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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

#511

Post by amanda99 »

robotnikman wrote: post #121
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.

>what “my data” means It makes me wonder, if everyone 'owned' their own data, I wonder if it could be used as a form of UBI. Everyone has data from using services, everyone owns it, everyone can sell it to make a living just doing whatever they are doing everyday. This is only just a shower thought I had the other day though, there are probably many pitfalls when it comes to such an idea.

You will never generate enough money from information about your consumption to fund your consumption. Obviously there's other data, but you get the point.

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

#512

Post by stackedinserter »

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.

These are not the same people, obviously.

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

#513

Post by gfiorav »

One of the big WTF moments I've had in the "web vs. device" Ad-related privacy journey was realizing that even if you create an "anonymous" account on an app in your phone, your device ID is shared and can be recognized by Ad vendors.

Example:

- You're using a known account on a Mac to search for a shelf to buy

- You're using a anonymous account to browse Reddit on an iPhone

And the shelf Ad pops up on the Reddit feed. Yep, as long as you logged in with a known account on both devices, they're now linked by device id. An all you do on those devices (regardless of the account) can be traced back to you.

I read about this in "Chaos Monkeys" but it never really hit me until this experience.

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

#514

Post by mathgeek »

stavros wrote: post #462
qingcharles wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, my goto is signalhire

Thank you, though I have a feeling that they get their data from their own sign up form.

This is to be expected as a source of their data, no?

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

#515

Post by stavros »

mathgeek wrote: post #514
stavros wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, though I have a feeling that they get their data from their own sign up form.

This is to be expected as a source of their data, no?

Yeah, it would be, it's just a bit ironic.

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

#516

Post by casenmgreen »

secondcoming wrote: post #492
casenmgreen wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped keeping a mobile number many years ago. Phone is wifi only. In particular, I do not use the contacts functionality built into the phone. (This is /e/OS, which helps, but I'll be moving to Mobian as soon as it is viable.)

How do you do online banking?

Laptop, running over Tor.

I use cash for all physical payments; never the card. I use the card to withdraw cash, once a month.

I very rarely buy on-line, because I stopped using Amazon (treatment of warehouse staff) and buying off of Amazon is hell on toast.

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

#517

Post by casenmgreen »

skrebbel wrote: post #479
casenmgreen wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped keeping a mobile number many years ago. Phone is wifi only. In particular, I do not use the contacts functionality built into the phone. (This is /e/OS, which helps, but I'll be moving to Mobian as soon as it is viable.)

What do you do when the car repairman wants to call/text you when the car is finished? Or any other similar situations?

No car.

But in general, email.

I can make calls from my phone/laptop, using VOIP.

I could receive as well if I wanted to, but I rarely need to be called, so I do not normally keep a number, and I could not be called when out and about anyway, because wifi-only, but you do get an answerphone, so people can leave a message.

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

#518

Post by mapt »

swiftcoder wrote: post #475
Aurornis wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Unless your problem is with the company doing the privacy violations, this doesn’t make any sense.

Pretty much all companies are doing the privacy violations. You think your doctors office doesn't sell their contact list?

HIPAA is pretty much the only halfway effective privacy regulation the US has. It imposes strong regulatory, licensure, and even criminal censure for violations.

It's formulated so that they can give those contacts away rather than sell them, but only to the rest of the medical goods & services supplychain that are involved in your care, who are also bound by HIPAA.

The worst dark pattern this has generated so far seems to be pharmaceutical company drug reps bribing your doctor to change what they would prescribe you.

The worst that's likely to happen without regulation, as far as I can tell, involves an associated provider just leaking UnitedHealthcare's full database of every patient and every condition.

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

#519

Post by amanda99 »

theptip wrote: post #306
sebastiennight wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think this is a slightly different case no? If the ad network is using a very high precision variable to soft-link anonymized accounts, then randomizing the values between apps should break that. Your analogy applies more to things like trying to anonymize your traffic with Tor, where using such an anonymizer flags your IP as doing something weird vs other users. I’m not convinced simply fuzzing the values would be…

I'm sure the ad networks do a lot more than use high precision variables for soft-linking.

These are professional networks with a ton of capital thrown behind them. They have pretty decent algorithms, heuristics, etc; and you don't make money (compared to the other data correlation teams) if you do simple dumb stuff. I'm certain they take into account those trying to be privacy-conscious, if only to increase their match rates to be competitive.

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

#520

Post by leoqa »

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…

You may be committing some type of violation of privacy laws if you're contacting them via phone and they're on the do not call list. Because they work at a company does not mean that you and the employee have a business relationship.
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