Listener Mail Roundup

and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Polette. I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot com and as usual I have sitting next to me senior writer Jonathan Strickland. How all right? How do you? And today we thought we'd try something brand new. You know, we've done a couple of different sort of theme podcasts in the past, and this time it's yeah, okay, a couple. Well, we've done a couple of you know, Christmas, we've done the New Years, We've done focus on the innovators. This

time we're doing a listener mail round up. Yes, let's get along, little dogies. So this first listener mail comes from John from Medford, New York. Guys can you tell me if there is an easy way to track the GPS in someone's phone. I've seen all sorts of services and expensive equipment out there, but there must be some inexpensive or easy way to it. I think he means to do it. Yeah. UM, listen here, John, We've learned the hard way about this topic. UM. So GPS receivers.

The key word in that is receivers. A receiver receives signals. It does not transmit signals. So if you're in a with a phone is a little different. But let's say you just have a regular GPS receiver. That receiver is not indsmitting any data to any other device or service. Um. What it's doing is it's acting like essentially in antenna and and and there's a computer in there that analyzes the data, which then tells you where you are. But it's just receiving signals that are being sent out by

GPS satellites. And these things are just sending They're just bombarding the Earth with signals, radio signals. That's it. Um. It's like any other radio tower. It's not directed specifically at any individual. It's just hitting a specific area of

the world. Yes, and that's how that's how the receiver tells it goes you know, hey, I seem to be this far from satellite an't seen to be that far from satellite B. I should be right about here exactly, although usually it's also there's a satellite see but simplifying sites so um so yeah, but yeah, what it's doing is it's taking these signals and it's comparing the time stamps and by telling how how long it takes the

signal to get to the receiver. That's that's how it kind of figures out where on Earth you must be, because it's like there's only one spot on Earth where this would happen, so you have to be here. So I'm guessing that John wants to find Carmen san Diego. Yes, if Carmen san Diego has a GPS receiver and no other device on her, you're just gonna have to follow those clues like the rest of us. Um my guess

is she's probably stealing Beethoven. But uh, oh my gosh, I can't believe I can't even remember anything about Carmen san Diego. You know, I just do it out there is a one time or all I have to say is rock on rockapella. So anyway, the so so just you know, the current copyright holders are going to be all over this. No no, that's always said was rockafella.

We didn't sing the song. We're fine. So yeah. The thing is, I'm not quite sure why you want to track somebody else's GPS and I'm not gonna ask, right, that's tricky. Let's play. Let's play the game. Let's assume that whomever it is you wish to try wants you to be able to find him or her, because that is a lot easier to talk about than you have an interest in a particular person and you want to be able to follow them and they not know about it,

because that's kind of creepy. So John, we figure you're a stand up guy. Uh And so let's say that you know, you and your buddy you want to you want a way to be able to tell where where people are so that you know, you can, like how I see that he's in the mall too, I can go by and just say, hey, uh well, the GPS

receiver by itself is not going to do that. However, there are devices that use other methods of distributing information that can help you, For instance, there are smartphones that have a GPS receiver, and of course a smartphone also is a phone, I mean, otherwise it's not a phone, right, So that makes sense. Right. So, in the way the smartphone can send out signals via either cellular or maybe even radio signals like WiFi. UM, that could send data

about your location to other people. And there are plenty of services that do use this kind of method. Oh yeah, they'll they will absolutely do that and do it for free, you know, if you're if you're willing to spend the battery it takes in order for it to constantly update your location through your cellular provider. Um. You can install one of many many applications to your smartphone that will allow you to do this, and and some of them don't even use the GPS receivers. Some of them just

tulate triangulate through the cell towers. Right now, that's not as accurate your Wi Fi networks networks, which is even less accurate, right, so you can kind of in those cases, you'll just get sort of a general location. UM, you won't be able to pinpoint someone's location, so you can't send the murder bots to you know, the corner of fifth and Maine. You're gonna be like, um, search this three block area and then find my victim. Hold off Ninja's.

I can't send in just yet, Right, you should just send the pirates anyway, because they'll maraud through the entire town there. You know, Ninja's are very precise and Uh, anyway, we're getting off topic. So the if you have a phone that uses the sort of uh, the sort of applications, then you can keep track of someone if that person has installed those applications on his or her phone and

usually designates you as someone who can look at that information. Yeah, some of them, some of them broadcast the information to the general public, but others are more like there's a network, like a kind of a network of friends like you would have on Twitter, where just people within that network can see where you are at any given time. Yeah, I mean there are there are other devices too. There aren't phones like the Spark Nano from Lightning gps UM.

It's a little gadget. It's about size of nine volt battery. Um. It cost two and forty five dollars a month for the service, which is probably the expensive thing you were talking about. Uh, And this this actually got a lot of press. I saw lots and lots of articles about this one. Must have good pr folks anyway, UM, basically, what it does is it, you know, lets you track somebody. You sign up for it and it sends information back to the service and says, hey, this person is at

this location. UM. One application you could use this for is say you had a student latchkey kid. Uh, you know, your son or daughter, and you wanted to know are they gonna be okay? You know, are they going to make it home because they're walking home, They're gonna let themselves in when they get there. Well, it actually will tell you if they hit the safe zone. So you

can designate this location, this GPS location as a safety zone. UM, and it will Basically you can go on the website and go, oh yeah, Chester made at home, Fine, everything's all right. There is a panic button too. If something happens, it can summon help. So I mean that's the exact kind of thing that it could be used. But um,

similar devices have been used by law enforcement authorities. Sure, and uh, you know they could be attached to a car there even UM, there are other applications to athletes use them and their coaches can tell how fast they're going because it's using GPS information to see, well, they made it this far in this amount of time. Um. There's all kinds of stuff that this is being used for. Uh. And you know there are questions when the police use it over whether or not it's a violation of privacy

and things like that. As a matter of fact, there's a case right here in Georgia where they're considering passing a law that would make it a violation privacy for anybody other than like the owner of a vehicle or you know, the police to track a GPS like that. What would Sting want with all that information? Oh, the municipal police, the cops, you know, those people that they have the show on TV about don't stand so close

to me. Um. But one of the for example, one of the applications we talked about earlier that a good example would be the Google My Location which I have on my HTC G one Google Android phone. And yeah, that one triangulates through cell towers and people can see if they're added to your network, they can see where you are. I don't have anyone added to my network, so I only see me. And it's kind of sad, but I know where I am, which, by the way, came in handy when I was walking around other cities.

Yeah yeah, but things like bright kite, Yeah, who's fire Eagle, there's They are all kinds of services out there. Oh yeah, yeah. Well, the thing is you can use these for, uh, for all kinds of great social networking applications if you really

want to. I mean, you can open up your location to the general public and people will find you and go, hey, I'm down the street you want to meet up for a drink, And if you're willing to meet a complete stranger who randomly said, hey, I found you through your GPS location and I know where exactly where you are,

and then of course there's a fine. There was a boost mobile you had the where You're where you at campaign, But yeah, that was the same sort of thing and has triangulated and sent that information to people within your network so that that way they would know where you were at any given time. UM. I don't know that I would necessarily add people to mind network. I don't know that I want people to know where I am

all the time. Uh, I'm pretty sure they don't want to know where I am all the time, So I don't see why they would add me, to be perfectly honest, unless they just wanted to have fair warning before I shoved up like belling the cat. That that I totally understand, But I hope that answers your question. Really, what it comes down to is, if the person wants to share that information, it's easy. If the person does not want to share that information, it probably shouldn't be looking into it.

And it's not easy, and it's probably not going to be legal, especially if this uh, this new law sets a precedent if it gets passed, and should say, because it is still not passed. Um, And I'm not quite sure how you would steal a signal. I mean, what we're talking about there is the law enforcement authorities or private investigators or whomever clipping a GPS device to you. So I mean that's one thing. Stealing somebody else's signal.

I'm not you'd have to command near the frequency. It would only make sense if you're talking about like like the parent of a child and you enable this feature on a phone and the child is unable to disable the feature. That would make sense. You know that's true, all right? Well, then, uh, I guess that will move us on to our second email. Okay, I'm not gonna do the warning signal this time, all right? So this comes from Ben m Hey, guys, love your podcast and

all the things I learned on my daily walks. I was coming home from work the other day and thought of an issue that I thought might make a cool podcast for you. A lot of credit cards these days have a little square gold chip on the front of the card. What is that for and what what does

it do that a regular credit card doesn't? As well as a couple of years back, there was talk about innovations to credit cards and debit cards for that matter, that stores may soon be able to scan your card and your purchases barcodes as you leave the store and debit the amount off your card without you having to go through a checkout at all. Does any of this ring a bell with something that you two have heard

of or does it make no sense at all? If you could find anything or know anything, I would love to hear it in a future podcast. Thanks guys. Ben. Well Ben, if you're in Europe, you've been using this for a while, so I'm guessing you are one of our fellow Americans, because over in Europe and other parts of the world, the this is not an unusual thing

at all. In fact, it's pretty much common practice, almost to the point now where it can be problematic for an American traveling overseas to purchase things using an old fashioned credit card. UM. And this this comes down to four letters. Uh. Those would be r F I, N D radio frequency identification and Uh. Basically, the chip that you're talking about is UM is a little piece of transistor material that circuits, yes, and in grace circuit that carries material. And they can be made of a lot

of different things. They can actually have a little computer on board, although those are you know, kind of expensive and and they're usually found in things other than credit and debit cards. We should go ahead and first say that these smart chips is kind of the common term for them. But these smart chips can be found in all sorts of different cards, not just credit cards or

debit cards. UM. For example, Palette and I both use one on a daily basis just to get to work because we take the public transportation system here in Atlanta called Marta, and they rely on something called a breeze card, and the Breeze card has the this sort of smart chip technology in it, and that's what allows you to go through the low turnstiles and it Uh the ones that we have keep track of what date they were activated, and then uh others might keep track of how many

trips are on the card. But that's the same sort of thing. It's this this technology. You put it to a scanner, the scanner identifies the card, it knows whether or not the card is valid, and then it activates or doesn't at debate the turnstyle. And the Reefs card is made of paper. So if you are in Atlanta or if you have a transportation authority that uses a similar card, you can hold it up to the light and you'll see the wiring inside of it. It's kind of it's kind of funny. Um, but that sort of

isn't exactly what you were talking about. I did think of another application that we use every day. Both of us use a g S M cell phone. Oh, yes, that's true, and uh those come with little itty bitty smart cards. If you have a cell phone from a GSM provider, uh such as T Mobile or a T n T, you'll see they came with a big credit card sized thing, and generally they break out this itty bitty smart chip and they stick at your phone, and that chip is what allows the phone to communicate with

a network. So you might think, okay, well, if I can get a credit card that has this chip in it and you can just sort of, you know, wave it in front of a scanner, um and then purchase something, how safe is that? Well, if that were all there were to it, that's not safe at all, because there are actually devices out there that can record the signature of and of one of these smart chips and sort

of create a copy of it. It's called spoofing. UM. And if that were all there were to it, where you just had to spoof the signature of this card, that would be a nightmare, uh, because it would mean that someone could easily steal someone's credit card number essentially and go on a shopping spree. H. Fortunately, most of the credit and debit cards that use this technology over in Europe also require the user to enter a pen number. So it's the chip and pen system or pin and chip.

I think, and uh, you know, the card says okay, this is this is what lets me buy stuff. The pin number verifies it and then you can purchase whatever. So that way, if someone just were to accidentally leave their card behind and I don't know a restaurant that they frequent way too often, like me, UM, you wouldn't have to worry about someone just picking it up and then going out and buying tons and tons of stuff because they also need your pin number before they could

do it. So it's actually fairly secure. It's not you know. When I first heard about it, I was like, what keeps anyone from just copying the signal and just going crazy and you know, running up and down Oxford Street buying everything they can. I mean, that's that's the thing. It's it's ultra convenient to uh, to imagine, and and there are some places in the United States that do that. I can think of a couple of gas companies where you can buy gas using their proprietary smart chip UM.

And there are some fast food companies I could think of too that that read the cards UM, JP, Morgan Chase in American Express have had smart chips in their cards for years. As a matter of fact, the Blue Card, I remember the ads saying that that chip protects you when you go online. I was going, yeah, but that's an notified chip. I'm not sure how that protects you when you're plugging the numbers in and your um and somebody writes and ask I'll have to find out. But

in the meantime, UM, we're just gonna skip right over. Yeah, we're gonna skip right over it because I don't get it. Uh. The other thing to keep in mind, um, okay, so that's ultraconvenient, and it can be very secure if you combine it with something like a pin. But okay, so what you're talking about, the shopping thing, you've got to plug in. In order for that system to work. You have to plug in an r f I D chip

on every single product, and that can be expensive. Well, not only that, but you also have to create, you know, build in our f I D readers, scanners and all of those businesses. That's the main reason why we haven't seen this in a wide range rollout in the United States. It's because it would be really expensive to replace all that equipment, and and that's what's holding people back. That's

what's holding back. You know, the banks and financial institutions are are really slow to adopt this technology just because it's a huge headache to try and convert everything over um. That also means it's a huge headache for anyone traveling overseas because we're using the old magnetic strip on our credit cards and debit cards, and a lot of the places in Europe have switched over so that it only reads the smart ship. That you put the card in a reader and it it detects the smart ship and

then prints out your receipt. Um. Well, if you don't have a smart chip, it can't do that. And some of them don't have the magnetic readers anymore for the strip, so you have to see if they have one of those old credit card carbon copy machines in the back. But uh, I mean it's that's a that's a problem, and hopefully the United States will eventually switch over to the smart chip technology to at least make it easier for global travelers like you know yours truly, I like

to I like to jet set. Well, you know, if you do like to jet set your your passport if you get a new passport, the United States does have a smart ship in that passport, which also freaks people out because they have to deal with the idea that somebody might be able to scan their identity just by walking nearby with an antenna. And there are there are a lot of other people who I mean, they're they're

extremes that you can take this to. Like some people have actually gone to the trouble to have their r f I d uh chips implanted in their bodies. Um. I read an article about a guy who actually keyed his motorcycle with an r f I D chip, So all he had to do was put his hand on it and it would it would function as the key. He can repress the starter and it would read the r f I D chip in his hand and know it was him and start the engine. I just wanted

that story to end with. And then the motorcycle was stolen and we now call the guy lefty. No, I wasn't going to go there. There are also people who see biblical interpretations of this and say this is the you know, mark of the beast you can't do the business with. Regardless of whether you believe it or not. It's kind of interesting to think about because you went, well, yeah, I mean if they did away with other uh, you know, with other means of paying for stuff, and I had

to have the number implanted in me. Wow, that's kind of creepy, you know that that you could see that the how people would make that connection. I don't necessarily believe that that, you know, is the case, but I think it's you know, it makes sense that someone would

make that connection, sure, is what I said. I So there are people, there are people who are you know, seeing this in all sorts of different in all sorts of different ways, and people who are making wallets that are you know, basically restricting the signal from being transmitted outside your your wallets so that if someone bumps you with an R F I D reader that they can't

steal that information off the chip. And I have heard that it is actually harder to spoof the information off of the smart chip than it is the magnetic um essentially magnetic tape, the magnetic strip that we have on our cards right now. So theoretically it's that would be good. Yeah, theoretically it's easier to actually copy the technology we're using now than it is to copy the smart chips. You just have to have the right equipment to and we've

we've seen this happen. We've seen you know, uh, rings of credit card thieves who had installed software on various UM scanners in different stores, and they were collecting credit card numbers and debit card numbers and pen numbers as well. And UM, so, I mean it sounds at first when you start talking about wireless you always think, oh, well, that's automatically less secure than, uh, than any other like

a hard copy method or whatever, something that's not necessarily wireless. Uh. In this case, UM, I think we can say that the smartship technology is at least as secure, or if you prefer, as insecure as the dominant technology in the United States. Yes, you tse it. It It will completely fall to pieces because it's insecure. It took me a second. That was like a little joke grenade. I hope I jumped on that for the rest of you. Um, I'm done. Yeah,

I don't. I don't really have anything else to add to it, and I don't have any more emails to go through for this for this episode. Okay, So we hope to do more of these in the future. We very much like to um respond to readers. So if you have a question, if it's a short one, that's okay, we can group them together like we have here. If it's all longer answer them. We'll we'll tackle that as well. You could write us at tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. And remember we have blogs up. You

can follow our blogging exploits. Chris and I blog once per day, and uh, we have lots of interesting things to say there that we don't necessarily cover in the podcast, so check those out too. You can go to house stuff works dot com look in the right hand side.

You'll see the links there. And of course, if you want to read more about r F I D technology and other things like credit card technology, we have articles up on the site that that how stuff works dot com and we will talk to you again really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how staff works dot com and be sure to check out the new tech stuff blog now on the house stufforks homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you