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My Phone Was Spying on Me, So I Tracked Down the Surveillants

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Re: My Phone Was Spying on Me, So I Tracked Down the Surveillants

#91

Post by buckminster »

alisonkisk wrote: post #80
davvolun wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of the thing though. > Signer agrees to become contract murderer unless pre-empted by local laws and regulations. I'm over-exaggerating, and I get the value when it's prohibitively expensive to write a TOS when it's essentially impossible to pre-emptively vet the legality of all possible clauses internationally as laws constantly change. But if the clause I wrote is technically valid, then what's the poin…

The TOS is about what you can do, not what the company can do.

This is pedantically true, but the TOS are usually bundled with other agreements that purport to give the company permission to do things.

Re: My Phone Was Spying on Me, So I Tracked Down the Surveillants

#92

Post by surround »

asicsp wrote: post #3

The thread also mentions https://nrkbeta.no/2020/12/03/my-phone-was-spying-on-me-so-i... which would be a better link than twitter.

> For the sum of 35,000 NOK (3,300 EUR / 4,000 USD), we got access to location data showing where tens of thousands of Norwegians had travelled in 2019.

> One of them was 31-year-old Karl Bjarne Bernhardsen from Stavanger. The information made it easy for us to identify him in the data that – according to the data provider – had been anonymised.

Here’s that article:

https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?tl=en&u=...

And the HN thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23136612

Re: My Phone Was Spying on Me, So I Tracked Down the Surveillants

#93

Post by smeyer »

csbartus wrote: post #79

I stopped to use smartphones in 2018. Since then I have a Nokia 3310 new model, with Facebook installed. However the wi-fi is turned on around 10 minutes per month, in best case. What I've immediately observed after switching to the new phone that I'm receiving more precisely targeted ads. Before, on smartphone no adds were relevant, after the smartphone new adds were all relevant. My guess was the phone / the cellul…

Are you sure that none of your friends are looking up the predefined brand names? Do any of your friends go home and immediately google the predefined brand name?

Re: My Phone Was Spying on Me, So I Tracked Down the Surveillants

#94

Post by dalbasal »

martamorena9182 wrote: post #78
dalbasal wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As people, we like to think categorically... especially "contracting" in the philosophical and legal sense. Whether its a medieval oath or a standard employment contract, the concept of "binding agreement" sorts out moral issues of consent and creates a platform for further relations. Reality is generally less fussy about categorical boundaries. It likes spectrum. Linnaean classification is an approximation. Biology…

I legitimately have no clue what you are trying to say. But it sounds very educated, so that's good I guess?

What isn't understandable?

Re: My Phone Was Spying on Me, So I Tracked Down the Surveillants

#96

Post by ph2082 »

miguendes wrote: post #28

Interesting article. Is there any way to mitigate the amount of data collected? If I turn GPS off can they still track my steps? One thing that I notice frequently is discussing some topic with my wife and then finding an AD related to the topic on Instagram, LinkedIn, and whatnot. Could be a coincidence but I not sure any more.

Same I noticed.

One particular day I remember specifically because had a long call with friend who lives in some other city. We talked about meeting sometime in future, dating, job situation and travelling to Canada/Europe.

With in hours I received promotional email about "travelling to the city my friend lives in". Dating site AD. Looking for Job and article about how to travel move to Canada/Europe.

Fun day.

People only think about Facebook, but there are other AdTech companies as well which do not get scrutinised as much.

Re: My Phone Was Spying on Me, So I Tracked Down the Surveillants

#97

Post by mgamache »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #70
mgamache wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a feeling that a judge would want to find them invalid, but what happens if he/she rules that they are non-binding? The chaos it would cause for US B2C businesses would be large. This alone may sway the courts to make them binding.

> The chaos it would cause for US B2C businesses would be large. Literally who cares? Let them deal with it. It doesn't matter how much money they lose. They should have considered the consequences of abusing people's trust and violating their privacy under questionable consent. Corporations are vastly more powerful compared to individuals. Courts obviously need to favor the latter in the vast majority of cases. To d…

It was not a value judgement, just a prediction. Some judges do look at the impact of a ruling. I personally don't think they should be legally binding (as I suspect most HN readers do).

"doesn't matter how much money they lose" -- of course it does, these companies employ people and generate lots of government revenue (even if they skirt corporate taxes).

Re: My Phone Was Spying on Me, So I Tracked Down the Surveillants

#98

Post by TurkishPoptart »

Hamuko wrote: post #74
derwiki wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most likely a coincidence: https://www.avg.com/en/signal/facebook-listening-private-con... If it were true I feel confident that information would have leaked by now.

> If it were true I feel confident that information would have leaked by now. Yeah, there's no way for Facebook to be actively listening to conversations on millions of phones connected to private home networks without someone noticing. And that's not even addressing that someone currently or formerly working at Facebook would just blow the whistle at some point. The problem with this conspiracy theory is that people…

But this definitely _does_ happen, and most people, even non-tech people are aware of it. There's just some people who refuse to believe it.

Re: My Phone Was Spying on Me, So I Tracked Down the Surveillants

#99

Post by eivarv »

sunstone wrote: post #32
eivarv wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're targeting European users, you need to comply with the GDPR.

In this case the user is in Norway which is not a member of the EU.

Didn't mention EU, but to be specific: members of the EU or the EEA.

Re: My Phone Was Spying on Me, So I Tracked Down the Surveillants

#100

Post by tome »

tome wrote: post #22
raxxorrax wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He consented to the collection and Apple would have exactly the same issues. Also Android is marginally more useful than an iOS device. I know that it is fancy as a music player and social media apps, but it isn't really what it could be.

> He consented to the collection and Apple would have exactly the same issues. Would it? In iOS you can selectively forbid applications from using locations services.

After having read the responses to my parent comment I'm confused. Why would disabling location services on his phone not have solved the problem?
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