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Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds

nytimes.com

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Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds

#51

Post by random878 »

code4tee wrote: post #16

“We’re not doing anything not disclosed in our terms of service.” is rapidly becoming a no longer acceptable answer to consumers. Don’t tell me a weather app needs to know my location all the time to give me the best weather info then sell my location to the highest bidder. Don’t tell me that buried in some 20 pages of leagalese in your Ts&Cs is some vague references that make this “legal.”

I would respectfully disagree.

It is not acceptable to roughly the amount of people (and I include myself) who make a deliberate and self conscious decision to oppose it.

This is a small, small group. I have a phone with Replicant OS, which puts me within a niche group of an already niche group (those willing to install alternative OS and strip Google on their phone). In a wider computing sense - what percentage of HN use GNU/Linux? Of them, who runs as fully Free OS? What percentage of them are rocking a 12y.o. librebooted thinkpad?

The general public are apathetic at best. Contrary to popular opinion, people are not ignorant to the behaviour of tech giants - they just don't care enough to stop. Clearly, it is still an acceptable answer to consumers.

It's like claiming that people don't go vegetarian or vegan because they aren't aware of the suffering. Of course they are aware. It's just easier to keep eating hamburgers and live with the cognitive dissonance.

It's the same with these apps.

Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds

#52

Post by izacus »

mariusmg wrote: post #13
izacus wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>That does nothing for IP based geo location though Of course, since ip "geolocation" is just ip data + location agregatted from ISPs. How can the OS maker "fight" this ?

By introducing VPN I guess (I think Google offers one on their Fi service) - I don't seen any other solution, especially since telcos sell your data as well.

It's just worth noting that flipping a switch in your OS might not do much in terms of location tracking.

Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds

#53

Post by kkarakk »

i quite like when apps use my location info to do unique things like recommend places in the vicinity that are good(foursquare) or give me specific filters for a location(snapchat) phones should obfuscate the location provided in some way so that users can take advantage of location services without continuously sharing my movement to the backend

Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds

#54

Post by shaki-dora »

pjc50 wrote: post #44
shaki-dora wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A more generous interpretation, that does not require buying into the generic, unactionable cynicism that everyone is corrupt, is simply that new laws require neat, easily comprehensible and emotional stories to be enacted. As examples I would cite federal hate crime legislation, enacted after a particularly abhorrent lynching of a gay teenager IIRC. Or the current change of approach to Saudi Arabia’s ruling sadists:…

> the smoking bone saw of Istanbul just grips us far more viscerally. This is a brilliant, horrifying, piece of phrasing.

To give credit where it's rarely due, I believe I stole that particular turn-of-phrase from Lindsey Graham.

Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds

#55

Post by kop316 »

bad_user wrote: post #9

iOS 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. --- People are surprised when seeing the Activity section in Google's account details, then fre…

I respectfully disagree on Google being entirely transparent about tracking location, especially if you run Android + Google Play Services. I have a tablet (Pixel C) that runs LineageOS + Google Play Services and a Phone (Nexus 5x) that runs LineageOS vanilla (no MicroG, no UnifiedNLP, no Google Play Services). Some things I have noted:

- When you install MicroG/Google Play Services, they take over location services (i.e. they run in /system/priv-app, and if you disable their location, location on the device is disabled totally).

- Android by default has the default on option to scan wifi and Bluetooth when you turn them off to find wifi/bluetooth and coorelate it to your location.

- On my Pixel C, when if I try "high accuracy" or "battery saver" mode Location services, Google Play has tried to force me to agree to their location tracking and I have disagreed every single time. Location services does not work if I use "device only" (which is supposed to only use GPS).

- I have noted that on my phone now, if I disable location and then reenable it when I have moved more than 20-30 miles, the GPS has to reacquire the signal and can take up to 2 minutes (I also tried it when I drove several hundred miles, it took several minutes to reacquire). This is indicative of the GPS module being off totally. This was not so when it had Google Play Services on, it was able to reacquire my location extremely quickly, sometimes almost instantaneously even if I moved a long distance. I suspect that Google Play was still tracking my location even if I turned off location services (due to it totally controlling my location).

- EDIT: Another interesting note is that on my phone has had location services off and then turned just back on (i.e. no GPS lock), it appears to give the last time GPS was acquired as my current location. OSMAnd shows that location but says it doesn't know my location, but other apps do not realize that. I am suspecting that Android does not necessarily have a "stale" location, just the last reported location.

Putting my tin foil hat, I hypothesize Google anonymously tracks your location even if your location services if off (allowing them to do traffic, how busy a restaurant is, etc.).

EDIT: As correctly pointed out, networked assisted GPS is a thing, and may also play into the differences in GPS reacquiring. I believe that network assisted GPS is in AOSP. When I turn on and off GPS in Android, it appears to have the almanac for where to look for satellites based on SatStat, and how quickly my phone acquires the GPS signal is a function of where it used to be compared to where it is now. In addition, UnifiedNLP [1] scans for networks/cell towers and correlates it to location, it does not appear to implement networked assisted GPS. [1] https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_UnifiedNlp

Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds

#56

Post by bad_user »

izacus wrote: post #7
rollulus wrote: post #3

I 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.

IP-based location isn't very accurate due to IPv4 addresses becoming a scarce resource.

Mobile 3G/4G data networks are reusing those IPs, so at best you'll get a country or state-level accuracy.

The IP of home / business connections can be static and the accuracy can be good, however you're not taking that IP with you when on the move. So in order to track a user's movement, online services have to link that IP to some unique identifier of that user.

It's not insurmountable of course and native apps have no problem in generating such unique identifiers per user, however without consent it's now illegal to use a user's IP for tracking his location under GDPR and it's also illegal to generate unique identifiers for users without consent. Even logging IPs is now illegal, unless you're doing it for security purposes and only for a limited amount of time.

Also the Terms of Use documents aren't sufficient, there are already many lawsuits active and we'll soon hear of the fallout.

Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds

#57

Post by javajosh »

random878 wrote: post #51
code4tee wrote: post #16

“We’re not doing anything not disclosed in our terms of service.” is rapidly becoming a no longer acceptable answer to consumers. Don’t tell me a weather app needs to know my location all the time to give me the best weather info then sell my location to the highest bidder. Don’t tell me that buried in some 20 pages of leagalese in your Ts&Cs is some vague references that make this “legal.”

I would respectfully disagree. It is not acceptable to roughly the amount of people (and I include myself) who make a deliberate and self conscious decision to oppose it. This is a small, small group. I have a phone with Replicant OS, which puts me within a niche group of an already niche group (those willing to install alternative OS and strip Google on their phone). In a wider computing sense - what percentage of H…

Holy cow, you are using a phone without GPS? https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Replica...

Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds

#58

Post by pjc50 »

amaccuish wrote: post #18
darren_ wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Location history wasn't ever needed for remembering searches, FWIW.

> Location history wasn't ever needed for remembering searches It absolutely was. When I tapped on the search bar, there were no results and it told me to turn on location history.

Just tried this. I have "home" and "work" defined in Saved Places, but if I go to the search bar there are "home" and "work" options which claim not to be set up and won't work until I turn on "web and app history". Hmm.

Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds

#59

Post by afpx »

Hedge funds have been using location data to ‘predict’ corporate earnings for at least 5 years, that I know of. There’s also speculation that they use the data to identify locations of VIPs and where they’re going (by clustering activities of the VIP’s entourage). It’s unfortunate that news organizations as reputable and prominent as the NYT only get on these stories so late in the game. This information would have been more useful to the public back in 2013.

What I don’t understand is why these types of activities by hedge funds aren’t considered insider trading.

Re: Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds

#60

Post by mtgx »

random878 wrote: post #51
code4tee wrote: post #16

“We’re not doing anything not disclosed in our terms of service.” is rapidly becoming a no longer acceptable answer to consumers. Don’t tell me a weather app needs to know my location all the time to give me the best weather info then sell my location to the highest bidder. Don’t tell me that buried in some 20 pages of leagalese in your Ts&Cs is some vague references that make this “legal.”

I would respectfully disagree. It is not acceptable to roughly the amount of people (and I include myself) who make a deliberate and self conscious decision to oppose it. This is a small, small group. I have a phone with Replicant OS, which puts me within a niche group of an already niche group (those willing to install alternative OS and strip Google on their phone). In a wider computing sense - what percentage of H…

In the EU, there is this legal concept of "informed consent" that was implemented in the GDPR.

It hasn't been tested much in court yet, but the theory is that users should actually understand what the "deal" between them and the company is when they "agree" to those terms of service.

It seems pretty reasonable to me, otherwise stuff like slavery could also be brought back hidden in companies' ToS.

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