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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

#381

Post by otteromkram »

inetknght wrote: post #319
gruez wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Then there wouldn't be any free ones.

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

#382

Post by Brybry »

gog wrote: post #262
XorNot wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally explained in the second paragraph there. You can't have private information which is meant to also be shared widely. It is the distinction between Access and Authorization.

But it's not meant to be shared widely, for most people it's meant to be shared with consideration and/or permission. Also, it's not just about "a desire not be interrupted by people you didn't agree to be interrupted by", it's about not having the data in the first place, for any reason, including tracking of any sorts.

Pre-internet/cell phone nearly everyone had their name/phone number/address in phone books. Libraries had tons of phone books. And you could pay for the operator to find/connect you to people as well.

Contact info being private is a relatively recent concept.

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

#383

Post by otteromkram »

ajcp wrote: post #352
maeil wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So I can see why companies are quick to lock out customers who try these games. Most of the companies who customers try these "games" against are places like Google and Meta that literally do not provide a way for the average customer to reach a human. None. Those have got it coming for them, the megacorps' stance on this is despicable and far worse than the customers directly reaching execs who could instantly cha…

> but that's not generalizable. You only referenced two companies...

EBay, Amazon, Walmart, CVS, etc.

Name a major company, then try to contact customer service and interact with an actual human.

Even if they do have a contact phone number, good luck navigating the mazes of voice prompts.

Amazon isn't actually so bad about this, but I couldn't tell you if their CSR chat bot is an actual person or mid-level AI by now.

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

#384

Post by AdieuToLogic »

sfink wrote: post #380
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lastly, does your insurance shoot up if you have a car without one of these systems? This question I can answer with a reasonable degree of certainty; no, it does not. Insurance companies increase rates for automobile coverage for many reasons, real or illusionary. But "does your insurance shoot up" strictly for not having a recording device in a vehicle is not one of them. Do some insurance companies charge less w…

> Do some insurance companies charge less when provided access to policy owner driving patterns which the companies infer reduce their risk? Sure. > But that is a different question. In what way? A discount for allowing surveillance is identical to an extra charge for disallowing it. They're identical, unless the "base" rate is set externally somehow. $5 for lemonade, $3 off if you skip the lemon == $2 for sugar wate…

>> Do some insurance companies charge less when provided access to policy owner driving patterns which the companies infer reduce their risk? Sure.

>> But that is a different question.

> In what way? A discount for allowing surveillance is identical to an extra charge for disallowing it.

In this case, the discount is "opt-in."

> $5 for lemonade, $3 off if you skip the lemon == $2 for sugar water, $3 extra to add lemon.

I believe a better analogy is:

  The drink costs $5.  If you don't want lemon in it,
  we'll knock off $3.  Those are your options.

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

#385

Post by otteromkram »

ra wrote: post #222
terminalgravity wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for letting the group know.

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

#386

Post by notduncansmith »

ajcp wrote: post #350
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's odd that of the two replies referencing people, both got their names obviously wrong. Is that a new phishing tactic?

Russian bot tactic? Guessing it’s an easy way to farm interaction as people comment back to correct the mistake.

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

#387

Post by hollowturtle »

amatecha wrote: post #355
scarface_74 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you looked at the latest JS standards?

(and if you haven't... check out the APIs available to the developers/owners of all the websites you browse: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API )

what should imply checking available web apis? the comments is correct, browser can't access your location without explicit confirmation from the user, the same apply for other web apis, or at least mention a bunch of them which you know don't apply instead of linkin MDN

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

#388

Post by hollowturtle »

scarface_74 wrote: post #331
nicbou wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The browser has less access to your system, and usually only if you give a specific website permission to use these features. Mobile operating systems are slowly changing that though.

Have you looked at the latest JS standards?

what is contained in the latest js standard that does let you collect fine grained information of your users without their consent? web apis that have to deal with sensitive data all requires explicit user confirmation to be used

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

#389

Post by udev4096 »

Total bs. Do not give location permissions to untrusted apps. If the app insists on it, use mock GPS feature on android which will spoof your location. Can we all please stop exaggerating the slopiness of normies with their pretentious acts of being shocked after not being cautious about their privacy? Privacy is not by default, you have to put some effort into it

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

#390

Post by habosa »

miki123211 wrote: post #361
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…

> 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 The article author claims that you can't get this stuff for under $10k. Where do you find it for pennies?

Try cold outreach software like Apollo.io

As a test I downloaded it and got my wife’s full email and cell phone number easily from their free trial. And the full price would be on the order of pennies per contact.

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