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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

#521

Post by matheusmoreira »

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…

> CashApp terminated my account for this shenanigans

The audacity of these people. They probably do far worse things to their customers on a daily basis.

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

#522

Post by stronglikedan »

leoqa wrote: post #520
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.

you can call anyone for any reason if you aren't doing it for your own business

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

#523

Post by cooper_ganglia »

leoqa wrote: post #520
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.

I'll call anyone I please, thank you very much!

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

#524

Post by matheusmoreira »

hellojesus wrote: post #354
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.

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…

A big problem with GrapheneOS is the fact it only officially supports Google phones. Google is apparently incapable of selling those things globally, limiting availability.

There's also the fact hardware remote attestation is creeping into the Android ecosystem. There's absolutely no way to daily drive something like GrapheneOS if essential services such as banks and messaging services start discriminating against you on the basis of it. Aw shucks looks like your phone has been tampered with so we're just gonna deny you access to your account, try again later on a corporation owned phone.

GrapheneOS is amazing from a security and privacy perspective but it doesn't matter. The corporations will not tolerate it because it works against their interests. They will ban you from their services for using it. Unlike Google and Apple, they have no leverage with which to force the corporations to accept terms unfavorable to them.

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

#525

Post by triceratops »

leoqa wrote: post #520
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.

Don't do not call laws apply to marketing companies? OP isn't marketing or selling anything.

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

#527

Post by triceratops »

ericjmorey wrote: post #302
josephg wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They would make adjustments so that their details are protected, but the regular user is not.

Run for city council or the school board. Boom, now you're a "politician".

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

#528

Post by jorts »

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.

God damn this feature. About ten years ago I inadvertently did something in LinkedIn and ended up spamming everyone I knew with LinkedIn invites. It annoyed a lot of people.

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

#529

Post by triceratops »

kortilla wrote: post #119
nicbou wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things like that are on my mind when HN rants about GDPR. Something like this would be wildly illegal where I live.

HN rants about it because it’s not a good solution. It identified a problem but caused an idiotic fallout (cookie banners) and failed to actually put in a framework to enforce that companies aren’t just lying.

I've been seeing cookie banners on European websites long before GDPR was a twinkle in some Brussels bureaucrat's eye.

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

#530

Post by coldpie »

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?

Zuck's lobbyists pay better than China's.
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