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Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads

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Re: Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads

#41

Post by gruez »

inetknght wrote: post #26
inahga wrote: post #6

There are quite a few interesting tracking flows out there. My rent is paid through a company called Bilt. I discovered that when I shop at Walgreens now, Bilt sends me an email containing the full receipt of what I bought like so: > Hey [inahga], > > You shopped at Walgreens on 12/1/24 and earned Bilt Points with your > Neighborhood Pharmacy benefit. > > Items eligible for rewards > TOSTITOS HINT OF LIME RSTC 11OZ >…

> just use cash/certified check from now on You might want to discover about sophistication and pervasive facial recognition technology used by major retailers. Paid by cash? It can still be tracked to you. For "fraud prevention", of course.

>Paid by cash? It can still be tracked to you. For "fraud prevention", of course.

They can already track you through your phone and/or credit cards. Why bother setting up a massive facial recognition system for people paying with cash when they only account for 10% (or whatever) of overall shoppers, and have less disposable income than average?

Re: Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads

#43

Post by xenic »

baggy_trough wrote: post #12
monlockandkey wrote: post #5

How did were the apps able to collect geolocation even though location services were disabled?

Probably from IP address geolocation.

Doing that on the client side sounds pointless though, if you are already transmitting the ip.

Re: Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads

#44

Post by gruez »

password4321 wrote: post #34

Is WiFi access point geolocation by SSID or MAC address? Do mobile OS's require additional permissions for apps to get either of these data points?

>Do mobile OS's require additional permissions for apps to get either of these data points?

Yes on both iOS and Android as far as I can remember.

Re: Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads

#45

Post by voytec »

ksec wrote: post #42

May be Steve Jobs was right all along. We dont need Smartphone with App Store. Either 1st Party Apps and Everything else should be on Browser or Apps that uses Browser Engine.

What? [0]

[0] Steve Jobs introduces App Store - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU3X6Fu5JiE

Re: Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads

#47

Post by londons_explore »

inetknght wrote: post #26
inahga wrote: post #6

There are quite a few interesting tracking flows out there. My rent is paid through a company called Bilt. I discovered that when I shop at Walgreens now, Bilt sends me an email containing the full receipt of what I bought like so: > Hey [inahga], > > You shopped at Walgreens on 12/1/24 and earned Bilt Points with your > Neighborhood Pharmacy benefit. > > Items eligible for rewards > TOSTITOS HINT OF LIME RSTC 11OZ >…

> just use cash/certified check from now on You might want to discover about sophistication and pervasive facial recognition technology used by major retailers. Paid by cash? It can still be tracked to you. For "fraud prevention", of course.

Are you aware of cases where it is used for more that theft prevention/manual review of CCTV?

I'm not aware of any big retailers using facial data for targeting vouchers or anything similar.

Simple things like "did walk through the door with a child" would be pretty valuable data, yet as far as I know, nobody uses it.

Re: Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads

#48

Post by throwaway847739 »

9283409232 wrote: post #16
ta988 wrote: post #2

Shame on all of the people working on those systems. Legit companies trying to make the world better struggle to find competent people.

What companies?

I have the same question. It did not seem easy for me to find a job where we are at least not writing malware (according to my judgement). But it's far from making the world better :|

Re: Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads

#49

Post by gruez »

theptip wrote: post #35

> Why do they need to know my screen brightness, memory amount, current volume and if I'm wearing headphones? This is clearly adding entropy to de-anonymize users between apps, rather than to add specificity to ad bids.

Everything listed changes way too often to be useful for tracking. My guess is that it's for anti-fraud purposes. Someone setting up fake devices and/or device farms is likely to get similar values, which means they can be detected via ML or whatever.

Re: Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads

#50

Post by nicbou »

dylan604 wrote: post #14
psanford wrote: post #10

Don't use mobile apps that could just be websites.

Extended to add don’t use websites without blockers. If they are willing to track via app, why would we think they would not track via browser?

The browser has less access to your system, and usually only if you give a specific website permission to use these features. Mobile operating systems are slowly changing that though.
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