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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

#251
post #108

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

So in essence the merchant pays with my data?

This is the real reason why they can afford to give you cash back.

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

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sufficient number of people would need to, not everyone. And if I were the only one then tracking companies wouldn't adjust for just me. Basically, if this were to catch on then ad trackers wouldn't adjust until there was enough traffic for it to work. Also, that doesn't negate the ability to use this to create fake credentials that aids in tracking ads back to their source.

They don't need to adjust. Here's a real-life example: You show up alone at the airport with a full-face mask and gray coveralls. You are perfectly hidden. But you are the only such hidden person, and there is still old cam footage of you in the airport parking lot, putting on the clothes. The surveillance team can let you act anonymous all you want. They still know who you are, because your disguise IS the unique fi…

Swapping fingerprint details is different than your example since it happens immediately and out of view. You could change fingerprints very often/create a new set for every browser tab. Additionally, as I pointed out before, they won't adjust until there is enough usage and when there is enough usage then the random settings are hard to distinguish because it isn't 1 in 1m. I get that they will keep trying to track down things that make browsing specific, but that is what updates are for. We need to at least make it hard.

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

#253
post #177

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…

>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…

How about a no/limited internet setting? So many apps spy on you and they don’t need network at all to function.

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

#254

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…

Honestly, kudos. The rules should apply to the ones foisting this system upon us as well. This is probably the only way to make anyone in power reconsider current setup. And people laughed at Red Reddington when he said he had no email.

There was a post from someone a long time ago who has an email address and name similar to Make Cuban but not quite. He got quite a few cold call emails meant for Cuban. A lot of them were quite sad (people asking for money for medical procedures and such).

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

#255
post #192
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 >…

If you find the condoms overly sensitive you can try one of the "long lasting" versions.

Is that my personality or my looks? :-)

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

#257
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 >…

So paying by cash is the easiest way to generally avoid this? Clearly you can decide not to use Bilt, but maybe you get caught out some other way (bank, ...) - too difficult to track the trackers.

That's what I do, but I assume some stores like Target also track you by Bluetooth, facial recognition, etc, and can correlate any past or future cash purchases if you use your credit card once for maybe a large innocuous purchase.

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

#258
post #114

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…

I'll answer the, "Does disabling it void your warranty?" question. The answer is almost always "no". Unless the modification you make to something actually directly or indirectly caused damage to it, companies in the US cannot "void the warranty".

This is usually side-stepped by being a violation of Terms of Service, which is a much lower legal hurdle.

The warranty is intact, but the device is bricked, because it can't bypass any of the authentication that is required to do... Pretty much everything.

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

#259
post #188

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…

Actually this could prove very useful for a resistance movement. Take them down with with their own medicine.

Yeah, I wonder if it might help to create a little newsletter for politicians and regulators. Send emails telling them exactly where they are, what apps they use, and so on. And send them the same information about their children.

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

#260

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…

Could you please tell me how to buy this stuff? This sounds like a great way to get customer service when normal channels fail.
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