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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

#441

Post by rollulus »

simonw wrote: post #193

Anyone understand why an apparently accurate latitude/longitude showed up in one of those traces despite location services not being enabled for the app in question?

Thanks for asking. Came here to ask since I was curious about this too. I don't find any of the replies here convincing:

- List of open wifis: AFAIK, and in my experience, apps need special permissions to do anything at the wifi level. And yes, iOS location services use wifi info but it's disabled, that's the point;

- IP back to geo: then why not send the IP itself directly?

- Mozilla location services: same as above, why not send the info you send to Mozilla directly to the data harvester which can call Mozilla itself?

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

#442

Post by adr1an »

emsixteen wrote: post #438
speleding wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a result of sales drones getting hold of my number, I have to put my phone on silent and never pick up unless I recognize the number. Very unfortunate. What if there is an emergency with my kids?

If you're using iOS you can set certain contacts to bypass silent mode so that you still hear their notifications/calls. I know it doesn't help with unknown numbers, but just saying in case you're not aware. I'd be surprised if you can't do the same on Android.

You can. There's DND mode and Favorite contacts. I use auto-DND scheduling option too.

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

#443

Post by thaumasiotes »

miki123211 wrote: post #364
hellojesus wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grapheneos lets you pick this for apps before they even launch. You can revoke their network access, as well as define storage scopes for apps at a folder level, so if an app needs access to photos, you can define a folder, and that is the only folder it can scan for photos. I used that when submitting parental leave at work. I didn't want to provide full access to all my photos and files for work, so all they got wa…

iOS and Mac also let you do this, for photos, contacts and files. Apple is also pushing developers toward using native picker components. That way, you don't need to request consent at all, as you only get access to the specific object that the user has picked using a secure system component.

> That way, you don't need to request consent at all, as you only get access to the specific object that the user has picked using a secure system component.

This is an interesting contrast with the earlier philosophy of phone OSes that the file system is confusing to users and they should never be allowed to see it.

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

#444

Post by pas »

conductr wrote: post #414
mickgardner wrote: post #269

I find it fascinating reading hacker news, full of IT folk who simultaneously build software that enables and profits from the advertising and personal information selling & tracking industry - are also the same people who complain the loudest about it. Unbelievable.

There’s no code of conduct or rule book that anyone should follow so ethics is determined at the individual level. That quickly turns to, either I build it for them or the next guy will. Resistance is futile type thing. Most other types of engineering have published rules and standards and industry credentialing including ethics tied into it and loss of credentials for an ethics violation would be career ending in ma…

Can you give a few examples where that helped?

(I can only think of straw-man examples. Does the private prison industry have problems getting architects, civil engineers, electrical engineers? Does the pharma industry have problems getting chemical engineers for manufacturing addictive painkillers?)

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

#445

Post by debugnik »

sjtgraham wrote: post #286

> 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? > I know the "right" answer - to help companies target their audience better! For example, if you're promoting a mobile app that is 1 GB of size, and the user only has 500 MB of spac…

The mention of a "right" answer, quotes and all, makes it clear they understand this argument is a farce, doesn't it?

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

#446

Post by loxs »

jcul wrote: post #417
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…

On android you can choose whether to grant access to contacts. And most apps work fine without. GrapheneOS, which I use, also has contact scopes, so troublesome apps that refuse to work without access will think they have full access. You can allow them to see no contacts or a small subset. There's also multiple user profiles, a "private space", and a work profile (shelter) that you can install an app into, which can…

The point is that it doesn't matter whether YOU grant access to your contacts. As long as anyone who has you in THEIR contacts decides to just press "share contacts" with any app, you are doxxed and SkyNet is able to identify you for all practical purposes.

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

#447

Post by pas »

amelius wrote: post #54

> 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?

Congress is pretty ok with whatever Trump says, we have always been at war/peace with TikTokia.

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

#448

Post by vv_ »

rsync wrote: post #320

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'l…

Google's Geolocation Services used to charge 4$ for 1000 requests to their Cellular/Wi-Fi Geolocationing Service. Essentially you send a list of Wi-Fi MAC addresses and their associated RSSI values and get back a latitude and longitude with an accuracy metric. It was surprisingly good, when GPS wasn't available (sub 50 meters accuracy).

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

#449

Post by saagarjha »

gruez wrote: post #21

>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…

Cell carriers will gladly sell that information to apps. You can make calls to them over the cellular network (even if Wi-Fi is active!) and they will hand it back to you. No location services is required to do this.

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

#450

Post by saagarjha »

landr0id wrote: post #104
maximilianthe1 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people have "autobrightness" on. I'd think brightness doesn't help much here

Kind of a joke, but it could be useful for determining if they should serve light-mode or dark-mode ads. But I suppose they could just detect if dark/light mode are enabled.

Why would you serve dark-mode ads? Clearly you would pick the brightest option all the time.
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