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Your mobile data sold, without your knowledge

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Re: Your mobile data sold, without your knowledge

#31

Post by nisse72 »

aaomidi wrote: post #23
indymike wrote: post #17

Many of the apps that sell your location use location as a critical component of the experience. Apple and Google added a permission last year - only allow access to location when app is running (in the foreground). That change has made a dramatic reduction in the amount of location data available. Ultimately, free is the culprit. People like to navigate, buy stuff online, see things on a map, get local weather, and…

Then allow me to pay if I want to? I don't get this argument when an alternative doesn't exist.

And even if you are able to pay and choose to do so, do you think this means they stop collecting your data? I very much doubt it.

Re: Your mobile data sold, without your knowledge

#32

Post by mindslight »

realharo wrote: post #28
Firerouge wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At worst, having root should be the most that's required, which only on some phones requires a custom rom. Android has built in support for location spoofing with the developer mode option, select mock location app.

Other apps can easily check whether the location comes from a mock source and discard such data. https://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/Loc...

These type of security vulnerabilities are due to the core OS/APIs being developed by a surveillance company that isn't concerned with user privacy, and they're countless.

There isn't enough will in the Free world to mitigate even the most glaring ones either, such as LineageOS not incorporating the MicroG patches. The end result being more forks, more confusion, and groups of users remaining unprotected.

Commoditize your complements, indeed.

Re: Your mobile data sold, without your knowledge

#34

Post by mayneack »

aaomidi wrote: post #23
indymike wrote: post #17

Many of the apps that sell your location use location as a critical component of the experience. Apple and Google added a permission last year - only allow access to location when app is running (in the foreground). That change has made a dramatic reduction in the amount of location data available. Ultimately, free is the culprit. People like to navigate, buy stuff online, see things on a map, get local weather, and…

Then allow me to pay if I want to? I don't get this argument when an alternative doesn't exist.

Some do. I pay to remove ads from the wunderground app which IBM claims means they don't sell my data. Not sure if believe them, but at least I don't see ads.

https://i.imgur.com/TlOo07T.png

Re: Your mobile data sold, without your knowledge

#35

Post by askvictor »

aaomidi wrote: post #23
indymike wrote: post #17

Many of the apps that sell your location use location as a critical component of the experience. Apple and Google added a permission last year - only allow access to location when app is running (in the foreground). That change has made a dramatic reduction in the amount of location data available. Ultimately, free is the culprit. People like to navigate, buy stuff online, see things on a map, get local weather, and…

Then allow me to pay if I want to? I don't get this argument when an alternative doesn't exist.

I think the problem is developers/companies only have so much time/resources, and figure that x people might pay for an app/service, but 100x will use it if it's free (with other monetisation strategy), then why bother coding & interfacing with a payment system (and this starts to get convoluted and require and entire department handling payment and tax issues across different countries and jurisdictions) for just 1% of likely users?

Not saying that's the right approach, but that's probably how the thinking goes. Billing is certainly easier than it used to be (that's what the 30% app store cut is for), but can still get convoluted, and might have the perception of being convoluted.

Re: Your mobile data sold, without your knowledge

#36

Post by ggggtez »

PeterisP wrote: post #16
ggggtez wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>is granular location data illegal Generally speaking, there are no laws against merely possessing data, unless the data itself was the result of a crime. Maybe you mean selling the data? That's nuanced. It seems to be illegal for phone-companies to sell your real-time cellphone location... but historical data? App developers instead of phone companies? The devil is probably in the details in terms of what constitute…

The article is about Norway, and there are laws against merely possessing data, namely the GDPR. To be specific, "merely possessing" private data (the granular movement data would qualify) by companies for business purposes is illegal by default - there are many options that give a legal basis for processing, and many of them do not require the user's consent, but it's upon the company to demonstrate what gives them…

The above poster's question was specifically about the US.

GDPR does not cover the US. Europe has more privacy laws than the US does.

Re: Your mobile data sold, without your knowledge

#38

Post by meritt »

saagarjha wrote: post #25

This is one of the reasons why I'm generally not OK with "anonymized" data collection without an explanation of how it's being anonymized. It's almost always easy, often trivially easy, to correlate the data together and basically get a perfect recreation of whatever the original data was back.

Anonymization in the data reselling industry is often some form of md5(lower($email)). It's a joke. They even do that for extremely small search spaces like phone numbers. It's still provided at the individual user-level and even if the anonymization is done in a way that's irreversible, you only need to know a single event for a given person and you now have their entire history.

For example, there's a popular email client that scrapes people's inboxes and sells their purchase history to anyone willing to pay. That purchase history is provided on an individual email level and is "anonymized". But if you know your target has this email client installed and you know a single purchase (e.g. a coworker saying "Oh, I bought this awesome coffee maker on Amazon last night!") you can now access their entire individual purchase history backward and forward.

Re: Your mobile data sold, without your knowledge

#39

Post by jeffbee »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #6

What I don’t get about this kind of thing is that it’s not just shady data resellers you’ve never heard of. It’s also overt, high profile, branded tech companies like Foursquare and Yelp, with huge amassed data sets of foot traffic, wifi scans, battery status, often paired with demographic info or data that can be joined by ad IDs or commercial device graphs. If these companies are able to keep on truckin’ with massi…

The fact that Apple Maps integrates Yelp is a big red flag for me, and I think a big hole in their privacy story. It's why I am more comfortable using Google Maps than Apple Maps.

Re: Your mobile data sold, without your knowledge

#40

Post by cocoa19 »

indymike wrote: post #17

Many of the apps that sell your location use location as a critical component of the experience. Apple and Google added a permission last year - only allow access to location when app is running (in the foreground). That change has made a dramatic reduction in the amount of location data available. Ultimately, free is the culprit. People like to navigate, buy stuff online, see things on a map, get local weather, and…

"Ultimately, free is the culprit. "

False... Plenty of companies take your money and still sell your data.

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