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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

#61

Post by Aachen »

gruez wrote: post #44
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.

Android for sure, since version 8 I'm certain but probably even 5 or 4.x (so 10+ years ago)

Always annoys me when I want to use a WiFi scanner to determine the range of an access point in different locations for example and it needs me to turn on location access first before it can get WiFi data. The open source app doesn't have an Internet connection so there's no way for it to send back data to the mothership even if it had an SSID database baked into the apk. For me, and traditionally, the location switch is to turn on or off energy-hungry GPS hardware, not gatekeep when I trust apps to collect my location. I can set those to "only while in use", deny their Internet access, or just not install them if I don't trust them with the location permission

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

#62

Post by nickburns »

jmward01 wrote: post #57
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.

It would be amazing if you could build and send fake profiles of this information to create fake browser fingerprints and help track the trackers. Similarly, creating a lot of random noise here may help hide the true signal, or at least make their job a lot harder.

Unfortunately fingerprinting prevention/resistance tactics become a readily identifiable signal unto themselves. I.e., the 'random noise' becomes fingerprintable if not widely utilized.

Everyone would need to be generating the same 'random noise' for any such tactics to be truly effective.

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

#63

Post by bdavbdav »

spencerflem wrote: post #55
gruez wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

idk why, but they do

Got a source on retailers actively doing this?

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

#64

Post by uoaei »

curiousthought wrote: post #27
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 >…

This is called Level 3 data, and any merchant can choose to provide it for a reduction in the transaction fees they pay. Here's a small comment thread from a few months back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41213632

Is there any documentation on this to read further? I.e. what the different levels contain and how much on average is the cost reduction for the merchant.

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

#66

Post by uoaei »

gruez wrote: post #37
mistrial9 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's a loyalty program calling something loyalty does not make it "loyalty" ..

That's just the standard term for such programs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalty_program

It's the normal term, in that it has been normalized as such. But it is otherwise not accurate except in the barest, most monetaristically self-fulfilling-prophecy way.

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

#67

Post by jrockway »

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 >…

What's most interesting to me about that is that they are willing to disclose that data to your email provider. Amazon, for example, is pretty cagey about what you've bought when sending emails, probably because they don't want Google to be able to use that information to target ads to you. (Not because they are Good and care about your privacy, but because they think they're going to beat Google at advertising. How's that going?)

So yeah, I don't get why they would do this. It gives their advertising competitors valuable data for free, and it pisses off customers by telling them that they're being tracked when they shop at Walgreens. Strange stuff.

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

#69

Post by erikerikson »

bdavbdav wrote: post #63
spencerflem wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

idk why, but they do

Got a source on retailers actively doing this?

Word of mouth: retailers in China have been using face recognition technologies to identify key customers so that they can be greater by name when delivered their favorite drink upon entering the premises.

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

#70

Post by dietr1ch »

mistrial9 wrote: post #29
gruez wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just sounds like a standard cross-merchant loyalty program? I don't think there are many examples in the US, but once you realize it's a loyalty program you really shouldn't be surprised that they're tracking your purchase history. That's basically the entire premise.

> it's a loyalty program calling something loyalty does not make it "loyalty" ..

So called loyalty programs should be illegal on multiple fronts,

- Privacy: There's obvious tracking of purchasing trends. This derails into selling user data to everyone that makes people increasingly easy to track.

- Customer-dependent pricing / Price-discrimination: This is awful for economy, in econ 101 you learn that business want to charge each customer as much as they are willing to pay, but this differentiated pricing is just getting their hands into everyone's pockets.The free market principles rely on perfect knowledge, and every step made to make pricing harder is an attack against self market regulation.

Price discrimination is illegal even in Lobby-land, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/13

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