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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

#531
post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They were evil before. Previously they’d take your LinkedIn password and try using that to log in to your email account to grab your contacts.

Ok I didn't know that. Very good point. Wow.

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

#532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still have that right; you simply entered into a voluntary agreement with your employer not to exercise it in exchange for money. Happens all the time.

Let's bring back indentured servitude, you have a right to not be a slave but you should still be able to enter into a voluntary agreement not to exercise that right.

That’s a facetious reply and you know it. Agreeing not to say certain things is practically a universal requirement of employment, for example, to preserve trade secrets. And indentured servitude is illegal.

Cut it out.

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

#534
post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my country (and I suspect most Western Countries) my doctor would lose his medical licence for selling my contact information.

Your poor oppressed doctor! And I’ll bet they rarely even get to treat bullet wounds. It’s different here in the Land of the Free ™.

Nah its called normal society, ie Switzerland here is the same the benefits of doing so would be absolutely minimal, punishments severe.

Plus its highly amoral and doctors here are still coming from idealistic breed that wanted to help people, those 2 are practically exclusive.

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

#535
Use NextDNS (https://nextdns.io) on your mobile phone as a Private DNS provider, and switch as many apps as allow it to be web apps, i.e. https://m.uber.com works just fine, and use Firefox on mobile and enable `about:config` via `chrome://geckoview/content/config.xhtml` , from there switch `beacon.enabled` to false.

Far less requires an actual app than most people imagine. It's the apps that leak so much.

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

#536
post #35

> Why do they need to know my screen brightness, memory amount, current volume and if I'm wearing headphones? This is clearly adding entropy to de-anonymize users between apps, rather than to add specificity to ad bids.

Screen brightness can identify weather you are outside or inside.

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

#537

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…

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.)

You are very lucky. In China, virtually all websites are required by law to use your phone number (verified by SMS) to register and/or to use. And all numbers must be linked to your ID.

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

#539
post #536
post #35

> Why do they need to know my screen brightness, memory amount, current volume and if I'm wearing headphones? This is clearly adding entropy to de-anonymize users between apps, rather than to add specificity to ad bids.

Screen brightness can identify weather you are outside or inside.

Taken as one of a thousand attributes it's likely to provide at least some discriminatory lift in isolating a single user, even if tiny.

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

#540

A long time ago I had the idea to create an 'accountability server'. The high level idea was for it to generate unique credentials so that you could track to the source who sold your info. There are some ways to do that now, but I wonder if it is time to start exploring that idea again. If you exposed it as a VPN/proxy+app that ran on a server in your home, so that you could collect your own data and provide unique c…

You can't. Because the creation is done in some proprietary software either bundled in the App or (worse) in the server somewhere.
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