NC_2024_11_17
This episode of Tiny Mac Tips covers scanning documents via Continuity Camera, using QuickLook for file previews, and customizing the macOS Dock, offering practical strategies to enhance productivity for all Mac users.
Automatic Shownotes
Chapters
NC_2024_11_17
Tiny Mac Tips Part 9 of X – iOS as a Scanner for macOS, QuickLook, Dock Tips
Scan from iPhone or iPad
QuickLook
Control the Dock
I Finally Found a Use for Tab Groups (With Profiles) in Safari
Support the Show
CCATP #803 – Adam Engst on Invasive Location Tracking and Tips On How to Manage
Long Summary
In this episode of Tiny Mac Tips, we reach part nine of our ongoing series aimed at helping Jill from the Northwoods evolve from an adequate Mac user to a proficient one. I dive deep into interesting tips that can be easily implemented, allowing users to optimize their Mac experience effortlessly. As we navigate through the episode, we tackle some philosophical questions surrounding the concept of "tiny tips" while also exploring the essential tools within the macOS ecosystem.
The session includes three tiny yet impactful tips. The first focuses on scanning documents directly into your Mac using your iPhone or iPad, utilizing the Continuity Camera feature. This seamless integration is a game-changer for macOS and iOS users, allowing for quick scans without the need for bulky hardware. I walk through the simple steps required to get started, from ensuring your devices are connected appropriately to the exact process of scanning documents directly into Finder, Mail, or various other applications. The user-friendly approach shows how scanning can be efficient, even allowing for multiple-page documents to be captured without hassle.
Next, we delve into the hidden gems of macOS, particularly highlighting the QuickLook function. I illustrate how this feature allows users to quickly preview files without needing to open them fully, saving time and streamlining workflows. The intuitive demonstration covers a variety of file types from images to PDFs, showcasing how this simple keystroke—hitting the space bar—can be a productivity booster and allow for better file management decisions.
The episode culminates with a thorough examination of the macOS Dock. I provide detailed insights on how to customize the Dock for maximum efficiency and personal preference, from rearranging icons to modifying the appearance of folder stacks. By harnessing the features within the Dock, users can tailor their workspace to reflect their workflow, making it easier to access important applications and files. Alongside these practical tips, I also share new findings related to functionality that many may not know exists, further enriching the Mac experience.
In closing, I reflect on the overall theme of the episode, emphasizing the importance of these small tips—while deemed "tiny," their impact on productivity and efficiency is anything but minor. This installment serves to empower all Mac users, irrespective of their current proficiency, equipping them with the knowledge to transform their everyday computing tasks.
The session includes three tiny yet impactful tips. The first focuses on scanning documents directly into your Mac using your iPhone or iPad, utilizing the Continuity Camera feature. This seamless integration is a game-changer for macOS and iOS users, allowing for quick scans without the need for bulky hardware. I walk through the simple steps required to get started, from ensuring your devices are connected appropriately to the exact process of scanning documents directly into Finder, Mail, or various other applications. The user-friendly approach shows how scanning can be efficient, even allowing for multiple-page documents to be captured without hassle.
Next, we delve into the hidden gems of macOS, particularly highlighting the QuickLook function. I illustrate how this feature allows users to quickly preview files without needing to open them fully, saving time and streamlining workflows. The intuitive demonstration covers a variety of file types from images to PDFs, showcasing how this simple keystroke—hitting the space bar—can be a productivity booster and allow for better file management decisions.
The episode culminates with a thorough examination of the macOS Dock. I provide detailed insights on how to customize the Dock for maximum efficiency and personal preference, from rearranging icons to modifying the appearance of folder stacks. By harnessing the features within the Dock, users can tailor their workspace to reflect their workflow, making it easier to access important applications and files. Alongside these practical tips, I also share new findings related to functionality that many may not know exists, further enriching the Mac experience.
In closing, I reflect on the overall theme of the episode, emphasizing the importance of these small tips—while deemed "tiny," their impact on productivity and efficiency is anything but minor. This installment serves to empower all Mac users, irrespective of their current proficiency, equipping them with the knowledge to transform their everyday computing tasks.
Brief Summary
In this episode of Tiny Mac Tips, we advance Jill's Mac skills with practical strategies. I demonstrate how to scan documents into your Mac using the iPhone or iPad via Continuity Camera, making multi-page captures seamless. We also explore the QuickLook function for quick file previews, enhancing productivity with a simple keystroke. Finally, I discuss customizing the macOS Dock for improved efficiency. These small yet impactful tips aim to elevate the everyday Mac experience for users at any skill level.
Tags
Tiny Mac Tips
Jill's Mac skills
scan documents
iPhone
iPad
Continuity Camera
multi-page captures
QuickLook function
file previews
macOS Dock
productivity
efficiency
everyday Mac experience
Transcript
[0:00]Music.
[0:29]With part nine of Tiny Mac Tips. This is an ongoing series I started in order to teach Jill from the Northwoods how to move from an adequate Mac user to a proficient one. In case you missed the earlier installments, I've included links to the first eight installments in the show notes. I do want to ask you a philosophical question before I start. If the tips I'm going to give you truly are tiny, but because I want to be thorough, they take me a long time to explain, do they really still count as tiny Mac tips? While we're asking a philosophical question, why do I call this Tiny Mac Tips? Is the Mac tiny? Maybe it should have been called Mac Tiny Tips. Oh well, here we are. I've been doing it for long enough that we're going to stick with the name. Now, I only have three tiny tips in this segment, but two of them were fun, so I really dug into them.
[1:15]
Scan from iPhone or iPad
[1:16]If you need to do a lot of scanning, you probably have a flatbed scanner, better yet, one of those fancy multi-sheet scanners. But what if you don't have room for one of those devices, or you're mostly paperless already, and only occasionally need to scan in a receipt or some random piece of paper. If you're a macOS and iOS user, you can use your iOS device to scan right into your Mac. Apple uses the word continuity to describe a whole slew of services that let you use your Apple devices in concert with each other. One of those features is called continuity camera, and that's what we're going to talk about today. Now, you may have heard of continuity camera in the context of using an iPhone as a webcam, but Continuity Camera also lets you use your iOS device's camera as a scanner. Before I explain how easy this is, let's quickly walk through the requirements. Both your Mac and your iOS device must have Wi-Fi turned on, but they don't have to be connected to any Wi-Fi network. They both must have Bluetooth turned on, and you must be signed into the same Apple account on both devices that use two-factor authentication. That might sound obvious, but you also need to have the iOS device near the Mac for it to work.
[2:24]Let's start with my favorite way to scan into my Mac, and that's straight into the Finder. Let's say you have a folder for receipts. Open it up in any view where you can see some empty space, where when you click, you won't be clicking on any existing files. Right-click in that empty space to see the contextual menu. You'll see the usual suspects like New Folder, Git Info, and more, but at the bottom, you should see Import from iPhone or iPad with a chevron looking over to the right. Move over to Chevron, and you'll see the name of your device, and below that, three options. You'll see Take Photo, Scan Documents, and Add Sketch. You can play around with Take Photo and Add Sketch on your own time. We're doing serious business here, so we're going straight to Scan Documents. Now, I'm going to just say iPhone from here on out, but you understand this applies to all iOS devices.
[3:14]As soon as you choose Scan Documents, even if your phone was locked at the time, its camera will turn on. You'll see the camera shutter button, and above that it will say, position the document in view. Now simply hover your phone over the document you want to scan. As soon as the camera recognizes there's a rectangular area to scan, it will highlight it in blue and automatically scan the document. If you only need to scan that one page, simply hit save and you're done. The camera will shut off, your phone will go back to the lock screen, and in Finder you'll see a new document called scandocument.pdf. That's literally it. In what, 4.7 seconds, you have scanned a document into your Mac. That's how I can prove that this is a tiny tip. That was the whole tip. You know I can't stop there.
[4:02]What if you have a multi-page document? No problem. After you scan the first page, instead of hitting save, simply move your camera so it can't see anything to scan, flip the page over, bring the camera back, and hover over the second page. The scanner function will add that second page to the PDF, and you can keep going until your entire document is scanned and only then hit the save button. But what if you make a mistake on a page? You can tap on it right after you take it and you'll get the option to retake the shot. Along the bottom, you'll also see controls to rotate the scan or crop it before moving on. There's also a three circle icon that will let you adjust the color to grayscale, black and white, or photo. Finally, you get a trash can if you just want to delete that one page.
[4:48]Now, I've explained how the camera automatically scans a document when it finds anything that looks like a candidate to be scanned, and how you have to move your camera away while you're flipping the pages so it doesn't scan by mistake. This might sound stressful, or perhaps you'd like a little more control. If that's the case, when the camera comes up to scan, in the upper right, tap the word Auto, and it will switch to Manual. Once you're in the Manual mode, when the camera recognizes the document by showing you the blue rectangle over it, the shutter button won't automatically be activated and scan the document. You have to tap it to take the scan. After you scan each page, you'll have the opportunity to adjust the corners of the scan, retake it, or keep the scan before moving on. Now I think about it, I might change it to manual myself because it does sound less stressful. It might take me a little longer to get the job done, but I'm always wildly swinging my arm around behind my back to hide the documents from my phone while I'm turning the page.
[5:46]Also at the top, when the scanner is active, you'll see the same three-circle icon I mentioned earlier, which lets you change the mode to grayscale, black and white, or photo for all subsequent scans. If you don't have good lighting for your scanning, there's a lightning bolt at the top of the screen that will let you control the flash. I use Scan for my phone all the time on my Mac, even though we have a flatbed scanner and a fancy sheet feed scanner. For the few documents I need to scan, and they're already sitting on my desk, it's far easier for me to grab my iPhone and make the scan. While I scan primarily into Finder, you can also use this technique to scan directly into mail or messages. Now that's an interesting idea because it means you can send a document to someone without saving it locally first. You can also scan directly into Keynote, Numbers, Pages, Notes, or TextEdit.
[6:37]Now, you might think that your hardware is too old for continuity camera, but there's a good chance you're in luck. According to Apple's support article about scanning with continuity camera, all iPhones, iPads, and even iPod Touches running iOS 12 or later can be used as scanners. Running macOS Mojave or later, Macs as old as 2012 MacBook Pros, Airs, Minis, and iMacs can run continuity camera for scanning. Even the MacBook introduced in 2015 can play. The Mac Pro from 2013 and the Mac Studio enjoy all the fun too. Every time I use the scan function with my iPhone, I appreciate even more the connective tissue between all of my Apple devices.
[7:18]
QuickLook
[7:18]On your Mac, if you've ever been looking at some files and you're not sure which is the right one, you could double-click each file and have it open in its default application to see if it's the one you want, close it, and double-click the next candidate, rinse and repeat. This process is tedious and there's an easier way. One of the hidden gems of macOS is called QuickLook. If you simply select a file in Finder and hit the space bar, it will pop open in a little viewer in front of you. If the selected file is an image file, you'll see the image. If it's an audio file, the pop-up window will have an audio player button so you can listen to it. Remember, you still haven't opened it, but you've got it right there where you can play it. If it's a PDF, the pop-up window will not only show you the first page, if it's a multi-page document, it'll have a little sidebar of thumbnails so you can flip between pages.
[8:06]Word, pages, and plain text format files open with QuickLook allow you to read them. Even video files will play inside QuickLook. Whatever file you investigate with QuickLook, look in the upper right and you'll see an option to open in. That'll open the document in your default application for that format. I've been using QuickLook pretty much since its inception 17 years ago, and I have a bonus tip I only learned about QuickLook this week from Adam Christensen during a recent Mac Geek app. He explained that Quick Look works in the Open Dialog box too. Let's say you open TextEdit, and you're offered the Open Dialog box to choose a file to open from the Finder, but you see a list of files and you don't know which one you want to open. If you hit the space bar on each file after selecting them, from the Open Dialog box, you'll still be able to check the contents before opening it. I guess it makes sense that it's there, but it absolutely never occurred to me to use QuickLook inside an open dialog box. Basically, anywhere you can see a Finder view, QuickLook is probably there to help you see inside files without opening them.
[9:11]
Control the Dock
[9:12]As you've undoubtedly noticed, macOS provides us with a dock across the bottom of our screens to allow quick access to our applications. For seasoned Mac users, this might be a bit rudimentary of a starting point, but I won't leave anybody behind. I'm going to dive deep into the dock so there may even be a nugget for you that you didn't know. Spoiler, I learned a few things researching how to explain the dock. The first thing to know about the dock is that you don't have to keep any application in your dock you don't care about. I see people all the time with apps they never use in their dock, and they don't realize they can just get rid of them. It's very simple to remove applications. Click and drag them out of the dock until you see the word remove above the icon, and then simply let go. In the old days, we used to get a cute little puff of smoke when we removed an app, but they took the joy out of that now, and it just kind of makes a sound. Sort of a poof of smoke sound, but it doesn't actually, it doesn't give me as much joy. Now, if you want to rearrange applications in your dock, click and drag them left and right to change the order. If you accidentally drag an application out of the dock, they're easy to add, too. To add applications to the dock for quick access, simply drag them from the Applications folder into the dock. As you approach the dock with this new application, existing applications will slide apart to make room for their new friend.
[10:32]On the far right side of the dock, you'll see a vertical splitter, and it has magical powers. Maybe not magical, but it has some really cool features. I've been saying all through this that we can put applications in the dock, but we can also put folders and files in the dock, but only if you put them on the right side of the magical splitter. Since it's so easy to drag things in and out of the dock, you can feel free to drag folders down into it that you want quick access to this week, but maybe you don't need next week. You can drag it back out later. This can be a real time saver for accessing files. Did you know that if you click and drag up and down on the vertical splitter, the dock embiggens and shrinks the icons?
[11:14]I thought that was a fun one. I do that one all the time. If you have multiple displays, have you ever had the problem where applications are opening on the wrong screen? It seems to happen, and I don't know what causes it. But if you click and drag up and down on the vertical splitter a little bit on the display where you want application to open, it moves that focus over to that display, and it fixes the problem. Like I said, I wish I knew why it goes wrong like that, but I'm glad to know this quick and easy fix. If you right-click on the splitter, you get a small menu of options to modify the dock. From this little contextual menu, you can turn on hiding so it disappears and reappears when you move your cursor away from the bottom of the screen and back down. You can also toggle hiding off if that gets on your nerves. If you have a lot of applications and folders and files in your dock, the icons might start to get really tiny, especially if you have a smaller screen. From this contextual menu, you can turn on magnification so that as you drag your cursor across the icons, they get larger and much easier to see. I've been talking all along about the docking on the bottom of your screen, but from this contextual menu, you can change it to the left or right side of the screen. It seems much more logical to take up some width on the screen by putting it on one of the sides, since our screens are wider than they are tall. But every time I try it that way, I end up putting it back on the bottom because it doesn't work for some reason or another for me.
[12:37]On the Mac, you can hide applications in several ways. You can use the yellow button in the upper left of the window for the application. You can click on the running application's name and select hide from the drop-down menu, or you can use the keystroke Command-H. If you're not using Stage Manager, all of these methods will cause the application to swoosh down into the dock. With our little contextual menu from the right-clicking on the divider in the dock, we can change the animation you see during that swoosh. If you don't like a lot of folderol, choose scale, and the app will very quickly scale down to disappear into the dock. But if you like a little bit of whimsy in your life, you might enjoy the genie effect for hiding. With the genie effect, your applications will squish down, like the cartoon genie Robin Williams played in Aladdin going back into the lamp.
[13:23]My main goal in bringing up the dock for a tiny tip, well, this is going on quite a long time for a tiny tip, but my main goal was to make sure you knew that you have a lot of control over the functionality, look, and feel right from the dock. If you want even more control, in that same right click on the divider contextual menu, you can see you can get to even more options with dock settings. This opens up system settings, desktop, and dock, where the top third of the panel is all about changes you can make to the dock. There's not a lot more in there than you can do right from the dock, but there are a few extras. Things like how big do the icons get when you have them embiggen as you slide across them. Now, I promise this is the last doc-related tip, unless I change my mind and I think of another one. If you do add folders to your doc, you've got quite a few controls at your fingertips. As you've probably noticed, a single click on the folder will show you the items in the folder. But did you know you can immediately open the finder by option-command clicking on that folder? I have to give credit to John Syracuse for talking about this on a recent episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast, so I just learned this one this week as well.
[14:32]Right-clicking on the folder gives you an altogether new contextual menu with tons of options. You can change the sort-by-criteria in the folder contents that pop up on a single click. You can choose whether to display the folder as a single folder icon or as a stack of folder and files in the dock. You get to decide how the items in the folder are displayed when you click on the icon. Fan will pop up the list of items in a curve to the right, as though you've kind of fanned a pile of folders and files out on a desk. Grid will give you a view much like the icon view in Finder, well, List will give you essentially the Finder list view with little chevrons to the right on any folders, allowing you to navigate into them and open any files within with a single click. I've got to admit to you that I never use the doc to access files in folders, but now that I found that list view, I'm actually thinking I might use it. I did use it today. Now, there's also an option of automatic under view contents as, and I was too lazy to go through and run a bunch of tests to see what kind of contents will cause automatic to change from fan to grid to list. I'll leave that as an exercise for the student. For files and folders and even applications, right-clicking gives you an options menu that includes remove from doc. That's in case you didn't already know, you could simply drag it out and show and finder. On applications, show and finder won't be all that exciting because I think you know where your applications are, but for files and folders that could be valuable.
[15:59]Remember when I said I promised I was done with the doc unless I thought of something else? Well, I forgot all about the fun you can have with Finder in the doc. With a right-click, you can open a new Finder window, create a new Smart Folder, or with the Find option, it'll open a Finder window with a cursor in the search box and Kind set to Any, ready for you to build a detailed Smart Search of your drive.
[16:22]In the contextual menu on Finder and Dock, you can also choose Go to Folder. This lets you type in a path to the folder. This is the same functionality as using the Go menu in Finder or using Command-Shift-G to navigate to a folder. It kind of seems to me that if you're a type-in-a-path kind of person, you're unlikely to also be a two-finger tap on the Finder icon in the Dock type of person, but it's there if you want it. Now, I honestly never noticed it before, but you can also see your most recently accessed folders in a list in that same contextual menu on the Finder icon in the dock. That might be handy. And whether you're looking at the contextual menu for files, folders, applications, or the Finder, you always see the option to decide which desktop the item will open in. This is relevant for Spaces users, and I'm assuming they'll understand what those options mean.
[17:13]Have you ever been working on your Mac and the Finder gets its panties in a bunch. This happened to me just this week. I was trying to move a 44 kilobyte, yeah, 44 kilobyte screenshot file, and I got the spinning pizza wheel of death. I used the X to stop the transfer, tried it again, and Finder locked up again. Well, the solution to a jammed up Finder is to relaunch the Finder, and you can do this right from the dock. Instead of right-clicking on the Finder icon, hold down the Option key, and then right-click on the Finder. This will add a relaunch to the contextual pop-up menu. When Finder couldn't seem to move that tiny PNG, I chose relaunch in this way, Finder disappeared and came back in a split second. I tried to move that itty-bitty file, and it moved without issue. I basically saved myself a reboot right there.
[18:05]In system settings, we can define which applications launch at login, but I find system settings a tedious place to go hunting for things nowadays. They keep moving things and adding things, and search is at best maybe 72% successful at finding anything. Case in point, I dare you to search in system settings for login items. It finds nothing. Now, if you have an app in your dock, you can change whether it launches at login right from the dock. I did not know this until I started working on this article. If you right-click on the icon for the app and choose Options, you get an option to change Open at Login. Better yet, it's a toggle. So if an app is opening at Login, but you want it to stop, simply uncheck Open at Login, and it will stop. I think that sub-sub-sub-tiny tip was worth the price of admission. I know this TinyMac tip session was really more of a deep dive into two of them, but in reality, the three tips are You can use your iPhone or iPad or even iPod Touch as a scanner for your Mac. Quick Look will let you peek inside files without opening them. And the dock is highly customizable and has functionality built into it that you might not have known about.
[19:19]
I Finally Found a Use for Tab Groups (With Profiles) in Safari
[19:19]Way back in 2021, when Apple introduced macOS Ventura, they gave us a feature in Safari called Tab Groups. They said that it would help us to keep tab groups organized and make them easier to find again later. You know me, I love a new feature, so I gave it a try. To use tab groups, you select the little button in the upper left of a Safari window to open the sidebar. This sidebar includes bookmarks, reading lists, shared with you, iCloud tabs, whatever those are, and also tab groups. You can also toggle visibility of the sidebar with Command-Shift-L.
[19:52]The idea of tab groups is that you open a bunch of tabs you want to group together, and then you use the plus button with tab group selected, and then you name that tab group. Now, every time you come back to this sidebar, you can select that tab group, and it reopens all of them as a set at the same time. Wow, that sounded swell, but it wasn't at all swell, at least for me. My problem is that the tabs in a tab group aren't maintained if you do anything else while that tab group is open. For example, let's say one of the tabs in your tab group was to your Mastodon homepage. You see a post with a link to a nifty picture from NASA's astronomy picture of the day. You decide to follow the link to see the full-sized image in full format over on APOD. Boom, you've just changed your tab group. Now, if you're lucky, the link opened in a new tab, and all you did was just add APOD to your tab group. But if it didn't open a new tab, you've now lost Mastodon in your tab group and replaced it with APOD.
[20:50]How annoying is that? Anything you do while in a tab group other than simply scrolling and reading each tab will destroy that tab group. Upon this discovery, I abandoned tab groups as a feature I would ever use. Fast forward two years when Apple introduced macOS Sonoma with a feature in Safari called Profiles. They pitched profiles as a way to keep your browsing separate for topics like work, personal, or school. They explained that each profile would have separate history, cookies, website data, extension, tab groups, and favorites. I could see how profiles would be a great way to switch context between work, personal, and school, even though I don't have those particular contacts. You could look at the podcast as work if you wanted to, and I suppose in a way it is, but it's a core part of what I consider fun online, so the distinction between the podcast and play for me is kind of tenuous at best.
[21:41]But I immediately thought of one type of web browsing I would like to keep distinctly separate, and that's my social media account access. While I use a dedicated app for Mastodon, and I click lots of links and it contribute off in there, sites like Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Blue Sky, and LinkedIn are a much more passive service for me. I go to Instagram primarily to consume photos my daughter and daughter-in-law post to my grandchildren. While I'm there, I may scroll a wee bit just to see how Tom Merritt's new dog 7 is doing, and then I'm pretty much done with Instagram for the day. I'm not much into Facebook these days, but I go to the NoSilicast Facebook group regularly to post about new content from the podcast. I then forward those posts to my personal account on Facebook because, shockingly, some of my real-life friends actually read and listen to the drivel I generate. I usually check my notifications while I'm there on Facebook and then I move on.
[22:32]Blue Sky and Threads are starting to be pretty interesting, so after posting my latest podcast content, I usually have a bit of a scroll there too. When I decided to stop participating on Twitter for obvious reasons, I replaced that with LinkedIn. I've never been much of a participant there, but I figured, why not let the people there share in the fun of my podcast content? All of these accounts are most assuredly tracking me, so having them sequestered in a separate profile sounded ideal. And since there are distinct sites I want to visit and I don't want to visit other sites, this also sounds like I finally found a use for tab groups. You know, I just want to go there and I don't want to go anywhere else from there. Now, I can hear you yelling right now that I should use a Safari private browsing window for this activity. That certainly is a great way to keep all that cross-site tracking nonsense at bay, but private browsing windows don't allow you to make tab groups. This makes sense since tab groups are synced through iCloud and that would be leaking data. The whole point of private browsing is that Apple promised us that data wouldn't leak out.
[23:34]So, to create a profile, in Safari settings, use the plus button to add a profile. This will automatically create a personal default profile along with the new one. Apple gives us a lot of tools to make the profiles look and feel different, so we're aware of our contacts when we're working. I named my new profile Meta, since that would remind me of evil tracking. You can choose a symbol that will appear next to the name, so I chose Fire to remind me of burning things down. I left my personal profile with the default symbol of a person from the shoulders up. I'll let you only get a choice of like five different little icons. I don't know why they're so restrictive. You can also choose a profile color scheme. I went back to my personal profile, and I chose a lovely lavender because Sandy and I really like that color. For my meta profile, I chose a dark, dismal, boring gray.
[24:23]In the general tab of Safari Settings, you tell the browser how you want new windows and tabs to open. You have quite a list to choose from. You've got start page, home page, empty page, same page, tab for favorites, or even choose a tabs folder. For your new profile, you make that choice in the profiles tab, not over in the general tab. I chose start page for both my personal and meta profiles for new windows. Within the profiles tab, there's a sub tab for extensions, and that lets you choose which extensions are active for this profile. I perused them and decided the meta profile wouldn't get to have the 1Password extension, so I'd be less likely to log into a site other than my set of social media tabs. Now when I open a new window in my personal profile, the background is a lovely lavender with little person icons sprinkled across it, and my favorites and a nice grid for quick choosing. In the upper left, I see the person, and it says Personal, and it's highlighted in lavender. In contrast, when I open my meta profile, the entire start page window is that dismal gray with little white flames on it. And in the top bar of Safari, it says meta with the flame, and it's highlighted in dismal gray. All of this makes it very obvious which profile I'm in. And one thing that helps me use profiles is that you can switch between them with a keystroke.
[25:43]Option-Shift-Command-0 opens a new Safari window in your default profile. Option Shift Command 1 creates a new window in your second profile, which in my case is my meta profile. When I'm in post-the-show mode, using those keystrokes is a quick way for me to jump in and get the job done.
[26:01]Now, if you're not a keyboard junkie, or you might not do this often enough to remember the keystroke, you can select the current profile name, and in the drop-down, you'll see the option to switch to the other profile windows. If you choose to switch, the current window will close, and the selected profile will open. From the same dropdown menu, you can choose to create a new window in the existing profile or in one of your other profiles. By the way, if you're into focus modes, Apple's support article about profiles explains that you can add a focus filter that automatically switches to a specific profile in Safari.
[26:34]Once I created the Meta Profile, I used File, New Tab Group, and I opened each of my social media sites arranged in my preferred order. Because I'm using this profile for such a distinctly different purpose than my normal web browsing, I'm very conscious of the fact that I'm using this fragile tab group concept. That keeps me focused on the task at hand, and I don't wander off following links. I get in, do what I came to do, and then I close the Meta Profile window. I'm much more productive not having that open. Now the cherry on top of this new method is that it syncs to my iPad and iPhone, so I have access to both profiles no matter my device. It's a little bit harder to get to the Switch Profiles section, but it's not too bad. In Safari on the iPhone, tap the double square in the bottom right of the screen over by the URL bar. This is the one that brings up all your tabs in a grid. Below that is an icon in the middle that looks like a bulleted list. That brings up another set of options, and at the bottom it says Profile. Next to that is a drop-down that shows, or maybe it's a drop-up, that shows you the name of your current profile, and you can switch to any other profile. At this point, the grid is each of the social media sites that I have in my tab group, and I can go into each one.
[27:49]For the first six months or so that I've been using tab groups in my meta profile, my process has been to use the keystroke to invoke a new meta window, Then I use Command-Shift-L to open the sidebar. I tap on my MetaTab group, which opens all of the tabs. And then I use Command-Shift-L to close that sidebar. But just as I was about to finish up this article, I had an epiphany. Remember early on I explained that in Safari settings for each profile, you can choose what opens with a new page or a new tab? I told you I chose the Start page. I went on and on and on about how lovely it was to see the big lavender background for my personal profile and dismal grave for my meta profile.
[28:27]Turns out in that dropdown for how to start a new window in my Meta profile, one of the options was tabs for Meta. I didn't know what that meant. I changed to tabs for Meta and new windows opened with the six social media sites I originally used for my tab group for my Meta profile. So I wasn't using the tab group, but it was the same six that I had originally used. I emphasize originally because the tabs that opened included Twitter, but did not include LinkedIn. Now remember, I removed Twitter and I replaced it with LinkedIn. So that means Tabs for Meta wasn't using my current tab group. I went hunting for an explanation. I looked at this new window for my Meta profile, and since I choose to show the Favorites bar in Safari, I could see that the open tabs were identical to the Favorites bar. I saw Twitter up there, but not LinkedIn. So this was a clue. It's something to do with those Favorites.
[29:22]My first thought was to go into bookmark favorites, remove Twitter, and put in LinkedIn. But that's when I got even more confused. When I opened bookmarks in the sidebar of Safari with my Meta Profile active, the list was identical to what I see when I'm on my personal profile. But Safari windows open to my personal profile have an entirely different set of sites for the favorites bar. I looked at the folders and bookmarks, and as expected, I saw a folder called Favorites with a little star next to it. That contained the favorites for my personal profile. So where are the favorites coming from for the Meta profile? I scanned down the very long list of bookmarks I have. I use it kind of like a junk drawer. I don't organize it. I don't manage it. I just throw junk in there, so it's very long. Way down near the bottom, I found a folder called Meta. In there, I found the five original social media sites, or is it six? Anyway, I found the original social media sites that are shown in my favorites bar for my meta profile. I deleted xTwitter from that folder, and that deleted it from my favorites bar in my meta profile. I added LinkedIn to that folder, and now that shows in the favorites bar. Even better, opening a new window to my meta profile now opens links to the new and improved list of social media sites, not including Twitter.
[30:43]I know that was a really confusing explanation, but that's because it's very confusing. Let me try to attempt to make it clear. On your personal default profile, the favorites bar is in the bookmarked folder with a star next to it, and it's called favorites. But in any other profile you create, you'll have a bookmarks folder with the name of the profile, and that's where your favorites are for that folder. In Safari settings, if you want your favorites to open, when you open a new window for that profile, choose tabs for, name of your profile, and you'll be golden. I went back into my bookmarks, and I added the flame emoji to the name of my meta folder so that I'd remember that was a special folder, and I moved it way up near the top.
[31:25]I should point out, all of this is explained in the Apple support article, but it's easily as confusing as I've made it from here. Let me give you an example. There's a sentence in the support article that says, the favorites bar is shared only between profiles that are set up to use the same favorites folder. Now the words set up to use the same favorites folder is a link. And I thought, great, I can go learn more by hitting that link. But the link takes you to the same support article you're already reading. In fact, I think it takes you back to the top, so it doesn't help you understand that at all. But back to my epiphany. The whole point of this article and the way I even titled it was how I'd finally found a use for tab groups. But now that my new meta profile opens with those six social media sites, I don't need the tab group. Even better, I'm free to navigate away from these tabs. I can add tabs. I can close tabs. Because when I open a fresh window to my meta profile, all six of those tabs come right back. I even saved myself the extra step of opening the left sidebar with Command-Shift-L to get to the tab group and then closing it with Command-Shift-L. This method of opening to favorites is better than tab groups in every single way.
[32:36]Bottom line is I didn't get what I expected out of this article. I thought I'd be raving about tab groups, but I still find them too touchy and fragile to be useful. But I did learn how to use profiles to have a set of social media tabs that can track me between them, but not pollute my personal profile. I also found a pretty easy and quick way to open them all at once, do what I want to do in there, and get back out.
[33:03]
Support the Show
[33:04]This week, I received a very generous donation from Paul Nealon to support the show. He wrote a note that included some tidbits I also thought were interesting. He wrote, Long-term listener. Retired mechanical engineer. Woo-hoo! Would have donated sooner if you had Apple Pay. But NC1017 was so good it got me over the PayPal login hump. Totally agree on Apple Notes. You say it so well and systematically. Notes could be so much better. Because the ergonomics are bad, it's hard to get into the flow. Reminders is the same way, too many keystrokes. Also, Cher is totally confusing to me too. Very few, if any, podcasts take the time to explain why they don't like something. Also greatly enjoyed your Geek Sky guest, so that's also confusing, and I learned quite a bit. Well, of course, I loved learning that I'm not the only one who finds Cher and Apple Notes confusing and the ergonomics of the interface to be subpar. I was also intrigued that he said that if I'd had an Apple Pay button, he would have donated sooner. It kind of made me wonder how many people might not donate because it's a hassle to open a PayPal account. I did a bit of digging, and I think I understand a way I could have an Apple Pay button if I open a Stripe account. They take about the same processing fee as PayPal does for their service, so it wouldn't make much of a difference to me. I'll let you know when and if I get that working. Thanks so much, Paul, for the great idea and the lovely donations.
[34:29]
CCATP #803 – Adam Engst on Invasive Location Tracking and Tips On How to Manage
[34:29]Music.
[34:37]Well, it's that time of the week again. It's time for Chit Chat Across the Pond. This is episode number 802 for November 12th, 2024, and I'm your host, Allison Sheridan. Hey, this week, welcome back to the show again, Adam Angst. I'm afraid we may not be doing so much giggling during this episode. Maybe more of a fish shake and parcel solution, right, Adam? Yeah, this is not one of those ones that I'm happy about in any way, shape, or form. I'm afraid they're going to start thinking that we are cranky together because we were cranky about the constant interruptions about looking at our screens and everything. But this one, there's no way around this one being a terrible story. So let's start with on October 24th, you wrote an article entitled Expose Reveals Ongoing Smartphone Location Tracking Threats over on Tidbits. And I've got a link to it in the show notes so people can read the whole thing. We've known for a long time that advertisers track us around the internet. So what is this new discovery? What broke recently?
[35:38]Well, in retrospect, in some ways, it's not so much of a discovery. It's that it's more widespread and easier to use than we thought. So what we're talking here is location tracking, physical world location tracking. So this is the, hey, I just saw that you're in the coffee shop. And, oh, look, you go to that coffee shop? every day how interesting um so um there was a there was a privacy advocacy company um called atlas privacy and they were looking at suing um uh this this this company called babble street which does a location thing and and so in the process of of sort of getting started on this, They wanted to see if, you know, kind of look into what Babel Street's tool called LocateX could do. And so, they asked if they could use it. And Babel Street basically said, yeah, sure.
[36:38]So, they said, you know, like, oh, it's only for law enforcement. Are you planning to do any work for the government? And they're like, yeah, we are actually. So, they weren't even lying, you know, no problem. And so, they got full access to this tool. and so they went to town they're like we can look up anything and they did and so they looked up all sorts of locations of people and identified classes of people who can be tracked and things like that and it was it was remarkable how easy it was and so then this atlas privacy group brings in a bunch of media, 404 Media, Krebs on Security, a number of others, New York Times. I don't think the New York Times has written about it yet, unfortunately, unlike the others. They've been busy with some other little thing that's been happening in the world, I think.
[37:30]But so, in any event, this hit the news in kind of a big way because –.
[37:37]I think people have sort of known that this was possible, but they didn't realize just how easy it was or how easily the location. Yeah, yeah, granular. Like how easily any given person could be targeted. Because the problem is all this data is anonymized, right? They don't actually know that you're this dot on the map. But come on. We all go to the same places all the time, including, say, our houses and our offices. And, you know, so if you know anything about someone, and you can find them on the map, well, then you can follow them around. You know, that device has been identified, and you can attach that back to a person pretty easily. So, Apple has given us a way to obfuscate that it's us, right? It's supposed to only be cohorts or words like that that mean anonymous groups. But I think what I understood from your article is that they can look at, say, a specific place, like the parking lot of a courtroom from a trial. So there's a trial going on. The people parking in the parking lot are either lawyers, judges, or they're in the jury box. I suppose they could also be witnesses or defendants. But you could start tracking people based on that to figure out who they are.
[39:03]And, in fact, in the particular example that they came up with, there is a parking lot specifically for jurors.
[39:12]So, it wasn't even – Okay, so really narrow. Really narrow, right. And, you know, so that was pretty, you know, pretty telling. I mean, again, you know, you're doing a mob trial. You do not want your jurors identified, right?
[39:28]That's a bad thing. Speaking of bad things, they were also looking at abortion clinics. And since there's some laws going into place that'll punish people who help someone go get an abortion, you can now track people like that. And that's terrifying. Well, and again, it's even worse than that in the sense of, like, they could track a car from the abortion clinic and then basically watch it go back over a state border to a state that does not allow you to do this, right? Right. And then watch basically where it parks.
[40:09]So now they know you went home. And, you know, Babel Street says, oh, you know, not everyone can get this, which is true, but they absolutely give it to law enforcement. Right. And with the government in some of these states putting in these arcane and horrible laws, wow. Yes, precisely. So, you know, some other examples they came up with were, they could very easily, of course, track hundreds of people at a temple in a synagogue in Los Angeles, at a mosque in Detroit. Yeah. You know, you can figure out where people are there. Oh, and you know, like, just to be clear, there was a whole lot of, you know, like, I found like 700 devices at a high school in Philadelphia. Yeah. So, now they're tracking the children, right? Yeah, precisely. I mean, so, again, like, you know, like, the 404 Media reporter who, he chose to kind of focus on the abortion example.
[41:10]But, you know, there's just so many other – Wrong? Issues, wrong things. Like, the jurors is a really good one, you know, or, you know, like, again, you should not be able to track, you know, high school kids. Yeah. Well, and the fact that you can say, oh, yeah, I'm going to use it for law enforcement, you can just get it. So, remember, one of the laws, I'm not going to call out any states in particular, but basically was a vigilante law that you could get paid for turning somebody in who went to get an abortion. So, now you can use this tool to say, I'm going to go make me $1,000 by using this tool to go find someone who went and had an abortion. And you can be, I don't know, a low-level deputy at somewhere halfway across whatever the state this is, and decide this is how you're going to supplement your income. You know, I mean, you know, there's just – the potential for abuse is just way, way too high. And this, of course, assumes that these people are actually trying hard to even restrict it to law enforcement. Whereas, I mean, the Atlas Privacy people got in so easily by just sort of asking if they could test it out.
[42:22]And so, it really doesn't take much to see that, oh, wow, this probably isn't that well protected. I do like that the broad-based examples make you realize, you know, it's really easy to say, well, it's not going to be me because I'm not going to get an abortion, so I'm not going to worry about it. But, oh, wait, I go to church, I go to the synagogue, I go to my mosque, my children go to school, I might be on a jury. You know, when you do this, you start painting the picture of, yeah, it can be you.
[42:53]It can be you. And, again, law enforcement doesn't have to – I mean, like, this isn't stuff you need warrants for, necessarily, once you've gotten – I mean, the way they're talking about it, once a department has gotten access to this. So, it doesn't take a whole lot of corruption or, you know, bending of the rules. Ill intent. Ill intent to, like, well, I want to find out, you know, where that person's going. I'm going to check up on them, you know. Yeah. And, you know, there's a lot of people who could fall into that category and use it for malicious purposes in some ways, even if they have legitimate access. Do we know where they got all this data? Or is it just because of this cohort sort of thing that the data is available? Right. So, basically…, And Brian Krebs talks about this, that all this data is available on exchanges. So, every data collection broker, or every group that collects this kind of data, packages it up and puts it on exchange for other companies like this to buy. Oh, okay. And so, it's just – It's a soup of – Right. It's, in essence, traded around.
[44:12]And so, you know, anything they can do to fingerprint devices, you know, even if they don't know exactly who it is, they know that it's this device. And the more they can connect that up between the data sets, and then what – I mean, because Babel Street doesn't actually collect this stuff as I understand it. They're assembling sources from all over. So, they make it easy to dig into it and find ways to use it.
[44:40]Precisely. And so, you know, again, kind of one of the issues is, like, we think with privacy, oh, you should have the opportunity to opt out. Well, good luck. You don't have a relationship with any of these people. Like, you don't have a relationship, you know, all the way down until, you know, the, you know, bouncing candy click button app that you thought was so much fun, you know, but in fact was, you know, showing you ads. And that's why it was free. And those ads were sharing a location every time you use the app. That kind of thing is where it's happening. Okay, so you wrote a second article, which is, now we're going to switch a little bit from doom and gloom to is there any hope? Is there anything we can do about this? You wrote an article this week entitled Protect Yourself Against Location Tracking Abuses. And one of the first thing you talk about is that there are alternative tools to use that maybe don't track you. Talk a little bit about those. Well, so Apple has, it's not so much tools, but Apple has a lot of settings. And to be fair, one of the things that the Atlas Privacy people said was they felt that they could see about 80% of Android phones and about 25% of iPhones. Oh, why so much fewer on iOS? Because Apple makes it a whole lot easier to turn some of this stuff off.
[46:07]But you still have to do the turning off. So before we get into the turning off, though, back up and explain, you talked about mobile advertising ID. Ah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So, so... And the idea – the problem – the way we're identified most of the time is via something like email address or phone number. I mean, names are kind of terrible if you think about it. Most people have fairly common names that happen all over the place. But email addresses, phone numbers tend to be more unique. And so that's the way people have long been identified. But the problem with that, of course, is that those are really, really attached to people. You don't want to be getting people's email addresses and phone numbers in your databases. And so Apple and Google came up with this thing called a mobile advertising ID or MADE. They actually have different names for it. I forget what Google's is exactly called. Apple's is called the identifier for advertisers or IDFA.
[47:11]And that is a unique ID that goes to your device, your iPhone, your iPad, and it can't be changed. Until iOS 14, actually, you could change it. But Apple pulled back on that. And so, because in iOS 14, we also got something called app tracking transparency, which is the thing that Facebook and company hate about Apple. I'll talk about that in a second. But so the idea is that everything that needs to be connected to a device will have this ID associated with it. And so they don't know it's you, but they do know it's this ID. And so what the – and then because you have a different one for every device, what the – part of what all of these data collection companies are trying to do is connect the devices. So if you browse from your Mac, you browse from your iPhone, you browse from your iPad, those are different devices, but they want to make sure they've got all of them associated with you. And so there's a whole lot of fingerprinting, basically, that goes on. Triangulation, maybe.
[48:25]Triangulation, and it's like, well, we identified that the person who did this, then this, then this, so that means even though they did it from different machines, that's probably the same person. Right. And so that's kind of what these data brokers are doing, is collecting that information and attempting to distill it down to people, basically. They don't really care exactly who you are, but they want to make sure they've got all of your traffic collected so that they can better target you with ads. That's kind of what it comes down to. But a lot of that will also include location because some of that targeting is, well, if you're going to walk into our store, then we want to be able to give you a deal. So we care about what your location is. Okay. All right. So now Apple gives us app tracking transparency. Is that the thing that says ask app not allowed or to be allowed to track? Yeah, yeah. Ask apps not to track. And so, or sorry, allow apps to request to track is actually what the setting is called. And if you go into settings, privacy, and security, and you can turn off this allow apps to request to track. And everyone should do that. There is no reason any app should ever request to track. And if they do, they're sly.
[49:49]So I chose the other option, and I'm trying to find out what it's called, but where they get to ask, and I get to say no, so I know they're slimy. Yeah, yeah. So you can turn that on. I mean, if you turn on Allow Apps to Request to Track, then every time you launch an app that does that, you will be prompted. The first time. And you can deny it. The first time. The first time. Not every time. The first time. Not every time. But I mean, that makes sense. Right. And you can always come into that privacy and security screen to see, you know, event tracking, to see if they've got access. And so I do the same thing as you, actually. I leave it on so that I can identify the slime balls. Yeah. I mean, part of it is I feel powerful when I go, no, you dirtbags. You don't need to know where I live. That is not important information for this thing that's going to play a song or, you know, make a meme or something. You don't need to know where I live to do that. But if you're a map application, yes. Right. Precisely.
[50:50]Well, actually, there's two different things going on here. We're not up to mapping applications yet. Okay. Yeah, yeah. This is literally just advertising. And then one of the criticisms of app tracking transparency is that it's, in fact, only aimed at advertising and only sharing between companies. Oh, I was completing that. Yeah, so this is the third-party cookie tracking. Right, this is the third-party cookie tracking and that kind of stuff. And that's really important, nonetheless, because that's partly how they connect your location to your ID.
[51:28]Because if they know that I went off and did something else, and they know my ID, then they know, can start figuring more things out about me. Precisely. Precisely. Okay, so, but this app tracking transparency is what they think is why 80% of Android phones, but only 25% of iPhones are being tracked through this, these nefarious means we've been talking about? Yes, precisely. Basically, I mean, it comes down to the fact that Google is an advertising company. And so, you know, they're not going to make it as easy to turn this stuff off. You know, they can say things left and right, but the fact of the matter is that's where they make their money. And to an extent, you know, Apple's not entirely in the clear here either because, you know, they have plenty of advertising systems built into Apple stuff as well, the App Store and whatnot. And um and so you know and and they it's a apple used to let you change your your your id um regularly and so that was actually a good thing back in i was 14 was like yeah change it screw you i'm a new person now deal with it um and so but uh but yeah so everyone should turn off allow apps to request a track or if you do want to see identify the slime balls um you know leave that on and then just turn it, you know, deny request each time it comes up. I'm forgetting where this is. So I'm in privacy and security.
[52:55]There's location services.
[52:59]It's higher up than that. That's at the very top of privacy and security. Privacy and security. It's right below location services, then tracking. Okay, the next thing below location services is calendars, contacts, files and folders, all the Apple apps. And then below that, I get to, oh, are you on your phone? That's the problem. That makes more sense. I thought they were tracking me around on my Mac.
[53:29]I realized it. Here's another good reason for us to actually use video is I saw Adam look down at his hand. I'm like, why isn't he looking at his Mac? That's because it's in a different place. Privacy and security. There it is. Tracking. Zero. Yes. Yeah. I have none. Yes. And I allow apps to ask, and then I know you're a slime ball. Yeah, and I've got a whole lot of them here, I have to say. I mean, the problem is, often you... Oh, I've got a ton. And the problem is, a lot of them you might need.
[54:03]Not for tracking, though, right? But not for tracking, but you might need the app, is my point. Right. Oh, yeah. I mean, I've got a lot of legit apps in here. I mean, Starbucks, for crying out loud. I can't live without that. But they don't get to track me. So the first step, I guess, would be to look in and make sure that you, at the very least, are allowing them to ask. And if not, just shutting it down and don't let it do it. And if you see tracking, you see a number that's not zero, go in and turn it off. Right, right. Simple fact is, no sympathy, they don't need it. And to be clear, particularly with little apps, the developer may not even – they should realize, of course, but there are third-party libraries that a lot of developers will use. They want to have some feature in their app, and they can get it by installing this library. But that library may come with additional things built into it. And so, it's not inconceivable the developer could actually have done this and sort of not realized that it's going to be doing some of these bad things. In theory, that shouldn't happen because they should be testing it like a normal user. But nonetheless, the point is that it's not guaranteed malicious intent on the part of the developer. It is guaranteed malicious intent on the part of the libraries. I appreciate your generous spirit.
[55:33]Okay, so tracking is one thing. That's the fingerprinting online and looking in the cross-site tracking. Then we've got to talk about location, right? Yeah, because that's the other thing, right? Because location, I mean, just having the tracking is not going to get you location. So remember, tracking is literally the, it's the advertising and IDs and stuff like that. That is not going to get location. That's a separate thing. So that's in Settings, Privacy, and Security Location Services. Um and um and in there you will see every app that can use location and it's gonna be a long list because that's a small scroll bar yeah precisely um and so that's one you know here it's not an easy answer because as you said a mapping app of course it needs access like Right. It's reasons for existing. And the other big one that some people don't quite think about actually is weather apps.
[56:43]Weather apps are a situation where they don't desperately need to know exactly where you are to get you a basic forecast. But if you want a hyper-local forecast, and particularly if you want alerts of storms coming in, that kind of thing, that's when you start having to grant more access to them. So let's talk about a couple of these. If I look at the weather app in particular, it seems like depending on what kind of an app it is, there might be different options of what kind of access. So when we look at the Apple weather app, the options for location access are never, ask next time or when I share. I'm not quite sure what share means. Yeah, honestly, I'm not 100% sure either. Then there's while using the app, then there's while using the app or widgets. So, like, I've got a weather widget. I don't know why, because it's always 68 degrees here and sunny. But I have a weather widget on my home screen, so I would need that on if I want to see it there. And then always. Always would be something maybe to never choose. I mean, there might be certain things might want it, like find my. No, so always, no, the only thing I have set to always, in fact, is carat weather. Because I want those hyperlocal notifications.
[58:02]Okay. So I would put it on an earthquake notifier, for example. Right. You would put it on a weatherer. Right. Because the earthquake... Well, we don't get notice anyway. If there ever was a good one. I mean, they've got one called ShakeAlert, but anyway. But so, right. So the point is that at what point does an app need to know where you are when it's not running?
[58:30]And the answer is almost never. And that the hyper-local weather alerts is the only good example I've been able to come up with. Because even mapping apps, even like Google Maps, Apple Maps, and all those kinds of things, they don't need to know where you are when they're not running. Right.
[58:49]You're using them, kind of by definition. Well, so let's talk about the last thing. So those were the five different levels for location access to the weather app. Then below that, it says precise location. Now, if I'm doing a mapping app, I would like precise location. I don't want it to say, okay, she's somewhere in Los Angeles. Good luck finding the 405. But if I'm doing weather, I don't actually need precise location because I don't think whether there's a cloud over my head is what I'm looking for. I'm looking for something more regional, right? I mean, do we have any idea how big precise location is when it's turned off? So, yeah, we have some general ideas, but clearly it's 68 degrees and sunny where you are all the time. We get what we call pop-up thunderstorms. Okay. So, if you look at the radar and you zoom out on a weather app, you will see these tiny little pop-ups. And so, it can rain here and be dry a mile away. Okay. So, you might want precise weather. I might not. So, I do want precise location. Yeah. So, I've done some research into this, and the best I can come up with is that precise location gets you between 5 and 60 meters. So, 15 to 200 feet. So, that you really want, for instance, like, if you're going to use a ride-sharing app like Uber or Lyft. They need to know where you are. At the right bar when you're stumbling out the door. Precisely.
[1:00:16]A camera app. You know, if you like having the GPS location attached to your photos. Sure, sure. You know, good use. The approximate location, if you turn that off, is somewhere between 4 and 20 kilometers, or 2.5 to 12 miles. So, you know, so you are correct that actually for most people, that would probably be fine for weather apps. I mean, I know Bart showed me the radar map for where he lives. He lives in a small town outside of Dublin and he showed me the weather map and there was a rain blob. It was covering Ireland.
[1:00:55]I don't mean like a little bit of Ireland. It was covering Ireland. He goes, I guess I won't go out for a bike ride right now. There's a reason they call it the Emerald Isle, because it rains all the time, and the grass is really green. Oh, I got to tell you, when we visited there, it was like the cones in our eyes were burning from so much green because we hadn't seen green. We don't have that much of that color here. We got a little bit of it, but it's muted, a little more in the brown scale. When my sister first moved to California years and years and years ago, and I went to visit her at some point, we were driving around, and I was like, you know, because it's, you know, the golden state, and she's like, because that sounds better than the dead brown state. I mean, we're not joking about this. Steve just pulled up our weather station the other day and looked at the last measurable rainfall, and it was in April. It's November.
[1:01:51]So anyway, now that we're done with this week in weather, so now I think I understand those. But it's interesting that changing the allowed location access is different depending on the app. For example, we've got a unistellar telescope, and it needs to know where the telescope is in order to draw the star, to be able to navigate itself to the stars correctly. And under allow location access, there's only three things. Never ask this next time or when I share and while using the app, I made sure it's while using the app, but I turned off precise location because I'm pretty sure within 12 miles Andromeda is probably in the same place.
[1:02:28]I mean, if it stops working well, I can change it, right? Yeah, yeah, precisely. So, right. So those other options, there's really, well, okay. If you know location access is totally fine because the app requires it to do what it's supposed to do then your choices really come down to while using the app or while using the app and widgets and that's only a question if you use its widgets so again like you know carrot weather i like its weather widgets so i let it do the way you know i'm happy to have it do widgets google maps has widgets i'm apple maps have widgets those kinds of things but if he doesn't have widgets either won't give you the option, it won't give you the option. And if you don't use the widgets, you can just say while using the app. Because obviously the widgets are using, will be triggered much more frequently. Right. Every time you look at a widget on the home screen or lock screen, that'll trigger a location call.
[1:03:31]So most of the time, the good apps who really need it, just choose while using the app. You know, totally reasonable. That's what they're there for. Now, I actually use the ask next time or when I share as my sort of default when I'm not sure. Oh, yeah. So, right at the moment it asks, you could go, oh, I see what you want. Oh, that's okay. Yeah, right. That's totally fine. What the hell? Go away. So, I have a question.
[1:04:05]When I'm sitting in the chair having my nails done by my nail salon, the last thing I do is I bring up my banking app and I pay through Zelle inside my banking app. Okay? Okay. When I open, when I start to search, my banking app is the first thing available if I'm sitting in that chair at my nail salon.
[1:04:28]That's Siri. Right. But so if Siri or the Apple ecosystem itself knows where I am and it has this unique tracking identifier, isn't that exposable? Or do we believe that that's hidden on device? Um i think it's i think apple knows it um but i don't think apple shares it so apple apple almost undoubtedly is safe in this regard because apple has no interest in in like data data collection brokers and things like that that's not where apple makes its money so but you can turn that off so at the very very bottom of that huge list of apps that want location services you'll find system system services.
[1:05:13]And if you scroll through that, you'll see suggestions and search. Yeah, precisely. And again, most of these are fine. Like, of course, compass calibration and device management and satellite connection. Find my phone. All this stuff should be turned on. Like, I have all this stuff turned on, in fact. I should think about that a little bit. But just in general, they're all totally fine. But suggestions and search is where Siri says, ah, every time she's in this chair, she wants to use Zelle. Okay, and so some of these have a little, so now to be clear again, where we've gone is, let me back up. So we're in settings, privacy and security, location services. We've gone down to the bottom to system services. And now we have a list of things and they've all got toggles. Some of them have the location icon.
[1:06:09]So, suggestions in search has the location icon. So, that's saying it knows I'm sitting in the chair at the salon. Right. Just so people know, there's two icons. There's a purple one, which means it's recently done it, and a gray one, meaning it's done it in the last 24 hours. Oh, that just means it has done it. So, the toggle really does mean location. Allowing location. Okay, I thought just the ones with the little icon meant location. Yeah. Yeah, so for instance, for me, Wi-Fi calling, the toggle's turned on, but it hasn't asked for my location in the last 24 hours.
[1:06:47]So that's why it doesn't have a little arrow next to it. Okay, so to be clear, if the toggle is on, then whatever we're seeing in this list has access to my location. If it has a gray location icon, that means it's used it in the last 24 hours. If it has a purple location icon, that means it's used it more recently.
[1:07:07]More recently than 24 hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Probably, you know, last hour, something like that. Okay. Find my phone, yes, because I'm asking it with my watch every five seconds. Where are you? Oddly, I have Wi-Fi calling turned off. So let's walk through an example there. Wi-Fi calling doesn't have access to my location for some reason. It's the only one that's off. What does that mean? Why would Wi-Fi calling need to know where I am? Imagine that you are somewhere that does not have cellular access, but does have a Wi-Fi network. Yeah? so that's a situation where wifi calling might need to know your location, maybe for 911 yeah I was going to say for 911 or possibly, to other kinds of cellular location things well cell network search is a separate one yeah cell network search is a separate one we're assuming there's no cell network, Oh, and it's looking for one Needs to know my location I was going to say, 911 is the best example there But even then, I think for your Wi-Fi calling You usually enter a specific address That's supposed to go with your location When you're using Wi-Fi calling.
[1:08:34]That's kind of interesting because I recently had a gentleman on Chit Chat, a guy from GigSky, who is a network operator for eSIMs. So you're on travel and you want another eSIM. And one of the things he talked about was a trick to be able to use your home's phone number, say, to get SMS messages, like to be able to authenticate to your bank when you're on travel, but you don't want any roaming charges. And he said to turn off, to call your provider at home and say, I want no chance of roaming. Turn it off. Make sure nothing is possible. And when you're on, at least on a GigSky card, if you have Wi-Fi calling turned on, you can allow your phone to receive messages. And it thinks it's on Wi-Fi. Even though Wi-Fi calling works over cellular, which is kind of a weird thing. But I'm wondering whether if I turn that Wi-Fi calling location on, it might stop that from working.
[1:09:30]Getting really wrapped around the axle there. So, one thing that I just wanted to say is if you go in and look at any of these items, when they ask, they will have an explanation of why they want your location. So, for instance, here's the Wemo app, which is, I have a couple of Wemo smart switches, and it wants to know my location. Wemo needs location to continue. we do not store share or sell your location data that's a bad answer yeah continue continue that is a bad answer bad memo not no one no access for you um then we've got um oh let's see.
[1:10:17]Um here's voice memos is apple but voice memos will be named with a location where they are record it. Oh, it's kind of cool. I mean, which is true, you know, so you have that under location services. Yeah. My, I don't, not the system service, not, not, not system services, just location services. Yeah. I do not have voice memos in there. I wonder if I just haven't launched it in a while. So, I have an app. There's also an app called Vivino, some kind of wine app. Oh, yeah. And its explanation is, see wines available in your area. I'm like, no. Okay, but, you know, when you want to know, does my wine, you know, connect me to my wine and more, there could be value to you. You could make that choice, but maybe not. You can probably look it up yourself. I mean, Starbucks says, easily order ahead, get directions, and see what's available at nearby stores. Precise location is used to ensure orders are fresh when you arrive.
[1:11:18]Just saying. No, no, I don't buy that. I don't buy that because you order from home. They start making it. They don't wait to see if I'm close and go, oh, let's make it for Allison now. Yeah, I turned off precise location on that one. And I change it to while using the app. Because it does give you the suggestions, your favorites in order, you know, find them near me. Which is a critical thing to know when you need your starbucks now now this was this was my poster child for this one was um the canon print app i have a wireless battery powered canon pixna printer that i use for race printing results um enabling the use of precise location information may help when trying to solve printer connectivity issues location information will not be sent to canon like sorry like i believe you one bit that you need to know exactly where i am but we're not But that's going to help you troubleshoot something? Yeah, right. With a printer? The paper's jammed. Oh, you know what? We know exactly where your house is. So how are you seeing those? You're going into something and you turn it off? No, just for each app. Oh, I see. It's really small things. Just select one and look underneath where it says, you know, allow location access. It's the app explanation. Oh, Sky Guide. That's a thing for looking at constellations. It says app explanation. Sky Guide uses your location to send notifications about astronomical events visible in your area. Nuh-uh.
[1:12:46]I don't need that. I just changed it to never. Yes. I think if I hold, because Sky Guide is one of those things, you hold your phone up in the air and you kind of wiggle it around and it uses the gyroscope and it figures out where stuff is. I'll find out whether it actually works the next time. But I don't need notifications. Right. So there's never any harm in saying never.
[1:13:09]And, you know, basically the app will tell you, we'll just not do something and it will have to ask you again. But certainly, what I like to do is whenever, periodically, whenever the sum of the release comes up, I go through and switch everything that I'm uncertain about to ask me next time. And because then I'm like, oh, yeah, that's reasonable. Or what the hell? This is just a dumb excuse, you know, that you sort of, you were making, you said something in your app explanation, and that's not it. It's insufficient. Insufficient, right, right. Bad, bad example. I can tell, no, you guys are big, fat, flying dirtbags, never. But some, you're like, give me a little more. And that's the ones that you change to ask next time. Precisely. And I don't know why it says, or when I share. I mean, do people share apps? I mean, I guess they can. You share what? Yeah, I think it's like literally when you, because if you're on the home screen on your phone, and you select, you know, you long press on an app, you can share it. But I've never really heard of people doing this. I'm asking ChatGPT.
[1:14:23]Let's see if it has any explanation. Means the app doesn't get blanket access instead of the time you choose to share. When I share, some apps have specific features tied to location sharing, like posting your location to a map within a shared post. When the settings enabled, the app only requests your location when you choose to use a sharing feature that requires it. Hmm. Yeah. So it sounds like it's a blanket toggle instead of having separate toggles for both to confuse us. They put them together to confuse us. Yeah. Right. Right. I mean, I guess, right. If you share, there are some apps where you share your location. And so that might be that, you know, so. Yeah, you know what's annoying is if you choose that option, instead of when you're at the big list, instead of it saying ask next time, it says when I share. So that the one toggle is ask next time or when I share, but what it calls it is when shared. When shared, yeah. Yeah, that's kind of annoying. Yeah.
[1:15:25]Yeah, boy, the American one. I have a long explanation. This app can use your location information while you're using the app to find airports and to provide traffic information on your day of travel. And we'll keep going. like the app can use location while running the background to customize the information about your flights based on where you are located. For example, you'll see more pertinent information when you were at the airport as opposed to when you were elsewhere. So I got to tell you, I don't believe American because American's bad at it, but I believe I will allow United to do it. Because I mean, United goes, okay, I see you're at the airport. You know, you could drop your bags off at the SkyCab here, or you could carry them in yourself. And then you check them in. It goes, okay, we've got your luggage and they're on their way. And then they give you another one says, okay, your luggage is on the plane. You land, it says, okay, you're landing at your, no, it tells you your seat number. And when you get on the plane, it tells you what your seat number is. No, and turn around, you walked by it. Yeah, practically, practically. It's so freaking good. I mean, the plane lands and it tells you where your baggage claim is. You don't get anything like that with American. We've just started to fly United recently and we're like, man, what were we missing all these years?
[1:16:30]So yeah so in any event it's um this is a big one honestly because if the apps don't get your location it can't get bundled up with any kind of tracking that they might do otherwise so, reduce location sharing to the extent possible does it work retroactively do you think, no once once they've got data points on you they're not giving them back, no but i mean oh we're so sorry we didn't mean it we're really embarrassed No, but I mean, if they don't have my location being shared by the Target app, and that's how they knew where I was, if I stop sharing the location, doesn't that data, the new data doesn't exist, right? Right, the new data won't exist, but basically— I mean, maybe they know that Allison goes to Target, but they don't know I'm at Target now. Right, and things like this Babel Street Locate X tool will not know that you're there anymore. Right. So it is. So, I mean, it's not retroactive, but it's from today forward, they don't. It's not like all that data they collected means they can continue to track my location. No, no, no, no. They don't get to keep tracking your location. So this is good. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely good. Shut off location services for anything that doesn't need it. I love it. Very simple. Very simple. Kill location services.
[1:17:47]I love it. Well, I've got a link in the show notes to protect yourself against location tracking abuses by Adam Angst at tidbits.com. It's a newsletter that you should absolutely read. I don't read many newsletters, but I read what you write because it's always amazing. And I hear there's a couple of other hacks that work there, too, that are reasonably good. Some Glenn guy, a couple others. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Some. Not as good as you, but. Not as well. We are, of course. He just wrote about Thunderbolt 5, which I was so pleased about. I was like, oh, good. I don't need Thunderbolt 5. Thank you. That's what I need. The answer is you don't need Thunderbolt 5 unless you're one of these people. I don't think I need Thunderbolt 4. I keep trying to justify upgrading my CalDigit TS3 Plus from Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 4, but I'm 100% certain I wouldn't know. But I've got to go read that. I do want to learn about Thunderbolt 5. Before we go, though, I do want to mention two more things in privacy and security that people should look at and turn off, though, really quick. One is Bluetooth.
[1:18:46]And because lots of things will ask for Bluetooth access that don't need them. And you're like, NBC Sports. Why does NBC Sports need to use Bluetooth access? Well, it turns out it's because you can cast to certain TVs. But here's the thing. When Bluetooth access is turned on, other Bluetooth devices can see you in location, right? Right. So, you want to disable that because that beacon can be picked up by other devices and used to locate you. Wow. Okay.
[1:19:26]Did you tell us to do that in the article? Because I appear to have done that. Yeah, yeah. And then similarly, there's another one called local network, which is the same thing, where it's totally reasonable for devices to want to see what's on your local network if they need to do this. But if they know what your local network is, that can identify you as well, just sort of like your cable modem knows roughly where you are. So, all this data goes into the pot. What that would mean. So, Hulu wants to know my local network. Does hulu is probably looking for other devices on your network like um uh screens of some sort probably like uh you know another apple tv apple i don't think well hulu shouldn't need apple tv for that but um but other like other smart smart tv type things okay nano leaf nano leaf it's a smart light it would need yeah yeah it would need access to your network to the local network okay To the network. So, like, I have Mixcloud and Teams. I don't know why they'd need it, so I turned them off. And again, anything you turn off that really needs it, we'll ask again.
[1:20:37]So, there's no harm in it. But it's just, it's like, don't be sharing data that you don't know, have any reason to understand why that you might need to do this. You know, they can, maybe can always ask again. Yeah, the default should be no, leave me alone until you prove to me that you have some reason. Like, there's something I want that I can't have unless you give me that. Well, usually what happens is these things, you know, the first time you launch them, they ask for all this permission. And you're like, yeah, yeah, I don't know what you do yet. Right? So, you know, you'll agree to most anything the first time because you're like, I've never used this app. I don't know whether it needs Bluetooth access. My favorite are the ones on the Mac now where they're going, can I have access to your calendar and contacts? No.
[1:21:22]You know, it's like something that turns my light on, you know.
[1:21:26]I don't think so. I don't think you need that. Because we want to make sure that your contacts are able to turn your lights on too when they visit, of course. Just when they visit. And hackers in Russia. Exactly, exactly. Well, I appreciate the public service announcement, and this makes me feel less powerless to do a double negative there. Right. It's not great. I mean, it's still like – so, the whole Atlas Privacy story, there's this couple. They were both police officers in New Jersey. and partly with this lawsuit in New Jersey they've got this rule this law that says you can't track police officers or judges or people like that and so that's how Atlas Privacy is suing, but this police officer the woman and her husband they were fully aware that this location tracking was a thing and the guy couldn't be found but they found the woman because she used a Macy's app.
[1:22:24]Oh wow and Macy's app wanted location and by girl you mean police officer right yeah yeah yeah no it was a married couple they were both police officers right right um and so so that was you know and uh so yeah so it was just one of those situations where and she i think she'd done a lot of things right, she just hadn't either she she missed the missed the the notification from macy's she didn't think about it whatever it was or it offered a coupon if you come close to the store.
[1:22:57]You never know. These particular police officers had been targeted on social media for various reasons. It's kind of a terrible story, so that's partly why they were so concerned about their location being made available. So, yeah. So, in any event, it was interesting. Again, these stories are well worth reading. I mean, the Brian Krebs on Security, 404 Media story. Um they're just chilling and you linked all of those in your article right yeah i linked all of those in my article and and i say we just you know it's it's one of those things where, realistically the only solution is going to be legislation because we have to make this not legal to do right you know as long as it's legal to do these companies are going to be doing it because they've found they can make money at it even if it's only selling data to each other.
[1:23:56]Uh well i had tried to end us on a happy ending note well we fulfilled the promise right we said uh now with less giggling this week yeah less giggling no so so i mean the only thing that i the only thing that i hold hope for is is that you know uh you know representatives legislators they're equally easily as trackable as everyone else. And so, you know, if some of them start getting into the, wait a second, anyone can follow me around wherever I go. That's a real problem. Hopefully that will get their butts in gear in terms of actually, you know, putting some privacy regulations into play. All right. From your lips to Congress's ears. Thanks for coming on the show. Get on it. Get on it.
[1:24:47]Thanks again always always fun well that's going to wind us up for this week did you know you can email me at allison at podfeet.com anytime you like if you have a question or suggestion just send it on over remember everything good starts with podfeet.com you can follow me on mastodon at podfeet.com slash mastodon if you want to join or listen sorry to the podcast on youtube you can go to podfeet.com slash youtube like the kids like to do if you want to join the conversation, you can join our Slack community at podfeed.com slash Slack, where you can talk to me and all of the other lovely Nocilla Castaways. You can support the show by going to podfeed.com slash Patreon, or with a one-time donation like the lovely Paul Nealon did by going to podfeed.com slash PayPal. And if you want to join in the fun of the live show, head on over to podfeed.com slash live on Sunday nights at 5 p.m. Pacific time and join the friendly and enthusiastic Nocilla Cast.
[1:25:36]Music.