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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

#311

Post by ericjmorey »

kortilla wrote: post #226
iamacyborg wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”…

You seem not to know much of anything about the laws regarding personal information in the US or Europe.

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

#312

Post by wkat4242 »

taneq wrote: post #241
create-username wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will share their whole list because it’s simpler

Or because they were tricked. eg. LinkedIn’s “Connect with your contacts” onboarding step which sounds like it’ll check your contacts against existing LinkedIn users but actually spam invites anyone on your contact list that doesn’t have an account.

Linkedin is so terribly evil these days.

I also see the shenanigans of adding new 'privacy' settings and setting them open by default. Another typical Microsoft ploy by the way.

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

#314

Post by dylan604 »

ironmagma wrote: post #309
_heimdall wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is possible to just not use a phone number. I mostly connect through Signal. I do technically have a phone number that my close friends and family have, but its a random VoIP number that I usually change every year or so. Surprisingly no one has really cared, I send out a text that I got a new number and that's that.

How? Most of the services I use, from Walgreens to banks to retirement accounts, require a phone number either for 2FA or just to verify that you’re you when signing up. After changing my phone number this year and having to go through the rigamarole for each service, I decided never again.

Yeah, companies are not dumb, and they know when you have VoIP number vs a full account with an "accepted" company.

I can kind of see why not allowing 2FA to a number that could be easier to loose, but that's weak argument. Of course they don't want someone from .ru to get a US number with all of the baggage that would entail

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

#315

Post by wkat4242 »

gruez wrote: post #223
x0x0 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, t…

F-Droid will never have popular apps because it requires them to be open source. In fact F-Droid does the build for you, generating reproducible builds and avoiding the risk of adding trackers to the binary that aren't actually in the source code. With F-Droid the code you see is what you get.

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

#316

Post by wkat4242 »

dylan604 wrote: post #310
sneak wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Until the app's devs get wise to this, and do not allow the app to function without the network access. It could be as simple as a full screen, non-closable screen that says the app requires network access with a button to the proper setting to correct the issue.

Yeah like the ChatGPT app that doesn't work without a Google account. I have Google play on my phone, just no account logged in. I do have Google play services like firebase push which many apps legitimately need. But ChatGPT just opens the login screen in the play store and exits itself.

I'm always wondering why these idiots force the creation of an account with their direct competitor. It's the only app I have that does this. But anyway I don't use their app for that reason, only use them a bit through API.

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

#319

Post by inetknght »

gruez wrote: post #223
x0x0 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, t…

> A perfectly privacy respecting app store isn't going to do any good if it doesn't have any apps.

40 years ago apps were sold on floppy disks. 30 years ago they were sold on CD-ROMs. 20 years ago, DVDs.

Online-only apps are a recent thing. A privacy respecting app store certainly can be a thing. Apps being blocked or banned from stores for choosing to not respect your privacy is a good thing.

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

#320

Post by rsync »

How much money is tied back to, or generated from, wifi AP SSID databases for geolocation ?

Because wow that would be simple to spoof and chaff and spam.

It's dinnertime here but if I had a few minutes I could make (my own house) appear indistinguishable from (Chase Center) from the perspective of SSID landscape.

It would cost nothing and is trivially easy. Even if they pair MAC addresses that's not a big hurdle. I'll bet relative signal strengths are not measured.

It might be a good flushing action[1].

[1] https://kozubik.com/items/FlushingAction/

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