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How did we do? - message on mobile
Bowdon:
My Dad has been telling me that recently he's started to receive the "How did we do?" message that people usually get when they have used a companies services.
The strange thing is, he's never given his mobile number to these places.
He told me that it happened when he came out of Asda.
Yesterday he told me that he got that message when he drove past a pub on his travels. He doesn't know how they are sending him the message.
The only thing on his phone that is active is 1. Wifi is on and set to connect to our home network, and 2. He has bluetooth on while in the car to use it hands free.
My theory is its something to do with bluetooth. But I'm not sure. I've never heard of this happening to anyone else.
Does anyone have any ideas or theories to what is happening?
V_R:
Is it actually a text message?
What phone?
Could it be Google Maps thinking he's been in said place?
sevenlayermuddle:
smartphone tracking commonly uses WiFi and GPS.
If the phone sees (say) Asda’s wifi it can tell other parties that you are near Asda, communicating that information using cellular sata. Similarly, if GPS location is Asda, it will communicate that fact too.
If it is an iPhone, go to Settings->privacy->locationServices, and ensure nothing is ticked that does not need to be ticked. For example, I allow maps and the Network Rail App to see my location, and not much else. Avoid signing in to anything provided by Google, or at least, make sure you sign out again.
If it is an Android then my personal, biased, slightly tongue in cheek advice, would be to destroy it and buy an iPhone. I am semi serious as it is how I dealt with my own Android phone after I understood Google’s approach to privacy, but no doubt other more constructive advice will be forthcoming. :)
Bowdon:
I think you're right. It seems to be something to do with that location tracking.
He opened the message and it opened up a list of all the locations he'd been in the last 6 months with the name of the place and 5 stars that you can select.
My cousin was visiting for the day and I mentioned it to him and he said he had a similar experience with some of his friends so he unticked the location tracker and he hasnt had any issues since.
sevenlayermuddle:
Worth mentioning, a pal of mine has been complaining of something not quite the same, but similar. He gets ‘welcome’ messages and other spam, such as suggestions of where to eat, when he arrives at places shopping centres and the likes.
He’s a pretty competent techie, being a retired software engineer for a major mainframe manufacturer, but he’s not quite figured out how to stop it. The sledgehammer approach of disabling all location services might work, but he doesn’t want do do that. His device is an Android.
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