Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

timsh.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 628 posts

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

#141

Post by Sparkyte »

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 >…

Preparation H, they should practice some level of sensitivity with such information.

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

#142

Post by everdrive »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #134
everdrive wrote: post #84

I'm really happy to see this level of detail and research. So many privacy-related articles either wholly lack in technical skill, or hysterically cannot differentiate between different levels of privacy concerns and risks. People commonly point to Mozilla's research regarding vehicle's privacy policies. ( https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-on-... ) But that research only states what the car com…

Those aren't questions that have fixed answers. The data available is pretty far beyond what I'm personally comfortable with though. One OEM I'm familiar with had such a policy. My org determined that we needed a statistical reference to compare against within a certain area. Some calls were made to the right people and shortly after we had a (mildly) anonymized map of high precision tracks for every vehicle of that…

That’s pretty interesting. What was the purpose of the statistical sample? What did your company want to know precisely?

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

#143

Post by hsuduebc2 »

kortilla wrote: post #119
nicbou wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things like that are on my mind when HN rants about GDPR. Something like this would be wildly illegal where I live.

HN rants about it because it’s not a good solution. It identified a problem but caused an idiotic fallout (cookie banners) and failed to actually put in a framework to enforce that companies aren’t just lying.

I agree but small stick to beat them is better than none.

I guess best solution would be usage of some proxy which intercepts these calls or provide fake data to them. As op in the article did.

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

#144

Post by collinvandyck76 »

voytec wrote: post #45
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

Probably referring to Jobs' initial stance that HTML5 is more than sufficient for "apps". Of course, he acquiesced and eventually added the App Store.

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

#145

Post by switch007 »

afarah1 wrote: post #102

NetGuard with DROP OUTBOUND policy once again proves helpful. The only app that shows ads that I have on my phone is a PDF scanner, and I don't allow it internet access.

GrapheneOS also allows you to toggle the Network permission of any app

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

#147

Post by yread »

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 work in cancer research. Some companies are there just for greed as well but at least the end product could be helpful

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

#148

Post by nabaraz »

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.

Steve jobs embraced web apps as much as he could.[0]. But people weren't willing to give up desktop apps.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20070809174426/http://www.apple....

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

#149

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

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 >…

Loyalty cards are one avenue for data brokers to get your purchase history. Credit cards can also sell your purchase data. Currently the only safe-ish way to be anonymous is with cash. That may disappear with pervasive face recognition and cell phone tracking.

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

#150

Post by sixothree »

anon7000 wrote: post #74
curiousthought wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s honestly crazy that we allow companies to sell our data — and even financially incentivize companies to share our data like this.

It’s amazing how little control we have over information that is the most personal essence of our lives.

Why do we have zero insight, no control. Nothing.

I hate it so much.

Post reply on HN