Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
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Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
#2The production value of these lavish spreads by the New York Times is impressive.
Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
#3I like it how iOS displays this arrow when location services are or were used, and how one can see in "Privacy -> Location Services" a brief history of which app did what, and enable or disable location access at all per app.
Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
#4Why is selling this data not illegal and harshly prosecuted?
You'd expect to find this data being stolen by trojans and sold for bitcoin by anonymous actors on blackhat sites, not by registered companies with offices and employees.
Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
#5Why is selling this data not illegal and harshly prosecuted? You'd expect to find this data being stolen by trojans and sold for bitcoin by anonymous actors on blackhat sites, not by registered companies with offices and employees.
It hasn't yet been used to expose a congressman?
The US lacks GDPR-style general privacy law, but there is a very specific one for video rental records passed specifically as a result of exposure of Robert Bork: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act
Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
#6That reminded me to check my privacy > location services settings and look for any apps that have "Always" and change them to "While Using" only
Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
#7I like it how iOS displays this arrow when location services are or were used, and how one can see in "Privacy -> Location Services" a brief history of which app did what, and enable or disable location access at all per app.
That does nothing for IP based geo location though. Every rest request to modern cloud services gets geotagged and those tags can be surprisingly accurate in populated areas for people that use wifi.
Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
#8That reminded me to check my privacy > location services settings and look for any apps that have "Always" and change them to "While Using" only
I wish there was something similar on Android. I used to keep my Location services off but needed to switch it on for Google Maps and HERE maps so I got lazy and leave it always on.
Its shameful that Android 2.3 let you have more control of your phone than Android 8.1.
Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
#9iOS now forcing "While Using" option on all apps is the greatest thing ever. Before this, some apps where forcing the "Always" option on users. Uber and Waze come to mind.
iOS also gives you a warning from time to time about apps using your location in the background. I think iOS right now has the best location management.
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People are surprised when seeing the Activity section in Google's account details, then freak out about Google tracking their location. At the very least Google is being transparent about it and gives you the option to turn that shit off.
Also I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Google Maps now remembers searches you've made without location history or app activity tracking being active. This wasn't the case about a year ago, when I last tried it, a dark pattern of sorts. They probably changed the behavior being forced by the GDPR or something similar.
So if you haven't done so, turn off "Location History" in your Google account: https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols (I turn everything off and I don't see a difference in usability)
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On the article, I love the maps and the animations. Visualization is the best way to make people understand the threat.
On GDPR, I've seen people complaining about the high cost for implementing it, however for privacy it is a godsend.
Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds
#10The production value of these lavish spreads by the New York Times is impressive.
Agree, that's some lovely parallax that normally stutters for me on other sites / implementations.