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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

#571

Post by WrongAssumption »

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.

The emergency call may not be coming from their phone.

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

#572

Post by m463 »

inahga wrote: post #6

There are quite a few interesting tracking flows out there. My rent is paid through a company called Bilt. I discovered that when I shop at Walgreens now, Bilt sends me an email containing the full receipt of what I bought like so: > Hey [inahga], > > You shopped at Walgreens on 12/1/24 and earned Bilt Points with your > Neighborhood Pharmacy benefit. > > Items eligible for rewards > TOSTITOS HINT OF LIME RSTC 11OZ >…

This happened to me with square (block). I bought furniture, and they used square and required my email address for delivery. And then after that, anywhere I used square to pay for something using the same card, they would email me a receipt. I complained and they played dumb and never did anything.

I just stopped using that card with square.

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

#573

Post by genevra »

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.

So you think individuals have control over how the industry works? The insight it gives devs is why some are so outspoken about it. This is a good thing.

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

#574

Post by diebeforei485 »

K0nserv wrote: post #470
nomilk wrote: post #403

> Advertising Tracking ID was actually set to 000000-0000... because I "Asked app not to track". > I checked this by manually disabling and enabling tracking option for the Stack app and comparing requests in both cases. > And that's the only difference between allowing and disallowing tracking This is revealing! I'd wondered about Apple's curious wording " Ask App not to track" leaves suspicious wriggle room - apps…

Apple sets Advertising Tracking ID to 00000-0000 because it's the only technical control they have. However, apps are also supposed to respect the signal with regards to other methods of cross-site/app tracking and disable fingerprinting mechanisms. See https://developer.apple.com/app-store/user-privacy-and-data-... for details

They have other controls. For example, a game does not need to know your precise battery level (respect the low power mode setting), or precise screen brightness (respect the dark mode setting), or precise storage or volume (appropriate is sufficient). They really don't need to know if you're using wired or bluetooth headphones, and can request a specific entitlement if they have a valid use for that information.

99% of games do not need precise location (some exceptions are pokemon go, etc). They can request and receive an entitlement.

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

#575

Post by KennyBlanken »

otteromkram wrote: post #383
ajcp wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but that's not generalizable. You only referenced two companies...

EBay, Amazon, Walmart, CVS, etc. Name a major company, then try to contact customer service and interact with an actual human. Even if they do have a contact phone number, good luck navigating the mazes of voice prompts. Amazon isn't actually so bad about this, but I couldn't tell you if their CSR chat bot is an actual person or mid-level AI by now.

The challenge isn't getting customer service. It's getting someone who isn't reading from a decision tree that conveniently doesn't include any paths where the corporation has fucked up.

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

#576

Post by quantified »

ForHackernews wrote: post #491
quantified wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing things because they increase some non-monetary value has fallen out of fashion for sure. A colleague of mine recently shared, in a group social setting, a sense of disappointment that his daughter was studying to be a doctor. I was, as far as I could tell, the only one to note that there is practical utility to having doctors. But the "be part of our mission" was shown to be hollow over and over too. First and…

Aren't doctors extraordinarily well-paid? Was this outside the US?

In the US. Among techies who are in the upper 10% but not the 1%

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

#577

Post by Zak »

nickburns wrote: post #359
ignoramous wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most that a network administrator can do to prevent this is configure firewall IP blocklists of known DoH servers ... A firewall (which must also host a resolver) can choose to block requests to IPs it hasn't resolved domain names for. This is something I implemented for an Android firewall app I co-develop; it works nicely enough.

A firewall (which must also host a resolver) Is that true? Per what spec are you referring to?

ignoramous probably meant that in order to block access to all IP addresses that it has not recently resolved, the firewall must also host or communicate closely with a resolver. This is a tautology, not a spec.

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

#578

Post by DoctorOetker »

qingcharles wrote: post #453
stavros wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you buy their details from?

Right now, my goto is signalhire

As we all know some of the "consent" pop-ups have a first page of general settings, and then a "vendors" page to further deselect all the "legitimate interests".

I recently noticed that a fraction of the "vendors" allow deselecting the "legitimate interest" but have the "consent" tick box marked and unmodifiable.

Consider the following page:

https://www.brighthub.com/environment/renewable-energy/artic...

The following vendors have un-deselectable "consent" tickboxes:

   Skimbit Ltd 
   Confiant Inc. 
   Lumen Research Limited 
   Visarity Technologies GmbH
   DoubleVerify Inc.  
   Revcontent, LLC 
   Adssets AB 
   Integral Ad Science (incorporating ADmantX) 
   Mirando GmbH & Co KG 
   Polar Mobile Group Inc. 
   Rockabox Media Ltd 
   Telecoming S.A. 
   Seenthis AB 
   HUMAN 
   Papirfly AS 
   NEXD 
   One Tech Group GmbH 
   illuma technology limited 
   CHEQ AI TECHNOLOGIES 
   Adjust Digital A/S
   VRTCAL Markets Inc 
   Cavai AS 
   Kiosked Ltd 
   Protected Media LTD 
   Oracle Data Cloud - Moat 
   Bannernow, Inc. 
   Jetpack Digital LLC 
   GeoEdge
   Ensighten
   IVO Media Ltd 
   Online Media Solutions LTD 
   Mobkoi Ltd 
   Redbranch, Inc dba Fraudlogix
   Alphalyr SAS 
   Silverbullet Data Services Group 
   Stream Eye OOD 
   adbalancer Werbeagentur GmbH 
   Somplo Ltd 
   Velocity Made Good LLC 
   Vyde Ltd. 
   Adelaide Metrics Inc 
   Sqreem Technologies Private Limited 
   TMT Digital Inc 
   dpa-infocom GmbH 
   Brandhouse/Subsero A/S 
   streaMonkey GmbH 
   Alkimi 
   Zeit Agency ApS 
   Sitewit, Corp 
   AccountInsight Ltd 
   Aderize, Inc. 
   fraud0 GmbH 
   Channel99, Inc. 
   Videobot Ltd 
   Appstock LTD. 
   Dando online LTD 
   EMBRACE Systems GmbH 
   Hiili SL 
   YIELDBIRD SP. Z O.O. 
   Volentio JSD Limited 
   BEAPUP SOLUTIONS LTD 
   Public Good Software Inc. 
   Kidoz Inc. 
   DataDome SA 
   Sarigato Sp. z o.o. 
   Gesher Software LTD dba bridgeupp 
   Playdigo Inc 
   Sipo Inc 
   EliteAppgrade 
   SpinX Pte Ltd 
   Creatopy INC 
   Codevelop Technologies GmbH 
   Adgrid Media, LLC 
   ProgrammaticX LTD 
   Nitrouppi LTD 
   9 Dots Media Ltd 
   Vudoo Pty Ltd 
   Mobavenue Media Pvt Ltd 
   Carbonatix LTD
1) What is up with these?

2) Are these even legal under GDPR rules?

3) Does this not nullify arguments by certain 3 letter agencies that users "consent" to their tracking?

4) Who is behind these companies? Any idea on how to approach this from an investigative journalism angle? Can we figure out the headquarters, employee counts, CEO's of these companies?

5) If "undeselectable consent tickboxes" qualify as legally valid consent, doesn't this set a precedent to foist off miryads of types of lack of consent as "consent"? Will this enable legalizing rape? Where does this Pandora's box end? How is this any different from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fQsrwBi2Jo

6) As far as I understand, an illegal contract is void. If the forms submitted by users contained undeselectable "consent tickboxes"; then the forms no longer constitute legal contracts. Observe that this is regardless of the preferences of all the other tickboxes: even if users were to lazy to deselect all the deselectable tickboxes, the mere presence of deselectable tickboxes voids these forms as contracts. This means that all the other vendors didn't receive any consent, since their specific submitted form-as-a-contract is void, even if the majority of the vendors had consent tickboxes that could be deselected. It would seem prudent for such companies to insist that the forms don't contain undeselectable tickboxes for any companies since it would nullify the consent they hope to receive.

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

#580

Post by maest »

chgs wrote: post #194
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.

Like adverts in general the value of your data or your attention is tiny. The average American spends $200 (via higher costs for products) for TV each year and receives how many hundreds of hours of adverts in return? The superbowl for example gets $5 for every viewer, for about an hour of adverts. What’s the average hour of time worth? Facebook might suck up your data and flog it for a few cents, you’ve probably got…

If my attention is so cheap I would definitely like to pay $5/ year to not have to see ads.
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