Please tighten your passwords and assume the brace position, says plane-tracking site

Aviation professionals enthusiasts have been told to change their passwords after flight-tracking site flightradar24 warned of a data breach. The site offers real-time visualizations of commercial flights in transit with a freemium model. Subscribers get access to more historical data or to a package of services aimed at …

[Wellyboot]

Not the sharpest bunch then.

>>As the message offered a link to reset passwords, some members worried that it was a phishing scam. Flightradar24 personnel therefore hit the service’s forums to confirm the mails were genuine.<<

Info-sec 101 - the next email offerin password reset WILL be phishing !

[Martin Summers]

Re: Not the sharpest bunch then.

Hey, at least they didn't keep passwords in plane text.

[Pen-y-gors]

Great site

It's a really neat site. Let's me find out which selfish bastards are disturbing the peace and quiet in my garden (and thousands of other peoples gardens) on a sunny afternoon by flying overhead in a noisy polluting machine, just so they can visit Dublin and drink Guinness!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Great site

Jealous much?

[seven of five]

Re: Great site

Yeah, so whatcha gonna do aboutit? Buy a SA-11 missle system and blast them outta sky? (Oh, wait)

[Gene Cash]

Re: Great site

"Abdul! My kingdom for an SA-7!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Great site

I keep a weather eye on ICE, CBP and DEA flights. They always fly right over the freeways here while out and about. I presume that their targets never check-6.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Great site

That's a really useful comment. It helps me identify people who buy a house on a flight path and then moan about the aircraft noise.

The only aircraft-noise disturbances I get tend to be military helicopters, which funnily enough aren't shown on FR24. And the occasional hot-air balloon... their burners are surprisingly noisy at 100ft AGL, but they don't choose their course quite like your Dublin visitors.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Great site

Much agreed on the military helicopters. They fly over us weekly, a Chinook pulling a giant Singapore flag, accompanied by two Apaches. Noisy as hell. Some sort of a practise for the nationaly day parade I guess, seems to start earlier every year.

[Pen-y-gors]

Re: Great site

Having visited friends in St Margarets who lived right under the Heathrow flightpath it can't be much fun. What pisses me off is that everywhere is 'under the flight path' these days. Our nearest serious airport is close on 3 hours drive away, but still we get them. Okay, they're at 30,000 feet, but when relaxing in a peaceful Welsh garden, with the sound of the stream, the birdies, the sheep and not much else, it's a really pain to get jet noise! Bastards I say!

[werdsmith]

Re: Great site

Having visited friends in St Margarets who lived right under the Heathrow flightpath it can't be much fun.

I live under a final approach, roughly 10-12 miles out from the threshold just inside the point where the aircraft intersect the localizer and it's terrific fun sitting outside on a sunny afternoon watching the pilots turning, getting the speed under control, dropping the wheels and going dirty as they descend through 2000 feet. I'm always disappointed when the wind changes and they approach the runway from the other end.

[Joeyjoejojrshabado]

Re: Great site

Well spare a thought for us poor bastards in Dublin.

[Jude Bradley]

Re: Great site

Yes you're right of course. Sweltering in the 24.c heat.

[Mark 85]

Re: Great site

Those are scheduled. Where I am, it's pretty much a given that commercial traffic flies over us. Our airport is in the middle of the valley along with the city and suburbs. Knew the thing was there and really doesn't bother.

What I'd really like to see is one for tracking the non-commercial stuff. This time of year is air show season and our airport is refueling and layover one for them. Everything from WWI a/c to current military aircraft come and go. The AF uses our field for "short runway touch and go" practice. So yeah.. I'd like to have a heads up and be able to be outside to see these birds.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The site offers real-time visualizations of commercial flights in transit with a freemium model."

Some private aircraft - even gliders - are also visible through whatever tracking devices they use.

[Alan Ferris]

And also some ground vehicles at airports seem to carry the right transponders too

[Martin an gof]

Some private aircraft - even gliders - are also visible through whatever tracking devices they use.

I believe that FR24 - as do other flight tracking websites - filters some aircraft out of the map. If you have a Raspberry Pi with USB TV stick and Dump 1090 installed you can not only feed data into FR24 (thus gaining a "business" class subscription for the price of a Pi and a stick) but you can look directly at the data Dump 1090 collects about aircraft near you. This data is unfiltered.

The "tracking devices" are ADS-B transponders, which continuously broadcast various data about the aircraft (or, yes, airport vehicles) to which they are fitted. Most commercial aircraft are required to carry these. Many private aircraft do, but not all military.

See also: FR24, how it works

and Flight Aware page on ADS-B

M.

[andy gibson]

Panic

A couple of years back, my assistant's OH was off to the US from the UK. It was her first ever trip on a plane and she was scared, and he was a little apprehensive too.

I suggested he put the Flightradar website on his workstation's second screen so he could watch the flight progress through the day.

I can still see the picture of horror on his face when he saw the plane had turned around some way across the Atlantic and was slowly returning to Ireland to land and he had no way of knowing what was up until it landed and she called (faulty air conditioner in the cabin).

[Martin an gof]

Re: Panic

I can still see the picture of horror on his face when he saw the plane had turned around some way across the Atlantic

Similar thing happened to my sister, whose eldest (then 15) was due to return from a rugby trip in Canada. FR24 showed them taking off, getting about half way across the Atlantic, then turning around and going back...

...then suddenly, miraculously, being transported from a few hundred miles off the East Coast of the US to a few hundred miles off the West Coast of the UK.

Coverage in the Atlantic is a bit sparse, and something went wrong with the "it'll carry on on its current track unless we hear otherwise" algorithm.

Phew!

M.

[Pascal Monett]

Re: Panic

That must have been a harrowing experience indeed - especially given all the terrible things Hollywood has taught us can happen on a flight (engine fire, hydraulic system failure, etc).

I guess you cannot help but imagining all the possible horrors and wondering which one it is. Getting the call was probably the greatest relief, learning it was "just" the A/C was the cherry on top.

[Kane]

Re: Panic

"especially given all the terrible things Hollywood has taught us can happen on a flight (engine fire, hydraulic system failure, etc)."

Snakes.

[werdsmith]

Re: Panic

If you set your FR24 to alert you for emergency squawk code 7700 then you will see just how frequently these unscheduled landings due to the aircraft going tech happens.

Somewhere in the world it's happening every day.

[Anonymous South African Coward]

Zoom out and see a lot of planes in the air.

Especially over Trumpmenistan and over the EU.

Scary.

[really_adf]

Re: Zoom out and see a lot of planes in the air.

There was a BBC TV programme a while back called "City in the Sky" because, at any given time, there are about a million people in the air (worldwide). So yeah, a lot of planes!

[Ken Moorhouse]

Psst Your Flies are Undone

Alternative headline?

[Anonymous Coward]

How to reset a FR24 password?

This was a question I asked myself when I got that email.

Clearly I wouldn't use the link in the email even though I'd viewed the message source and it seemed legit.

So, I go to my FR24 page and look for a way to access my account settings and reset my password, but the cookies recognise me I'm automatically logged in with no access to account settings.

Rather than track down the cookie responsible I used a different browser and wonder of wonders there is a 'reset password' option which I used.

Why they deny me access to my account settings once I'm logged in is beyond me, but there you have it.

I feed data to FR24 and quite like the site, but if you want a free alternative that will show more aircraft (MLAT/military stuff for example) you could do worse than go to https://www.adsbexchange.com.

Click on the 'Global Radar View' tab and off you go.

Another is https://flightaware.com who will give you an 'Enterprise' account if you send them data.

[werdsmith]

FR24 screwed over a lot of their app customers. 10s of thousands had paid for the ad-free version with features enabled which FR24 then withdrew and replaced with a new version "2" that needed to be paid for again to enable the features and remove ads.

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't true. They brought out a new, improved app which you can use for free and add a subscription if you wish. You are free to use the old app for as long as you wish. Your claiming that you should get the new app for free and they took away the old app you paid for. This is not true. The old app is still in your Google Play/IOS Store to download and install