Airline tracks Twitter user’s real-world ID, publishes her flight number

guest · Aug 9, 2019

Airline tracks Twitter user’s real-world ID, publishes her flight number
Southwest Airlines finally relents, after first insisting flight numbers aren't PII
August 9, 2019
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...rs-real-world-id-publishes-her-flight-number/

A security consultant who took to Twitter to call out inappropriate comments made by a Southwest Airline flight attendant received a surprising response when the airline’s official Twitter account included her flight number in its reply while the flight had yet to take off.

The consultant, peeved that the airline tracked down her real-world identity and then broadcast her location, sent a follow-up saying the number amounted to personally identifiable information that the airline was obligated to keep private. The airline’s response: flight numbers aren’t PII.

Did you just drop my [***] flight number to the world????????
We haven’t even taken off, why would you do this? I haven’t even DMed you! You just dropped my PII pic.twitter.com/dBq1CvHWZl
— Jackie (@find_evil) August 8, 2019
A variety of onlookers came to Singh’s defense by trying to explain to Emilia how broadcasting the flight number of a plane a passenger was boarding allowed others to know Singh’s location. And for some passengers, this might pose a threat. One onlooker even posted this image showing Sing’s real-time location: [...]
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mirimir · Aug 9, 2019

If she's in the EU, she could file a GDPR complaint. Otherwise, she's probably SOL.

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Airline tracks Twitter user’s real-world ID, publishes her flight number

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Airline tracks Twitter user’s real-world ID, publishes her flight number

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