151–160 of 628 posts
I'm a very happy paying customer of NextDNS ( https://nextdns.io ) which blocks known adware and tracking hosts across all mobile and desktop platforms.
>If it was LTE, I bet the lat/lon would be much more precise. False. Apps don't have access to cellid information unless they also have location permissions, in which case they can just request your location directly. >the free apps you install and use collect your precise location with timestamp [...] This is alarmist and contradictory given that the author admits a few paragraphs up that the "location shared was no…
Eh. Zip code level location + timestamp is still pretty invasive, even if, pedantically, that’s not very precise. We should compare if there a differences in the data sent in countries with better data privacy laws.
> There's no "personal information" here, but honestly this amount of data shared with an arbitrary list of 3rd parties is scary. Why do they need to know my screen brightness, memory amount, current volume and if I'm wearing headphones? Screen brightness, boot time, memory, and network operator could probably fingerprint any device all by itself.
A lot of people have "autobrightness" on. I'd think brightness doesn't help much here
Everything little piece of data that is gathered and used can help even if it isn't immediately apparent.
Now I could be wrong on this, but I feel like advertisers don't need to know something is true about a user, they just need to be confident something is true about a user and that's where data points like screen brightness can be of help to them.
- It was a clean state of a somewhat old phone (iPhone 11, factory defaults + new apple id)
- A single (old) app was installed (Stack by KetchApp, 10-12 years old)
- Was sending out an update a second pretty much instantly (5 kB - ~300 KB every second)
- Within a minute: IP, Lat / Lon, country, phone model, carrier / network operator, vendor, OS version, connection type (wifi), headphone status (?), volume setting (?), screen brightness setting (?), battery status (?), CPU count, system RAM, free RAM allocation, free hard drive capacity, system boot time (?)
Edit: It's almost Remote Desktop, on an iPhone. Realtime (~1 Hz) RAM / ROM allocation. Not sure how many Apple user even know how to check their realtime RAM / ROM allocation. The free hard drive space especially is just asking for botnet downloads.
Edit: Right, and ... disabling tracking doesn't mean anything because numerous updates blatantly ignore the setting ("uc": "1", // User consent for tracking = True;) and it's just a flag while they still send your vendor specific customer identifier anyways.
Really interesting article, and great investigation, just disturbing how much on an effectively clean phone.
> was shocked by the amount and types of data sent with the bids to ad exchanges. Can this data fall into the hands of "evil" state actors, and why is Congress OK with that and not with tiktok?
As soon as your cousin clicks "Yes, I would like to share the entire contents of my contacts with you" when they launch TikTok your name, phone number, email etc are all in the crowd.
And I buy this stuff. Every time I need customer service and I'm getting stonewalled I just go onto a marketplace, find an exec and buy their details for pennies and call them up on their cellphone. (this is usually successful, but can backfire badly -- CashApp terminated my account for this shenanigans)
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 >…
I'm a very happy paying customer of NextDNS ( https://nextdns.io ) which blocks known adware and tracking hosts across all mobile and desktop platforms.
Parts I found relevant: - It was a clean state of a somewhat old phone (iPhone 11, factory defaults + new apple id) - A single (old) app was installed (Stack by KetchApp, 10-12 years old) - Was sending out an update a second pretty much instantly (5 kB - ~300 KB every second) - Within a minute: IP, Lat / Lon, country, phone model, carrier / network operator, vendor, OS version, connection type (wifi), headphone statu…
Well the why the ad industry wants it is clear: fingerprinting and segmentation. Someone consistently low on battery? Push them ads for powerbanks.
https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-databroker-files-wie-uns-apps-un...
(English audio available)