Flight trackers opt-out

FR24 Other sites.

You cannot completely prevent this. If you are Mode S or ADS-B OUT, anybody can set up a receiver and pick it up from a huge distance, say 200nm if a good antenna is used, and feed it into some website.

Various previous discussions e.g. here.

Also plane spotters will get pics of your plane, so a google on the aircraft reg will pretty well reveal where the plane flies. If nothing comes up on google, it means the plane keeps a very low profile (e.g. just out of the hangar, a bit of local, and straight back in, and there are no plane spotters around) / flies at night / flies within desolate areas / doesn’t fly, etc. Where I am based there are spotters who deliberately take pics of the individual faces inside, with huge lenses, as you taxi past the restaurant, as 10-20m range. I had a polite word with one of them the other day (I told him the passengers don’t exactly appreciate this) and he told me to f—k off.

For some reason mine only shows up live during flights. FR24 never shows anything in its logs and there’s no record of the plane if you search for it. Some of the other sites pick up some flights. No idea why though!

(Legit question) why would they want to take pics of the faces?

I haven’t yet any flight I wanted to keep “secret” so generally do a little friendly wave, just like when kids are standing by – they seem to find it very fun

why would they want to take pics of the faces?

I haven’t got a clue. One assumes they end up on some weird websites.

so generally do a little friendly wave, just like when kids are standing by – they seem to find it very fun

Yes; the kids love it

For some reason mine only shows up live during flights.

That is true for the FR24 phone app. AFAICT it cannot retrieve any logs; not that I have spent time on trying it. The FR24 website shows the last 7 days’ flights, unless you pay and then you can go up to 2 years or whatever.

I believe bizjet (AOC charter) operators are the main people who lean on FR24 to stop tracking them, because they don’t want competitors seeing where they are flying. However I think those flights still show up on the phone app in real time; this was the case some time ago because I vaguely recall doing an experiment for somebody.

They show up without tailnumber.

@AJ
Email strongly worded and quoting the data protection rules to FR24 to the address given on the website worked for me.
Response asked for copy of registration doc and shortly after my plane didnt show up any more.

Basic problem: it hasnt been legally clarified, if the compulsory transponder data falls under the GDPR protection as personal data. In analogy to the IP adress (very similar: regularly one identity, but can be allocated to more than one person) which IS personal data, it should.
But no one has pushed this through a court.

Special problem: some operators are not based in Europe and would give a rat’s ass on what the rules say here (one group more or less tells it on their website)

if the compulsory transponder data falls under the GDPR protection as personal data

I am sure it does not fall under GDPR. Is ATC registered under GDPR? I doubt it Their defence is that the data is required for them to perform their job, and it isn’t personal data. And the aircraft transmits the data openly for all to receive. While there are (ancient) laws saying you cannot listen to various radio transmissions (e.g. ATC, in some countries) there is no law saying you cannot pick up these particular signals. This then leads to the very stretched argument that your transponder radiation is your intellectual property The whole GDPR thing has been widely promoted by its creators as a fix for all human rights abuses and accordingly is widely misunderstood (along with stuff like “the right to be forgotten”) and lots of people quote it in all sorts of contexts where it doesn’t apply… In practice GDPR has done precisely zero, zilch, nothing whatsoever to reduce or stop stuff like spam and related abuses. FR24 has a significant income and would have obtained legal advice.

If the server is outside the EU (practically speaking, if the business has no EU based assets) then it can ignore GDPR anyway.

IANAL, obviously

While it isn’t really practical to do data mining on FR24 (not least because it clearly “adjusts” the altitude to achieve nice round numbers), there are bigger issues with ADS-B OUT which can be used to automatically monitor vast areas for airspace infringement, at a very low cost.

ch.ess wrote:

and quoting the data protection rules

Which rules exactly?

I have a hard time seeing the real problem here. You are radiating a “I’m here” message for anyone to see, but don’t want anyone to see it. As I see it the data is not private, it’s official, just like ATC radio talk. On the other hand, those flight trackers are making a business out of those data which is not their property. But, the data is official, so anyone can do that. No one owns the data.

What is the alternative, and how would that work? First, someone would have to own the data. Then we are heading into a hopeless situation of “big brother” and whatnot. The purpose of the data is flight safety, flight traffic efficiency etc. Transparency is the key. If you don’t like it, then don’t fly. It’s like the Germanwings crash. 150 people died due to the “privacy” of one. Flying is not a right, it’s a privilege, and with that privilege comes lack of privacy. You are no longer a private person when flying, you are a part of an official and transparent system. This is a responsibility you have to handle as PIC IMO, for the safety of others.

But, I guess also that flight trackers are operating on the edges of what is legal some places. As I see it, they are just the flip side of the coin of a healthy system.

Peter wrote:

Is ATC registered under GDPR? I doubt it

Of course not – government exempts itself from all the parts of GDPR it finds inconvenient, while enforcing it on everyone else :-)

Noe wrote:

why would they want to take pics of the faces?

I think it’s basically impossible to take a photo of a small aircraft filling the frame without also clearly showing the faces of the people inside. Even pictures of my plane taken in flight with the plane only filling up a small part of the frame, you can recognise who’s inside.