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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

#221

Post by secondcoming »

pyromaker wrote: post #209

I don't think there is a hope when it comes to our privacy and ads and our data being sold - none. Even if I'm somewhat off the grid or low in activities, the indirect way of targeting me still exists, by my family members, friends, people associated with me. I surrender.

There is hope. The upcoming US State privacy laws are resulting in IP addresses having the last octet blanked out, and IDFA's zeroed out, at least for SSPs and DSPs. Companies such as Apple and Google will still have this info since they control the OS.

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

#222

Post by ra »

terminalgravity wrote: post #211
TheKarateKid wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What marketplaces do you use?

Im also curious about this. Is it just a website you place an order or do you have to go through some kind of agent?

I'm curious about this too.

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

#223

Post by gruez »

x0x0 wrote: post #206
gruez wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One big privacy issue is that there is no sane way to protect your contact details from being sold, regardless of what you do. >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. Fortunately this is changing with iOS 18 with "limited contacts" sharing. https://mobiledevmemo.com/wp-cont…

I think it's not properly appreciated that Apple fully endorses all of this. For two reasons: (1) the provision of the output of billions of dollars of developer time to their users for no up front cost (made back via ads) is super valuable to their platform; and (2) they uniquely could stop this (at the price of devastating their app store), but choose not to. In light of that, perhaps reevaluate their ATT efforts a…

>I think it's not properly appreciated that Apple fully endorses all of this. [...] they uniquely could stop this (at the price of devastating their app store), but choose not to.

A perfectly privacy respecting app store isn't going to do any good if it doesn't have any apps. Just look at f-droid. Most (all?) of the apps there might be privacy respecting, but good luck getting any of the popular apps (eg. facebook, tiktok, google maps) on there.

>In light of that, perhaps reevaluate their ATT efforts as far less about meaningful privacy and far more about stealing $10B a year or so from Facebook.

What would make you think Apple's pro-privacy changes aren't "about stealing $10B a year or so from Facebook"? At least some people are willing to pay for more privacy, and pro-changes hurts advertisers, so basically any pro-privacy change can be construed as "less about meaningful privacy and far more about stealing".

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

#224

Post by secondcoming »

zzo38computer wrote: post #161

Even just to look at the picture near the top (which is also repeated near the bottom), if you do not allow the app to track you that only disables one of the items of the information and not all of them. This is explained later in the document, that it is not explained very well to end users. I agree that it could be explained better. Perhaps, "Allow app to track your activity..." can have a option to display a more…

> if the advertisers/spies are stealing your power and network bandwidth and quota in order to do these things

They're not. The app developer is.

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

#225

Post by gruez »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #213
gruez wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I do think it’s fine for people to opt in to more tracking as a separate consent choice beyond merely participating in a loyalty program, for example to get more personalized and therefore more useful offers, but not as a condition of participation to merely receive at least standard offers and accumulate points. That’s how they generally work in Germany. Sounds like that'll push retailers to switch from a system wh…

> Sounds like that'll push retailers to switch from a system where they give points/discounts to everyone, to one where points/discounts are "targeted", which of course requires opting into tracking. Like I said before, the whole premise of loyalty programs is that you're being tracked in exchange for rewards. You really can't expect to have your cake (discounts) and eat it too (not being tracked). As I said, in Germ…

>As I said, in Germany you can indeed have your cake and eat it too in this regard, if you’re okay with the offers you receive being less targeted and therefore less appealing.

The "cake" in this case refers to the offers you had before GDPR came into effect and/or regulators started enforcing it. They might give opt-out people some token offers to appease regulators, but I doubt it'll be anywhere close to the offers they had before.

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

#226

Post by kortilla »

iamacyborg wrote: post #216
kortilla wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that to you it seems like your data but to Walgreens they see it as theirs. They generated it with their point of sale system. The data is about a transaction that you made, but they generated all of it. Until we have agreement as a society about what “my data” means, this kind of stuff is going to run rampant.

This is fairly easily answered through legislation like the GDPR which classes this data as personal data if it’s associated with an identified or identifiable person.

A legislative body writing something down doesn’t mean society has agreed to it.

If someone journals and writes down everyone they met with locations and dates, they will laugh you out of the room if you tell them they are violating GDPR.

This also leads to stupid shit like people not being sure if they can point a camera at their driveway to catch vehicle break-ins.

Finally, classifying something as “personal data” because it’s about me still doesn’t make it “my data”.

Health data in the US is strictly regulated, very personal, but is definitely not mine. I cannot remove things from it or prevent it from being shared between healthcare institutions.

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

#227

Post by secondcoming »

mdasen wrote: post #136

This is a wonderful write up. The part that isn't clear to me is how they're getting the geolocation data if location services are turned off. Are they just going off geo-ip lookups? If you grant access to Bluetooth or finding devices on your local network, they can get more information to track your location. Absent that, how would they get better than geo-ip?

https://www.maxmind.com/en/home

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

#228

Post by amelius »

qingcharles wrote: post #156

One big privacy issue is that there is no sane way to protect your contact details from being sold, regardless of what you do. 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 marketp…

I'm not familiar with these marketplaces. Could you name a few examples?

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

#229

Post by gruez »

actionfromafar wrote: post #217
andrepd wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How on earth is this legal

Corporations are people, too.

Or phrased less inflammatory manner: "Corporations can enter into contracts and engage in legal action just like people can". Even the much maligned Citizens United v. FEC basically boils down to "groups of people (corporations or labor unions) don't lose first amendment protections just because they decided to group up".

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

#230

Post by fragmede »

dietr1ch wrote: post #140
barrkel wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Price discrimination is not a priori bad. A fixed price with enough margin to support the business may be too high for price sensitive consumers. If you can charge more to less price sensitive consumers, you can, at the margin, make a little bit on these price sensitive consumers, and overall everyone is better off - more consumers are satisfied and their marginal willingness to consume a unit of the thing being sold…

Yes, this is the reason why it's sort of illegal, but done anyways. Honestly, beyond paying fewer fees on the bus as a kid, I'm pretty sure I'm being scammed everytime I experience price discrimination. I feel it's easier to make it illegal and give away reasonable credits to all consumers. I wouldn't discriminate in credits either, I'd rather have public transportation being free for all than claim to save money tha…

pricing is all made up to begin with though. your can't take the cost to make an item, add a reasonable amount of profit and that's the "real" price. that's just not the reality of running a successful business. human psychology is far too complicated.

at the end of the day, prices are just a number you make up, and hopefully it's a big enough number that your stay in business. hopefully it's a big enough number that you get rich. but sometimes it's a fire sale and you just end up owing less money to your vendors.

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