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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

#551

Post by mrguyorama »

gfiorav wrote: post #513

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 fee…

This is typically just done through IP address. That's why I get ads for my girlfriend's preferred eye cream brand despite the fact that we browse using different devices and the advertiser should have access to that data point.

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

#552

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

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…

> there is no sane way to protect your contact details from being sold

I can think of one: make it illegal to buy, sell, or trade customer data. All transfer of data to another party must have a record of being initiated by the individual.

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

#553

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

speleding wrote: post #431
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…

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?

> What if there is an emergency with my kids?

Hopefully rather than just stupidly giving up, they'll send an accompanying text message.

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

#554

Post by mulmen »

amanda99 wrote: post #511
robotnikman wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

UBI isn’t meant to fully fund consumption. It’s “basic” income such as rent or groceries. I will accept that consumption data doesn’t cover consumption and that the value is already priced in but I don’t accept that it has no value or that UBI is meant as complete income replacement.

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

#555

Post by mrguyorama »

araes wrote: post #305
mschuster91 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The headphone, volume, brightness, and battery was just "what" kind of headshake about invasiveness. Somebody'd hand wave they need it (we want it, we want it). They obviously don't. Well the why the ad industry wants it is clear: fingerprinting and segmentation. Someone consistently low on battery? Push them ads for powerbanks.

This is actually part of what I find so wrong about this entire idea. With all this fine granularity, it seems like ads would be incredibly relevant. Specifically about what you need with something that might actually result in a click-through to purchase a product. Especially if they get real-time updates on my hard-drive status and battery state. I don't remember the last time I got an ad that was actually relevant…

It is an excuse. Google doesn't choose ads for you, they shoot out this bundle of info about you and just display the highest bidder. That means whatever ads you see are basically dominated by whoever overpaid the worst.

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

#556

Post by wand3r »

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…

Where are you buying this? Might be handy for a job search. Zoominfo basically doesn't have a b2c offering and I am not paying several thousand for an experiment in improving my career

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

#557

Post by amanda99 »

mulmen wrote: post #554
amanda99 wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

UBI isn’t meant to fully fund consumption. It’s “basic” income such as rent or groceries. I will accept that consumption data doesn’t cover consumption and that the value is already priced in but I don’t accept that it has no value or that UBI is meant as complete income replacement.

I guess I was responding to this:

> everyone can sell it to make a living just doing whatever they are doing everyday

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

#558

Post by Frederation »

jeanlucas wrote: post #240
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.

Exactly this was tried by the likes of James Oliver and journalists/comedians of that caliber running ads and gathering data from politicians in Washington. It was some years ago and resulted in nothing

LOL!

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

#559

Post by dangus »

ErigmolCt wrote: post #427
ggm wrote: post #349

The thing I found I grokked, and think is important from this article is that private browsing doesn't end this information flow. It only marks the JSON data blob as "asked not to be identified or collated" and its substantively an honour system. There are penalties (lawsuit against google for misleading people on the fact data was still collected) but the walls to breach here are low, given that non-PII can be cross…

"Private browsing" is just a polite request for companies to pretend they didn’t see you before

“Private browsing” is just private mostly in the sense of your local device, as in, your browsing history and cookies aren’t saved to disk. That still has some use as cookies are more direct tracking than fingerprinting (e.g., keeping you logged in, or a Google analytics script seeing that you’re a logged in Google user with a real identity provided to Google).

“Ask app not to track” turns off Apple’s own device identifier, but doesn’t stop other types of identifiers from existing, as the article described by the way it showed how ad networks make their own device identifiers collected by various apps.

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

#560

Post by sfink »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #384
sfink wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 lemo…

That "better" analogy is a restatement of "$5 for lemonade, $3 off if you skip the lemon."

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

The base price is not a force of nature. $5 with the option to opt-in to a $3 discount sounds great, until you realize that just a month ago the price was $2 by default. They raised the default by $3, but allowed you to opt-out of that increase. Whether you label that "opt-in" [to the discount] or "opt-out" [from the increase], you end up in exactly the same place.

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