Is this Big Brother or what

[Bugsy]

I've just recieved this email this morning and wondered, how on earth the sender knows I have a GPS system. Is it just a guess that I own one, or are we being tracked already ?

Dear GPS Owner,

A major manufacturer of GPS products needs your help! The company wants to select a name for a new vehicle navigation product offering. As a current GPS owner, your opinions are very important to us. Would you please take a few moments to complete a brief survey?

Your responses are strictly confidential and will be used only in aggregate by the GPS manufacturer for planning purposes.

If you respond by December 21, 2006, and include your email address at the end of the survey, you will be entered into a random drawing to win a $100 gift certificate to Amazon.com! Five winners will be drawn.

The survey should take less than 10 minutes to complete. Would you please take a few moments to help us name a new portable vehicle navigation product?

To participate, go to:

Spooky................................................[:)]

[Pancake]

Did you register it online and use your email address ?? If you did they may have passed it on...

[cooperlola]

If you know where you are when you're using it, Gary, then it probably knows where you are!

[Gluestick]

Or it could be and probably is a typical spamming email which is automatically sent to as many logical email addresses as possible. The process is totally random: however since a large percentage of people have GPS, it's a bit like saying, "PC" instead of "GPS"!

The carrot - prize -  galvanises some people to respond: and then, Gotcha! Your details are sold on to yet another mail marketing biz, which creates and sells lists to spammers.

They should all be shot at dawn.

 

[Tresco]

Or, perhaps in your excitement at ordering your  GSP, you missed a tiny little 'option' box, saying "NO, I don't want you to share my information with the rest of the world".

[Will]

So why not suggest the name 'Big Brother' or something similar?

[Les]

Hi.

As a general rule, any e-mail that you receive which asks for personal details such as name, address, date of birth, occupation, phone number and even bank details are scams.

Be warned.

Les.

[Sunday Driver]

Look, just send the bleeding questionnaire back suggesting they call the new kit GPS**** (substitute your PIN number here)....

 

[The Riff-Raff Element]

[quote user="Gluestick"]

They should all be shot at dawn.

 [/quote]

Far too bleeding heart liberal - they should have electrodes

attached to their gonads and the current steadily increased until smoke

comes out of their ears. Then they should be flayed alive with a length

of knotted rope before being chopped into small (but not too small as

we want everyone to be able to see) pieces. These pieces should then be

shot at dawn.

I've had a VERY similar email to this and I neither have nor have

any plans to own one of these ridiculous devices. Just more tiresome

little toerags fishing for active email addresses.

[Bugsy]

Oh, come on Jon, say what you really mean.............................[:)]

[Dick Smith]

Hmmm. I think you might need some of Mr Zjob's tablets...

[Jonzjob]

[quote user="Fluffy Kitten"]Hmmm. I think you might need some of Mr Zjob's tablets...
[/quote]

Sod off, I need all the pills I have, but I do like Jenlain too (that's a beer rather than a pills?)

My GPS is a nice little Garmin. It works in the car and one of the best bits is that you can park in a town/city you don't know, waymark where the car is, walk away with the unit and find your car again!! Better than the rubbish they FIT in cars and nags at you! Good for walking out on the garrigue too and only about the same size as a dreaded mobile fone...

GPS units are completely passive and transmit nothing, so there is no way that anyone can know where you are. I even used mine on Ryanair to track our flight course to Carcassonne and before anyone else tries to tell me that it can disrupt the aircraft's electronics, I was an aircraft electrician for 12 years and I know it can't! It was lovely to look out of the window and know that that's such-and-such a place. Also gives cabin altitude, aircraft altitude, speed and direction and as an aircraft lover I was fascinated by that!!

[Dick Smith]

Then perhaps he needs some of the Bursar's dried frog pills?

[Dave]

Jon,

  from what you said about taking your garmin for walks, does that mean it can give location even in the boonies, I ask because when our son came last year in a car equipped with a GPS thing it showed us as in the middle of.....nothing and could only ever suggest driving to the nearest mainroad to relocate the sattelite, or something like that! Sounds like a useful tool.

best regards

Dave

[Dave]

HI again Jon,

      I was just on the Garmin site and there are several models, have you got a reccomendation, like which models is yours and would you want to change it?

best regards

Dave

By the way I think Big Brother is already here in France, if you have ever noticed as you have driven along the autoroute the big roadside signs that advertise the travel radio station using LED cells or something, well one day as we were plodding along at around 120kph (van) a car flashed by us and on the roadside sign that we were just passing the message changed to 140kph and then a car registration number that was the actual car that had flashed by, since then I have seen the same thing only this time the message was that Reg Number so and so travelling too close, keep your distance. Now how is that done? I am not talking about the signs as you approach the tolls that warn of your speed. Has anyone else ever seen that, or am I going crazy?[:'(]

[The Riff-Raff Element]

[quote user="Dave"]Jon,

  from what you said about taking your

garmin for walks, does that mean it can give location even in the

boonies, I ask because when our son came last year in a car equipped

with a GPS thing it showed us as in the middle of.....nothing and could

only ever suggest driving to the nearest mainroad to relocate the

sattelite, or something like that! Sounds like a useful tool.

best regards

Dave

[/quote]

Different Jon, but here's my tale. An aquaintence of mine (not a

friend; I don't have any this stupid) went hiking in the Jura with a

GPS and an ordinary 1:150,000 départemental map. In October. He almost

died of exposure, he had a mobile phone for emergencies, but no

international roaming option. Still, all the time he was lost, before

he had the fortune to stumble blindly onto a metalled road and flag

down a passing car, he knew exactly how mandydegrees, minutes &

seconds he was North and East. This must have been a great comfort at

the onset of hypothermia.

All the technology in the World is useless if misapplied.

[Sunday Driver]

[quote user="Dave"]
By the way I think Big Brother is already here in France, if you have ever noticed as you have driven along the autoroute the big roadside signs that advertise the travel radio station using LED cells or something, well one day as we were plodding along at around 120kph (van) a car flashed by us and on the roadside sign that we were just passing the message changed to 140kph and then a car registration number that was the actual car that had flashed by, since then I have seen the same thing only this time the message was that Reg Number so and so travelling too close, keep your distance. Now how is that done? I am not talking about the signs as you approach the tolls that warn of your speed. Has anyone else ever seen that, or am I going crazy?[:'(]
[/quote]

Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) - captures a digital image of the number plate, then intelligent software converts it to recognisable registration number. 

It's in widespread use on the UK motorway and trunk road system where it is linked to the police national computer, crime intelligence systems, DVLA, VOSA, motor insurance database, etc and is highly effective is combatting organised crime as well as identifying vehicles which have no tax/insurance/MOT or are being potentially driven by disqualified drivers. 

When an ANPR camera identifies such a vehicle, an alert is transmitted to a stop team on liveried police motorcycles situated further down the road. If the vehicle is untaxed/uninsured etc, then the police have powers to seize it and send it to be crushed.  Ducks in a barrel, really....

No reason to suppose it's not being used in a similar fashion in France. 

 

[Jonzjob]

[quote user="Dave"]HI again Jon,
      I was just on the Garmin site and there are several models, have you got a reccomendation, like which models is yours and would you want to change it?

best regards

Dave

By the way I think Big Brother is already here in France, if you have ever noticed as you have driven along the autoroute the big roadside signs that advertise the travel radio station using LED cells or something, well one day as we were plodding along at around 120kph (van) a car flashed by us and on the roadside sign that we were just passing the message changed to 140kph and then a car registration number that was the actual car that had flashed by, since then I have seen the same thing only this time the message was that Reg Number so and so travelling too close, keep your distance. Now how is that done? I am not talking about the signs as you approach the tolls that warn of your speed. Has anyone else ever seen that, or am I going crazy?[:'(]


[/quote]

Hi Dave, mine is a Garmin eTrex Vista and 'if' I were to want to change it then it would be for the eTrex Vista Cx, the colour screen version. It has 24 meg of storage, well rather than me trying to tell you what it has look at http://www.globalpositioningsystems.co.uk/recreational-handhelds.html . I use Global Positioning Systems 1. They are far cheaper than anything I have seen and 2. They know how the kit works and will advise if you ask. I don't and never have worked for them, just a satisfied customer ( I have heard it said that I have never worked for anyone, but that is not true cause I worked for IBM at least a couple of daze of the 18 years they employed me [Www])

As far as having to go to a road to find out where you are, no way. It will tel you where you are at any time, as long as it has a clear view of the sky, it works in a tent too and certain parts of our house. Clear view doesn't mean clouds, just thick tree canopy or maybe huge buildings close together. When I use ours in the car I have a re-rediating ariel. It has a receiver on a mag mount on the car roof and the transmitter is inside stuck above the rear view mirror on the wind screen. Then trees are not too much of a problem. It runs off the car battery.

The map software is MapSource European Metro Guide and I can load 8 X 4 meg tiles (sections of the map) on the GPS. The tile area varies because there is much more data for the towns/cities than there is for the country side. For me that means that I can load the area from just South of Toulouse to Béziers and south to Perpignan. But if I were to load all of Toulouse it would take 4 tiles, get my drift.

BUT if you use a GPS for walking it is NOT a substitute for a map! And a 1:100,000 map that shows all of your department is not good either. You need the 1:25,000 IGN maps. They are nearly as good as OS maps. Sorry if I am teaching you to suck eggs? For my sins I spent 4 years trying to teach scouts to read maps and to tie knots and I don't know which was more frustrating!!!

I have fitted it into one of my radio controlled gliders in the  U.K. to see how high and fast I could get. My mate did the same with his GPS. He beat me for speed  ---  102 mph and I beat him for height   ---  1020 feet and a 2.5 meter model looks VERY small at that height. I should have fitted it just after a trip over here and not reset it, that would have been about 35,000 feet and about 500 mph!! I think my mate may just have smelled a rat!! My speed was 96 mph. The world speed record for RC gliders was 254 mph. 54 mph faster than prop driven models (not-a-lot-apeople-know-vat)

Hope that helps. Oh yes as a matter of interest, I measured the area of our garden with it. I set it to area and walked round the perimiter and hit the button at the end. The Immobiliers info was about correct! 3,150 sq M...