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Is Your E-ZPass Being Tracked Around NYC? Probably
By
Ben Yakas
Published Sep 13, 2013
Modified Sep 13, 2013
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Sep 13, 2013
Modified Sep 13, 2013
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Are you worried that Major League Baseball is tracking your every move for market research? As Mel Gibson once taught us, it's not paranoia when you're right: a New Jersey hacker who goes by the moniker Puking Monkey recently discovered that his E-ZPass was being used to track his whereabouts. Check out some videos of him demonstrating it below.
Puking Monkey, who is an IT Director in healthcare informatics, hacked up his E-ZPass to set off a light and a “moo cow” every time it was being read. As you can see in the videos above, it went off quite a bunch just driving around parts of Manhattan. Forbes discovered that it's part of an initiative called Midtown In Motion, which feeds information from sensors into NY's traffic management center. Scott Gastel, a spokesperson for the DOT, confirmed that E-ZPasses are being scanned around Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island, and have been for years.
NY is apparently the only state that uses this technology in this way. The program has been successful enough that it will expand to other parts of the city soon though. If you want to avoid being tracked via E-ZPass, Puking Monkey recommends that you “bag the tag, and only bring it out when you want to pay a toll.”
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ezpass
paranoia
tracking
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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