"Acquired by Trainline in 2023, Signalbox works with organisations across the rail ecosystem to improve customer information and operational awareness."

https://www.signalbox.io/news/southeastern-launches-track-my...

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AJRF 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Few questions, wonder if anyone knows the answers:

1. So it's Trainline on a persons phone that is tracking this info and using it to enrich this service? I use Trainline and didn't know it was doing that, but I do have location permissions on because I was told that powered the search picker when I started using the app.

2. What did they use _before_ Trainline? Or was Trainline selling user location data to them?

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Liquid_Fire 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I think you're misunderstanding what they are saying. They don't use background location data, but they do use your current location data. Try the "Find My Train" demo on their site - it asks for location permission.

Or their API - it also expects device location data:

> At a minimum, requests to the detect endpoint _must_ contain a device's location measurement. Additional fields can be included where available to improve the accuracy of the returned results as outlined below.

https://docs.signalbox.io/docs#/operations/Detect_detect

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AJRF 2 hours ago | parent [-]

wait - so you think that the map is made up of people who are all sitting on that website using the Find My Train demo?

I think you are missing the point - what is collecting data on all those trains.

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Liquid_Fire 2 hours ago | parent [-]

No, live train data in the UK is already publicly available, e.g. see https://www.opentraintimes.com/

This is matching your phone's location to the already public train data.

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AJRF 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> This is matching your phone's location

But what is getting that?

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Liquid_Fire 2 hours ago | parent [-]

You are giving it to them. That's why the demo asks for your location permission, and that's why the API expects location info.

"You" here means another app that integrates their API (or you as an individual using the demo on their website). How the other app gets it is up to the other app - ideally it also just queries it directly and requires location permission.

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frnz 2 hours ago | parent [-]

so an empty train does not show up?

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Liquid_Fire an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Not sure how you came to that conclusion. An empty train would still exist in the live train data. It does not depend on mobile phones, but on rail signals and other such tracking built into the rail infrastructure.

	▲	frnz an hour ago \| parent [-]
		of course, sry, I didn't read the descriptions. Thanks for clarification!

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Hikikomori an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Does a train exist if you are not on it?

	▲	dofm 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yes; this is not a German train tracker. (How awesome it is to be able to make this joke as a Brit ;-)