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That one Tuesday where my phone GPS sent me to a dead end road three times in a row
I was driving to a job interview last month, and my GPS kept telling me to turn down this dirt road that just ended at a locked gate. First time I thought, okay, maybe I misread it. Second time I figured my phone needed a restart. Third time I started wondering if the satellites are actually run by the same company that owns those big data farms near my town. I saw a post online about how GPS signals can be spoofed or rerouted for testing purposes, and it got me thinking. That whole morning felt like someone was messing with my route on purpose, maybe testing traffic patterns or gathering location data. Has anyone else had their navigation just go haywire in a random spot for no clear reason?
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sean85424d agoMost Upvoted
Nah, cheap phones just lose signal sometimes, don't overthink it.
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karenb9724d ago
Honestly, the part about "the satellites are actually run by the same company that owns those big data farms" made me stop and think. I used to just shrug off GPS glitches as bad cell service or my phone being old. But after reading that, I started looking into how much data those mapping companies collect from my directions, and yeah, it's creepy. I had a similar thing happen near a new housing development - my GPS kept sending me through a construction site that was obviously closed. Now I'm wondering if they were testing how traffic flows around roadblocks or something. It's hard to just blame it on a weak signal when it happens that many times in one spot. I'm not saying it's definitely a test, but it changed how I look at my navigation app.
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sean_green4424d ago
My buddy Derek had the SAME thing happen near a construction site outside Denver last summer. His Maps app kept rerouting him through a fenced-off area three times in one week, @karenb97, and he joked the company was probably "stress testing" their traffic predictions on real drivers. I started turning off my location history after he told me that, just to be safe.
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