mind the usual postie popping by it was the Bluetooth/gps suggestion to ensure where you are that was a bit spooky

 

That's mild compared to the current reality.

When you take a photo on your phone and share it on line, you are almost certainly also sharing the precise details of when and where that picture was taken (its in the metadata on the photo).

If you carry a mobile phone, the phone companies have a record of roughly (to within a few hundred metres) you are at any point in time. That's because every few minutes and/or every time your signal strength drops below a certain threshold, a 'cell search' happens where you phone automatically sends out a signal and then between your phone and the nearest few masts, they agree which mast is best for your current location and that becomes the default mast to route any calls through should you decide to make a call or if someone decides to call you.

The two main smartphone operating systems, Android and iOS, both collect location data and share it with google/apple respectively.

Every time you drive your car, you will have your number plate scanned potentially many times. Most petrol shops do ANPR these days just in case you decide to drive off without paying. Its also on some of the traffic monitoring cameras on motorways.

If you nip down town, you're probably on CCTV for more than half of the time you're out.

Your ISP knows that you've been posting on here, and they also know what else you've been looking at. They'll sell that data to marketing companies.

The list goes on.

Remember a few years ago now when famously, that great goon that fell into the role of PM after B'liar quit (Gordon Brown) accidentally said horrible things about some ordinary woman while his mic was still on? The woman had already wandered off by the time he realised his error, yet she got a phone call shortly after and Gordy apologised personally to her. I think it speaks volumes when you consider how quickly they found out who she was and how to contact her. On a much lower profile note, here's another true story. A few years my mate found out his mother, who had been ill for a while, was going to die within hours. A family fall-out years before meant that none of the family knew where the other son was. They phoned the coppers and explained the situation. 45 minutes later the other son was on the phone arranging to get there asap.

If you have access to the right databases, and its only 'trust and goodwill' (which is all rules and license agreements amount to) that prevent the data being used in the wrong way or by the wrong people.

Another true story. Years ago my dad's mate's missus had a mental breakdown and vanished. My dad's mate was so worried but the coppers said they wouldn't do anything for a certain period of time because she was an adult. My dad's mate hired a private detective. Less than a fortnight later the call came, she had claimed dole at a job centre 300 miles away. That sort of information is not public domain, but the private detective found her, and that was in the 1980s, before the interweb, before mobile phones, and before the massive availability of data that we have now.

I'm afraid big brother is very much watching us

 

You are being tracked already - when you sign their electronic gadget the exact time and location is recorded and immediately transmitted to courier, and thus supplier can see it (as can you, usually, online using the consignment note number or similar)

 

Do amazon deliver mini helipads, they could have them with GPS

 

....I've just watched the video.....you wouldn't want one of those getting in the wrong hands,who knows what could get delivered....it's very inventive but not my cup of tea...but then again i'm a bit of a luddite

 

GC challenge for 2014:

Order fireworks from Amazon, to be delivered by drone, and the challenge is to unpack and set them off to bring down the drone before it leaves your airspace

 

Oops.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25217378

That's a bit of a design blunder. All the clever engineering that goes into make something fly where you want it to, and they overlooked the importance of the signals. Basically they use unsecured wifi for control, so any spotty teenager can hijack them with ease.

Back to the drawing board I think.

 

But even an inexperienced IT bod knows that the need to secure a wifi connection is not a luxury but a basic necessity for the technology to work reliably.

If I'd been on the development team I'd have gone ballistic, and started a mutiny if a boss of mine said it was going live without rigorous security testing.

 

Nah, not the yanks. They're well known in the IT industry for their total incompetence when it comes to IT.

Its nearly 20 years since I learned about a brand new Unix system that they built, where you could hack into any account using a simple trick involving a 'buffer overrun'. 20 years later the same trick still works on some software produced by a well known US based software company and us programmers have to take our own measures to mitigate against that type of attack.

The US government's futile approach to IT security is to pursue and prosecute those that hack them, while everyone else is more focused on figuring out how the attack worked and how to plug the hole.