•••

An incoming call. The number I don’t recognize. A cheerful recorded voice: “The taxi company Name in Novokuznetsk offers you 24/7 service at low prices, blah-blah-blah…”

An unpleasant surprise.

I mean, I’m used to spam calls. With my job, I don’t have a luxury of ignoring the calls from unfamiliar numbers, so I hear all this quite often: “Legal advise on bankruptcy!”, “We invite you to our new dental office!”, and all the “Only this week you have a free…” (I never listen further, so I have no idea what’s free this week). The spammers are from Moscow and Kaliningrad, which makes sense: I still have my Kaliningrad phone number that redirects to my primary (Moscow) one.

The call from a Novokuznetsk taxi company on the second day of my visit to Novokuznetsk (for the first time in five years) doesn’t look coincidental, does it?

I’d love to know who ratted me out; I doubt it’s one of my friends or relatives… My cellular provider? The bank that issued the card I used to pay in a store? The airline? Google? Meta (I shared my location with my wife in WhatsApp)? Samsung (the weather widget on my watch has access to my location)? Looks like no one else was aware of my visit to Siberia… And I never gave a permission to share my location with advertisers to the mentioned companies, either.

Anyone still having illusions of privacy?