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How do researchers find this information? Presumably the apps are using encrypted network connections to submit your location data to surveillance backends. Is guardianapp reversing each application using jail broken devices? Using an iOS emulator to inspect the running app?
No such thing exists
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Niche startup idea, VPN for your mobile device that can analyze and block traffic. Block entire countries, 3rd parties, etc. Give realtime feedback on their dashboard as applications are loaded. Could also be useful as a developer application profiling tool.
> Niche startup idea, VPN for your mobile device that can analyze and block traffic. This is indeed what we (originators of this location tracking research) do.
How do I blackhole all traffic to these 3rd party data collection companies? The apps aren't even using their own bandwidth. This is a disgrace that Apple is allowing this and doesn't provide a control to monitor or stop it.
Hopefully someone will add the tracking domains to a pihole list. Doesn't help when you're on the go through unless you vpn to a network you own with a pihole installed.
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Niche startup idea, VPN for your mobile device that can analyze and block traffic. Block entire countries, 3rd parties, etc. Give realtime feedback on their dashboard as applications are loaded. Could also be useful as a developer application profiling tool.
Facebook attempted such a thing already, and was caught exploiting it. VPN apps for the purpose of traffic control and monitoring are dangerous as they rely on some other party. I could do the same thing without ever needing a service for that. Setting up a monitored VPN gateway is no rocket science for me, I could do that, but the folks using crappy apps couldn't. And I would still need a way to map traffic to speci…
I've worked in this industry for years, happy to answer any questions.
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now that the commonly used hostnames are published. The problem I see with that is that apps could easily start proxying the requests though their own servers.
I personally believe this is unlikely, because then the firms paying for this data will not be so sure that the information is legitimate, whereas collecting directly from user devices makes fraud more difficult.
I could also imagine ways around that. For instance their proprietary SDK could generate the data and cryptographically sign it. Or they could require that app makers set up a special subdomain that points to their ip address. I guess it would only be worth the trouble if enough people care about it.
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You cannot decompile apps without a jailbroken device, as they're encrypted with FairPlay. And iTunes, at least with the latest version, no longer lets you download apps.
There are ways to download apps on a desktop without using iTunes.
How do researchers find this information? Presumably the apps are using encrypted network connections to submit your location data to surveillance backends. Is guardianapp reversing each application using jail broken devices? Using an iOS emulator to inspect the running app?
> iOS emulator No such thing exists