[HN Gopher] Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down t...
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Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app
ads
Author : apokryptein
Score : 1772 points
Date : 2025-02-02 17:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (timsh.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (timsh.org)
| ta988 wrote:
| Shame on all of the people working on those systems. Legit
| companies trying to make the world better struggle to find
| competent people.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Ugh. Eye roll on the whole "make the world better". So few SV
| products remotely make the world better. The purpose of the
| vast majority is to make money at all costs. I also disagree
| with what most people claim is making the world better. All in
| all, I think social media is a net negative for the world for
| any good that might be found. Every SV thing after that is just
| chasing the recketship to the moon dream.
| unification_fan wrote:
| > So few SV products remotely make the world better
|
| Because devs have to eat in order to survive?
| 9283409232 wrote:
| You don't need to work on adtech or work at Meta to
| survive. Don't pretend that it has nothing to do with the
| lavish salaries.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Right, because SV is epitomized for the struggling dev as
| much as Haight Ashbury is known for struggling artists.
| layer8 wrote:
| Ah, yes, the profession that most struggles to make ends
| meet.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I believe this was parodied multiple times in season 1 of
| Silicon Valley.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That scene in the pilot with the way over enthusiastic
| founder on stage with Kid Rock was pretty much when I knew
| I would <3 that show
| nicbou wrote:
| Direct link to the scene:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8C5sjjhsso
| spencerflem wrote:
| One of my favorite seasons of TV <3
| quacked wrote:
| I think a big part of the ability of these shady companies
| pulling the brightest minds away from more clearly beneficial
| fields is that important flavors of ideology necessary to
| motivate people to take less lucrative work have been stripped
| from "business". There's a lot fewer appeals to art, history,
| cultural stewardship, or empire-building present in things like
| transportation, medicine, construction, etc. than there were in
| the past. Any flavor of "for the glory of God/the nation/the
| People/the Art" etc. is pretty effectively stripped out of
| American business, and I think that's the only kind of thing
| that would motivate someone who could make $250k in Adware to
| make $100k in something else.
|
| People are now very well-trained to look out for their own
| bottom line, and take jobs accordingly.
| quantified wrote:
| 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 foremost, you as an enployee are
| making the investors and CEO rich. The mission is usually
| exploiting the employee, even when it's not exploiting the
| world. Employees have recognized the real social ethic (money
| over everything) and are just playing the same game. Which is
| sad.
|
| Ideally the people who see these choices would make
| alternative choices that will leave their grandchildren
| better off in the world. It has taken only a generation for
| the "greed is good" mentality to drop us into this fetid
| soup.
| quacked wrote:
| I think the phrase you called out--"be a part of our
| mission"--that most corporations (and, mimicking them,
| government agencies) regurgitate is itself the approach to
| socialization that causes people to feel less inclined to
| work for any non-profit reason. "Part of OUR mission"
| redefines the company as the entity to be loyal to, rather
| than casting the company as part of society itself. You
| can't replace constructs that tend to inspire people to
| heroism and selflessness with a corporate avatar and expect
| the fabric of society to remain similarly motivated. It
| does make a set few people a hell of a lot of money in the
| short term, though.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Aren't doctors extraordinarily well-paid? Was this outside
| the US?
| quantified wrote:
| In the US. Among techies who are in the upper 10% but not
| the 1%
| rolph wrote:
| i believe there are somewhat fewer practicing freemasons in
| those places of layte.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| American business has never cared about any of that stuff. It
| was always lip service.
|
| Also if you haven't heard, the US government is currently a
| shit show right now run by Musk as far as employment
| 9283409232 wrote:
| What companies?
| throwaway847739 wrote:
| I have the same question. It did not seem easy for me to find
| a job where we are at least not writing malware (according to
| my judgement). But it's far from making the world better :|
| yread wrote:
| I work in cancer research. Some companies are there just for
| greed as well but at least the end product could be helpful
| Yeul wrote:
| I read an interesting newspaper article about how the police
| confiscated a hired gun's iPhone and found that he ran a search
| on the city his victim lived in. It is these little digital
| breadcrumbs that makes life easy for the prosecution.
|
| Seriously if you are going to do illegal things never ever buy a
| smartphone.
| gruez wrote:
| >the police confiscated a hired gun's iPhone and found that he
| ran a search on the city his victim lived in.
|
| It's far more likely they just looked at his browser history
| rather than doing some skullduggery with databrokers or
| whatever.
| HelloUsername wrote:
| Related?
|
| NSA Warns iPhone and Android Users-Disable Location Tracking
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42713536
|
| Hackers Claim Breach of Location Data Giant, Threaten to Leak
| Data https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42627336
| apples_oranges wrote:
| Logged in to upvote this
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's funny how in recent headlines the NSA & FBI have been
| saying to use secure messaging app. Yet the FBI is infamous for
| claiming the need for back doors into these encrypted apps.
| What are we to think of the opposing views? Are they really
| being benevolent for the citizens, or do they no longer need
| the back door, or do they have a back door whether intentional
| or not?
| not2b wrote:
| It seems that they have changed their minds about
| surveillance back doors, after some devastating attacks,
| where Chinese state actors (among others) used back doors
| created for compliance with warrants to get in.
|
| But that was the pre-Trump NSA and FBI. Now the Chinese and
| the Russians just need to get some DOGE volunteer to give
| them whatever they want, since Elon now has root on all the
| government payment systems and is too undisciplined to do
| things in a secure way.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| The world is changing fast and reasons for actions may be
| more complex and interesting than you assume.
|
| Were they ever _not_ benevolent to US citizens as a whole,
| even if misguided? There may be last-ditch attempts to extend
| benevolence to US citizens as a takeover looms. If leaks from
| the Office of Personnel Management are to be believed, then
| right now US government is in the process of a soft coup,
| being dismantled along lines of political loyalty. I expect
| those working in intelligence and law enforcement who support
| democracy see the writing on the wall and will act sooner or
| later.
|
| Reliable end to end encryption is an important tool for
| citizens of a nation that may need to organise in a hurry. We
| might see new Edward Snowden type revelations of programmes,
| naming key people or giving clear advice not to trust certain
| US based entities or services. Civil servants may act
| professionally as non-politically as they can, but in the
| end, if only to protect their jobs, they're going to come
| down on the side of democracy.
| ipdashc wrote:
| > What are we to think of the opposing views?
|
| They're not homogenous organizations. Not sure about the FBI,
| but AFAIK the NSA has always been in an awkward spot of being
| split between defensive and offensive missions. It wouldn't
| be particularly surprising to have one arm going "you should
| all use encrypted messaging, it's the most secure" while the
| other arm is frantically trying to break or backdoor said
| encrypted messaging.
| monlockandkey wrote:
| How did were the apps able to collect geolocation even though
| location services were disabled?
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Probably from IP address geolocation.
| abound wrote:
| Indeed, the article notes that the lat/long wasn't "GPS
| exact", more like "postal code exact".
| xenic wrote:
| Doing that on the client side sounds pointless though, if you
| are already transmitting the ip.
| inahga wrote:
| 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 > $3.50 >
| > +3 pts > TOSTITOS RSTC 12OZ > $3.50 >
| > +3 pts > Other items* > EXCLUDED ITEMS
| > $0.07 > > *May include rewards-ineligible items
| and/or prescriptions.
|
| Ostensibly (hopefully) it would exclude sensitive items, plan B,
| condoms, etc...
|
| I'm curious how this data flows from Walgreens to my rent
| company, but maybe I'd rather not know and just use
| cash/certified check from now on.
| andrewfromx wrote:
| "Bilt Members can earn points on Walgreens purchases made using
| any card linked to their Bilt account."
|
| https://support.biltrewards.com/hc/en-us/articles/2901187842...
|
| There's that FSA/HSA benefit section at the bottom which
| explicitly states that Bilt receives item-level data:
|
| https://www.biltrewards.com/terms/walgreens
| gruez wrote:
| That just sounds like a standard cross-merchant loyalty
| program? I don't think there are many examples in the US, but
| once you realize it's a loyalty program you really shouldn't
| be surprised that they're tracking your purchase history.
| That's basically the entire premise.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > it's a loyalty program
|
| calling something loyalty does not make it "loyalty" ..
| gruez wrote:
| That's just the standard term for such programs
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalty_program
| uoaei wrote:
| It's the normal term, in that it has been normalized as
| such. But it is otherwise not accurate except in the
| barest, most monetaristically self-fulfilling-prophecy
| way.
| dietr1ch wrote:
| So called loyalty programs should be illegal on multiple
| fronts,
|
| - Privacy: There's obvious tracking of purchasing trends.
| This derails into selling user data to everyone that
| makes people increasingly easy to track.
|
| - Customer-dependent pricing / Price-discrimination: This
| is awful for economy, in econ 101 you learn that business
| want to charge each customer as much as they are willing
| to pay, but this differentiated pricing is just getting
| their hands into everyone's pockets.The free market
| principles rely on perfect knowledge, and every step made
| to make pricing harder is an attack against self market
| regulation.
|
| Price discrimination is illegal even in Lobby-land,
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/13
| barrkel wrote:
| Price discrimination is not a priori bad. A fixed price
| with enough margin to support the business may be too
| high for price sensitive consumers. If you can charge
| more to less price sensitive consumers, you can, at the
| margin, make a little bit on these price sensitive
| consumers, and overall everyone is better off - more
| consumers are satisfied and their marginal willingness to
| consume a unit of the thing being sold is more equalized.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| There are ways to adequately approximate that kind of
| price discrimination without detailed tracking though,
| like giving discounts to students, seniors, and people
| receiving various kinds of welfare benefit upon showing
| proof of status.
|
| Yeah it isn't as accurate as the privacy-invasive kind of
| tracking, since students and seniors can be wealthy and
| eligibility for welfare benefits doesn't always consider
| assets or gifts from well-off family. But it's accurate
| enough to give the economy most of the same benefit
| without the privacy downside.
|
| I do think it's fine for people to opt in to more
| tracking as a separate consent choice beyond merely
| participating in a loyalty program, for example to get
| more personalized and therefore more useful offers, but
| not as a condition of participation to merely receive at
| least standard offers and accumulate points. That's how
| they generally work in Germany.
| gruez wrote:
| >I do think it's fine for people to opt in to more
| tracking as a separate consent choice beyond merely
| participating in a loyalty program, for example to get
| more personalized and therefore more useful offers, but
| not as a condition of participation to merely receive at
| least standard offers and accumulate points. That's how
| they generally work in Germany.
|
| Sounds like that'll push retailers to switch from a
| system where they give points/discounts to everyone, to
| one where points/discounts are "targeted", which of
| course requires opting into tracking. Like I said before,
| the whole premise of loyalty programs is that you're
| being tracked in exchange for rewards. You really can't
| expect to have your cake (discounts) and eat it too (not
| being tracked).
| mistrial9 wrote:
| search term "green stamps" ( _edit_
| )https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S&H_Green_Stamps
|
| my grandmother collected green stamps from the grocery
| store, which she saved for food discounts.. I don't think
| that there was any customer ID involved at all..
|
| honestly, describing pervasive tracking of purchasing
| associated with govt ID as "normal" is .. its a sickness
| and parts of it are illegal now. It is not required or
| "normal" at all, from this view
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| > Sounds like that'll push retailers to switch from a
| system where they give points/discounts to everyone, to
| one where points/discounts are "targeted", which of
| course requires opting into tracking. Like I said before,
| the whole premise of loyalty programs is that you're
| being tracked in exchange for rewards. You really can't
| expect to have your cake (discounts) and eat it too (not
| being tracked).
|
| As I said, in Germany you can indeed have your cake and
| eat it too in this regard, if you're okay with the offers
| you receive being less targeted and therefore less
| appealing.
|
| My understanding is that GDPR requires them to offer the
| option to decline the personalized targeting without
| being blocked from participation overall, and this is
| probably the same anywhere in the EU. But I don't have
| personal experience with this in other EU countries and
| could be misunderstanding.
| gruez wrote:
| >As I said, in Germany you can indeed have your cake and
| eat it too in this regard, if you're okay with the offers
| you receive being less targeted and therefore less
| appealing.
|
| The "cake" in this case refers to the offers you had
| before GDPR came into effect and/or regulators started
| enforcing it. They might give opt-out people some token
| offers to appease regulators, but I doubt it'll be
| anywhere close to the offers they had before.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| > They might give opt-out people some token offers to
| appease regulators
|
| It's not an opt-out situation. As per GDPR requirements,
| these programs have a specific opt-in prompt for
| personalized targeting, separate from the one which is
| for generally collecting and redeeming points as a
| member, and it's not pre-chosen by default.
|
| I think one can assume that many people will decline to
| opt in, especially in a culturally privacy-focused
| country like modern Germany and since not opting in is
| far behaviorally common than explicitly opting out, but
| also that many others will knowingly consent in exchange
| for the benefits. So I think they would generally want to
| give decent offers to both categories of people, since
| the non-consent group is large enough to matter. Of
| course the personalized ones would be better, otherwise
| nobody would want to give that consent.
|
| Myself, I've consented to some but not all of the
| personalized targeting and information sharing from the
| loyalty programs I participate in here, after reading the
| descriptions of the requested consents in detail and
| making a conscious choice. In at least one case I
| converted a no to a yes after thinking about it longer.
| It's good to have that transparency and control, and not
| to have the legalese surreptitiously remove your right to
| sue the store should that become necessary as is common
| in the US (forced arbitration is generally illegal here
| in B2C agreements).
|
| As for the rest of your most recent comment, I wouldn't
| know; I didn't ever live in Europe before the GDPR.
| dietr1ch wrote:
| Yes, this is the reason why it's sort of illegal, but
| done anyways.
|
| Honestly, beyond paying fewer fees on the bus as a kid,
| I'm pretty sure I'm being scammed everytime I experience
| price discrimination.
|
| I feel it's easier to make it illegal and give away
| reasonable credits to all consumers. I wouldn't
| discriminate in credits either, I'd rather have public
| transportation being free for all than claim to save
| money that society needs to spend anyway.
|
| It doesn't help that lying about the price at any point
| just makes accounting harder, and creates space for
| wrong, uncompetitive pricing, or awful deals that would
| hurt business and society in the longer term anyway.
| fragmede wrote:
| pricing is all made up to begin with though. your can't
| take the cost to make an item, add a reasonable amount of
| profit and that's the "real" price. that's just not the
| reality of running a successful business. human
| psychology is far too complicated.
|
| at the end of the day, prices are just a number you make
| up, and hopefully it's a big enough number that your stay
| in business. hopefully it's a big enough number that you
| get rich. but sometimes it's a fire sale and you just end
| up owing less money to your vendors.
| dietr1ch wrote:
| > at the end of the day, prices are just a number you
| make up, and hopefully it's a big enough number that your
| stay in business.
|
| The only requirement is to make up a single for all your
| customers that are getting the same thing back. It'll be
| made up and account for business factors like risks,
| profits, etc.
| Y_Y wrote:
| I don't think everyone is better off, at best the "less
| price sensitive" is unaffected. But then you have to have
| have some way of stopping arbitrage via the customers
| paying the lower price through some sort of identity
| checks or restrictions. I think that's an unavoidable
| negative outcome and it's not clear that it would always
| be outweighed by allowing more people to consume the
| product.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| In Germany, the major cross-merchant loyalty program
| Payback gives you one or two rounds of extra consent
| choices about the tracking, and the type we see here is
| absolutely not mandatory for participating. It does of
| course let them give you more personalized and useful
| coupons, but one can participate while declining that
| permission.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Hopefully exclude? By whom? At some point, somebody has to
| decide it was sensitive, by what standards? Does Bilt decide to
| not use it after they were already sold the data? Does the
| aggregator after already been sold it by the harvesting seller?
| Does the harvesting app reduce the appeal of their data by
| deliberately excluding the data? Does the harvesting app care
| to spend the money on doing that?
| inetknght wrote:
| > _just use cash /certified check from now on_
|
| You might want to discover about sophistication and pervasive
| facial recognition technology used by major retailers. Paid by
| cash? It can still be tracked to you. For "fraud prevention",
| of course.
| gruez wrote:
| >Paid by cash? It can still be tracked to you. For "fraud
| prevention", of course.
|
| They can already track you through your phone and/or credit
| cards. Why bother setting up a massive facial recognition
| system for people paying with cash when they only account for
| 10% (or whatever) of overall shoppers, and have less
| disposable income than average?
| spencerflem wrote:
| idk why, but they do
| bdavbdav wrote:
| Got a source on retailers actively doing this?
| erikerikson wrote:
| Word of mouth: retailers in China have been using face
| recognition technologies to identify key customers so
| that they can be greater by name when delivered their
| favorite drink upon entering the premises.
| gruez wrote:
| The trouble with "word of mouth" is that you can't tell
| whether something is actually real, or vaporware that
| some account executive dreamed up to close a deal.
| erikerikson wrote:
| I agree, which is why I qualified it. I was working at a
| retailer, building it's cloud systems at the time. It was
| told to me by a colleague who claimed to be told that by
| a peer from China at a conference.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Its very well known that Target, Wallgreens use facial
| recognition for shoplifting.
|
| Its harder to prove any specific stores are using any
| specific survailence product for marketing, but plenty of
| companies are offering it. Here' Samsung's take: https://
| web.archive.org/web/20230410052807/https://www.samsu...
| bdavbdav wrote:
| That's really interesting- thanks for the link!
| vmilner wrote:
| https://www.facewatch.co.uk/
| bdavbdav wrote:
| I meant more for marketing - definitely used lots for
| loss prevention.
| Lio wrote:
| I don't know about the US but in the UK they did it
| ostensibly to catch shoplifters.
|
| We have a major problem with "professional" thieves
| stealing because the big chains don't want to pay cashiers
| anymore.
|
| You see a screen with your face on it in places like
| Waitrose self service checkouts now. It's their way of
| saying "we know who you are".
|
| Tracking cash purchases is just a side bonus for them.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Are you aware of cases where it is used for more that theft
| prevention/manual review of CCTV?
|
| I'm not aware of any big retailers using facial data for
| targeting vouchers or anything similar.
|
| Simple things like "did walk through the door with a child"
| would be pretty valuable data, yet as far as I know, nobody
| uses it.
| kortilla wrote:
| Is there actual evidence of this, like anywhere?
|
| Facial recognition on a small corpus of known faces (what
| everyone experiences on Facebook, their phones, etc) is an
| easy problem.
|
| Walmart picking up a face walking into a store and matching
| it against 30 million possibilities is going to return so
| many false positive matches it's going to be completely
| useless.
| curiousthought wrote:
| This is called Level 3 data, and any merchant can choose to
| provide it for a reduction in the transaction fees they pay.
|
| Here's a small comment thread from a few months back:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41213632
| uoaei wrote:
| Is there any documentation on this to read further? I.e. what
| the different levels contain and how much on average is the
| cost reduction for the merchant.
| devmor wrote:
| Here is implementation documentation from Mastercard about
| l3: https://na-
| gateway.mastercard.com/api/documentation/integrat...
|
| The cost reduction is very small, it's applied to
| interchange fees. I've been directly responsible for
| implementing this functionality on payment gateways for
| multiple processors because it helps reduce fraud holds as
| well.
| uoaei wrote:
| Separate question, what are your ethics around the
| surveillance of Americans' economic activities by private
| actors? What "rights" are relevant in this space and
| which do you subscribe to?
|
| I'm not going to debate you about anything, I just don't
| get the chance to ask insiders any of these questions.
| chgs wrote:
| Do you think there are different ethical concerns when
| dealing with non Americans?
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Also a great question.
| devmor wrote:
| My ethics are "this is unequivocally wrong without
| consent".
|
| Thankfully my work was on payment products that serviced
| businesses and government entities, so I did not really
| have to deal with that moral quandary.
|
| However it gets muddier in other spaces as well. There
| are types of cards, like HSA/FSA that require something
| similar to level 3 data called IIAS that is used to
| determine what parts of your purchase are eligible. In
| the parts of the systems I have worked with, this is
| covered by HIPAA, but I have no idea if there are
| "clever" methods to sneak that data out of the chain
| elsewhere.
| no_time wrote:
| Is this data requestable via a GDPR takeout?
|
| searching for "mastercard level 3 data takeout" and such
| bring up the same 5 pages that are not relevant.
| anon7000 wrote:
| It's honestly crazy that we allow companies to sell our data
| -- and even financially incentivize companies to share our
| data like this.
| kortilla wrote:
| The problem is that to you it seems like your data but to
| Walgreens they see it as theirs. They generated it with
| their point of sale system.
|
| The data is about a transaction that you made, but they
| generated all of it.
|
| Until we have agreement as a society about what "my data"
| means, this kind of stuff is going to run rampant.
| robotnikman wrote:
| >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.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Unlikely. I'd think the most valuable data is generally
| the type that can be used to extract money from you.
| Targeted ads and such. So, your data's value would
| increase in proportion with your spending power.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Honestly the path to "UBI" is probably just
| socialized/subsidized basic needs.
|
| Build masses of government housing, make a healthcare
| public option with sliding-scale costs, and you're 90% of
| the way there - food and decent low-end broadband are
| frankly already cheap enough for the government to cover
| with maybe some "Don't gouge Uncle Sam or else" clauses
| and that's about everything.
| fragmede wrote:
| I don't support UBI but that's a fascinating idea.
| Unfortunately the data is worth micropennies in the
| individual, so only worth something in aggregate, like a
| class action settlement where you end up with a cheque
| for $0.34 for damages which makes it not even worth your
| time, it'd only be good as the backdrop for a science
| fiction novel or as an experiment by a YouTube video by a
| well known creator to see how little money it would make.
| I would read the hell out of that book and watch that
| video tho!
| marcelluspye wrote:
| This idea is the subject of the 2013 book "Who Owns the
| Future?" By Jaron Lanier.
| chgs wrote:
| 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 more cash down the back of the
| sofa.
| maest wrote:
| If my attention is so cheap I would definitely like to
| pay $5/ year to not have to see ads.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| IDK, I think almost all interesting data has no obvious
| single owner, because it gets created as a side effect of
| an _interaction_ between two or more parties.
|
| Take the transaction information from example above. The
| record of you buying products X, Y, Z for total t=x+y+z
| at time T, with card C - both you and the store could
| argue they're entitled to it. It's about you and money
| you spent and products you received, but it's _also_
| about them and the money they received and the products
| that were taken off their inventory. Then the card issuer
| will interject saying, "hey, the customer uses a card
| _we provide as a service_ , so we're _at least_ entitled
| to know which card was use to pay, to whom, when, an what
| the total amount was! ". Then both yours and stores'
| banks will chime in, and behind them, also the POS
| terminal provider.
|
| Truth is, they all have a point. We like to think that
| paying for groceries with our watch is like a medieval
| peasant paying for fruit with metal coins at a town
| market. It's not. Electronic payments always involve
| multiple steps handled automatically, in the background,
| by half a dozen service providers linked by their own
| contracts and with their own legal reporting
| requirements, and each of them really do need to know at
| least some details about the payment they're
| participating in.
|
| A simpler example: this comment. It's obviously mine.
| It's also a response to you, and it only makes sense in
| context of the whole subthread. Should anyone reply to
| it, they'll gain a stake in it, too - and then, arguably,
| everyone following this discussion have a right to read
| it, now and in the future. After I hit the "Reply"
| button, I can't in good conscience claim this comment is
| mine and only mine. This is why I'm personally against
| the practice of unilaterally mass-deleting of comments on
| open discussion boards, like e.g. plenty of people do on
| Reddit, forever ruining useful discussions for the
| public.
|
| (It's also why I like HN's approach to GDPR, which is,
| you can get your account disassociated from your
| comments, and you can request potentially identifying
| content be removed, but the site won't just mass-delete
| your comments automatically.)
| numpad0 wrote:
| Connecting information to that kind of personal gains
| sounds dangerous. There is probably non-negligible abuse
| potential, like college kids legally printing money at
| weird scale.
| amanda99 wrote:
| 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.
| mulmen wrote:
| 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.
| amanda99 wrote:
| I guess I was responding to this:
|
| > everyone can sell it to make a living just doing
| whatever they are doing everyday
| iamacyborg wrote:
| This is fairly easily answered through legislation like
| the GDPR which classes this data as personal data if it's
| associated with an identified or identifiable person.
| kortilla wrote:
| A legislative body writing something down doesn't mean
| society has agreed to it.
|
| If someone journals and writes down everyone they met
| with locations and dates, they will laugh you out of the
| room if you tell them they are violating GDPR.
|
| This also leads to stupid shit like people not being sure
| if they can point a camera at their driveway to catch
| vehicle break-ins.
|
| Finally, classifying something as "personal data" because
| it's about me still doesn't make it "my data".
|
| Health data in the US is strictly regulated, very
| personal, but is definitely not mine. I cannot remove
| things from it or prevent it from being shared between
| healthcare institutions.
| ericjmorey wrote:
| You seem not to know much of anything about the laws
| regarding personal information in the US or Europe.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _to you it seems like your data but to Walgreens they
| see it as theirs_
|
| the value of this data comes from what did I buy, what
| else do I buy, where am I, who I am, etc.
|
| to your point, Walgreens does not sell to their
| competitor CVS data about what they sell, when, and
| where.
|
| so if that really is their argument, it's refutable.
| sixothree wrote:
| It's amazing how little control we have over information
| that is the most personal essence of our lives.
|
| Why do we have zero insight, no control. Nothing.
|
| I hate it so much.
| coin wrote:
| Who is Level 3 data shared with, ie who is the aggregator? Is
| it the credit card bank then aggregates and sells it?
| baxtr wrote:
| So in essence the merchant pays with my data?
| bredren wrote:
| Yes, though people also welcome the extra cash back or
| other card benefits.
|
| Apple Card does not sell this data, IIRC. But offers a
| lower cash back than many other cards.
| Terretta wrote:
| True, while Google sees roughly 85% of all American
| cardholder swipes and doesn't _need_ to sell it since
| they 're making the ad market...
| fragmede wrote:
| > while Google sees roughly 85% of all American
| cardholder swipe
|
| I'm probably not reading this properly, can you say that
| a different way?
| yolovoe wrote:
| Google buys transaction data from credit card companies
| (Visa, Mastercard, etc). They almost certainly know what
| you spend money on
| cluckindan wrote:
| For every 20 Americans with a credit card, 17 have all
| their purchases sent to Google.
| andrepd wrote:
| How on earth is this legal
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Corporations are people, too.
| gruez wrote:
| Or phrased less inflammatory manner: "Corporations can
| enter into contracts and engage in legal action just like
| people can". Even the much maligned Citizens United v.
| FEC basically boils down to "groups of people
| (corporations or labor unions) don't lose first amendment
| protections just because they decided to group up".
| thatsbogus wrote:
| Except not everyone in a corporation has the right to
| speech. I'm prohibited by my employer to say anything on
| the company's behalf, but the C-suite and board are able
| to speak on my behalf. So, the company's leadership has a
| right to free speech, I don't.
| gruez wrote:
| >Except not everyone in a corporation has the right to
| speech. I'm prohibited by my employer to say anything on
| the company's behalf,
|
| Yeah, that's how organizations typically work? You might
| have "freedom of movement", but that doesn't mean you can
| work in your CEO's office. Organizations also limit who
| has access to its bank accounts, but that doesn't mean
| it's suddenly illegitimate for companies to engage in
| transactions.
| otterley wrote:
| 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.
| andrepd wrote:
| 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.
| otterley wrote:
| 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.
| sgammon wrote:
| This comment is quoting Mitt Romney
| idle_zealot wrote:
| Things that aren't explicitly made illegal are legal. Who
| would invest the resources necessary to get a law banning
| this passed?
| liontwist wrote:
| This is the real reason why they can afford to give you
| cash back.
| conductr wrote:
| In theory you're already paying the merchant fee in the
| "price". So merchant found a way to improve margins and
| credit card companies found a new revenue source
| inahga wrote:
| Thanks for the details.
|
| > choose to provide it for a reduction in the transaction
| fees they pay.
|
| That would explain why I can use my credit card for rent
| without a transaction fee! No free lunch!
| nicbou wrote:
| Things like that are on my mind when HN rants about GDPR.
| Something like this would be wildly illegal where I live.
| DoubleGlazing wrote:
| Unfortunately the GDPR is largely toothless if a company
| without an EU presence chooses to ignore it.
|
| I live in Ireland and my data is in the databases of several
| US data brokers. Thise conpanies can't be forced to to comply
| with the GDPR because they simply do not have an EU presence.
| You don't have to search far to find stories from people
| people who made complaints to their local Data Protection
| office about such issues only to be told there's nothing that
| can be done.
| nicbou wrote:
| A common discussion these days is the threat of a foreign
| app (TikTok) being used by a hostile government to track
| and influence Americans.
|
| From my non-American perspective, the same thing is
| happening here. I distrust non-EU software by default.
| kortilla wrote:
| 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.
| throw_away32 wrote:
| > failed to actually put in a framework to enforce that
| companies aren't just lying.
|
| That's not true. I work in an European company and we were
| contacted by the agency to give a complete list of partners
| that we use, reasons for why it is justified, which
| routines we have for deleting old data etc.
|
| I guess in theory we could have lied and made up data, but
| only an idiot would risk lying to the government. Everyone
| at my company took it seriusly and tried to provide as
| accurate data as possible. There were also several follow
| up questions that had to be answered.
|
| The mindset of lying to the government to "protect" your
| employer seems so far fetched. Why should an employee lie
| to the government? If it turns out that the company was in
| violation of GDPR the worst case scenario for the company
| is a fine. If the government finds out you are lying, the
| employee faces jail time. The trade-off is simply not worth
| it.
|
| Maybe it's easier to lie to the government in some
| countries, but not in my country. The government agencies
| actually checks and verifies your claims.
| kortilla wrote:
| The lie doesn't have to be intentional. All it takes is a
| really simple accidental debug logging flag to collect
| what amounts to a GDPR violation.
|
| The point is that no effort was made to implement a
| technical solution to protect privacy. So it's
| upsettingly trivial to violate the GDPR unknowingly and
| any company that is even a little unscrupulous (of which
| there are hundreds) can easily ignore the law.
| troupo wrote:
| > The point is that no effort was made to implement a
| technical solution to protect privacy.
|
| And you want the government to do that?
|
| Why haven't the companies who at every turn shout how
| privacy conscious they are haven't done that?
|
| It's now been 8 years of GDPR. Why hasn't the world's
| largest advertising company incidentally owning the
| world's most popular browser implemented a technical
| solution for tracking and cookie banners in the browser?
| Oh wait...
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| I agree but small stick to beat them is better than none.
|
| I guess best solution would be usage of some proxy which
| intercepts these calls or provide fake data to them. As op
| in the article did.
| triceratops wrote:
| I've been seeing cookie banners on European websites long
| before GDPR was a twinkle in some Brussels bureaucrat's
| eye.
| inahga wrote:
| FWIW in Illinois, where I've experienced this, there is a
| bill https://www.ilga.gov/ftp/legislation/102/billstatus/HTML
| /102... that appears to be GDPR-esque or CCPA-esque. Seems to
| have little interest though.
| jay-barronville wrote:
| I've had to deal with Bilt [0]. In case you're not aware, they
| have a _"feature"_ called _Instant Link_ that automatically
| pulls _ALL_ of your personal and sensitive financial data from
| financial institutions, including your credit card accounts,
| balances, _etc._ They apparently do this via a partnership with
| a company called Method Financial [1].
|
| It's frankly _the most intrusive_ thing I've ever encountered
| in any software I've ever used--I'm not sure how it's even
| legal, but this is America where we have no real privacy
| rights.
|
| Instead of giving you the option to opt in for them to get this
| level of access, they automatically enroll you into it when
| your account is created, pull your data, and then allow you to
| "opt out" afterward, which enables them to have access to your
| personal and sensitive financial data anyway. And since you
| literally _must_ have an account with them if your building
| uses their services for rent payments, they've effectively
| rigged the system to force millions of folks to unknowingly
| give them access to their personal and sensitive financial
| data.
|
| Anyway, in your Bilt privacy settings, there are some options
| you can disable (including _Instant Link_ ), and I recommend
| that you disable ALL of them, although given the dark practices
| of this company, I don't even trust that those settings are
| actually honored.
|
| Side note: Did you know about a company called Method Financial
| that somehow has real-time access to _ALL_ of your personal and
| sensitive financial data? Did you know that this company you
| never heard of that has said access then sells that access to
| the highest bidder? Do you remember agreeing to any of that
| anywhere? Yeah, me neither (on all counts)...
|
| [0]: https://www.biltrewards.com
|
| [1]: https://methodfi.com
| inahga wrote:
| Thanks for the heads up. Luckily I can go back to analog with
| certified funds to pay rent. I suspect, without evidence,
| this is due to the relatively strong tenant protections in
| Chicago.
| jrockway wrote:
| What's most interesting to me about that is that they are
| willing to disclose that data to your email provider. Amazon,
| for example, is pretty cagey about what you've bought when
| sending emails, probably because they don't want Google to be
| able to use that information to target ads to you. (Not because
| they are Good and care about your privacy, but because they
| think they're going to beat Google at advertising. How's that
| going?)
|
| So yeah, I don't get why they would do this. It gives their
| advertising competitors valuable data for free, and it pisses
| off customers by telling them that they're being tracked when
| they shop at Walgreens. Strange stuff.
| myself248 wrote:
| Oh, here I thought it was because every time I want to
| remember info about an order, it forces me back to their
| platform, rather than simply searching my email like I do for
| every other item I've ever purchased.
|
| (And no, I don't use gmail.)
| crazygringo wrote:
| I believe that's opt-in. At least it seemed to be when my
| landlord switched to Bilt.
|
| There's a section of your Bilt profile that shows your other
| credit cards and whether you want them linked. It's pretty
| freaky to see them listed in the first place.
|
| I definitely keep them off.
|
| Bilt is ultimately a big points/reward program though, so you
| might get points for having them connected.
|
| I still haven't figured out exactly what Bilt's business plan
| is, but the main part seems to be trying to get as much
| financial data on people as possible, and partnering with
| landlords to do so, and since it's how to pay your rent you
| can't unenroll completely. (Unless you maybe mail your landlord
| a paper check?)
| inahga wrote:
| It was opt-out for me. Or at least, I was never given
| informed consent that this data exchange going to take place.
|
| The landlord of course makes it _seem_ like you have no other
| modes of paying rent. The cashier's check option is buried in
| the fine print.
|
| Dark patterns all around IMO.
| DerSaidin wrote:
| It was initially opt in for me, then they made it mandatory.
|
| (Sure, I could pay by check but consumer banking
| technology/US in the US already feels like is is lagging a
| decade behind other countries without voluntarily going
| further back. Paying by check every month would be quite
| inconvenient.)
|
| I'd already decided to avoid bilt as much as possible, but
| reading this thread prompted me to try going a little
| further.
|
| Looking through their privacy policy it talks about what
| California residents can do under CCPA:
| https://legal.biltrewards.com/policies
|
| > Request to Know... The specific pieces of Personal
| Information we collected about you.
|
| > You have the right to opt-out from having your Personal
| Information and Sensitive Personal Information sold to third
| parties. You also have the right to opt-out from having your
| Personal Information and Sensitive Personal Information
| shared with third parties for purposes of cross-contextual
| advertising
|
| Might as well give this a go.
| Sparkyte wrote:
| Preparation H, they should practice some level of sensitivity
| with such information.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Loyalty cards are one avenue for data brokers to get your
| purchase history. Credit cards can also sell your purchase
| data. Currently the only safe-ish way to be anonymous is with
| cash. That may disappear with pervasive face recognition and
| cell phone tracking.
| robocat wrote:
| So paying by cash is the easiest way to generally avoid this?
|
| Clearly you can decide not to use Bilt, but maybe you get
| caught out some other way (bank, ...) - too difficult to track
| the trackers.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| That's what I do, but I assume some stores like Target also
| track you by Bluetooth, facial recognition, etc, and can
| correlate any past or future cash purchases if you use your
| credit card once for maybe a large innocuous purchase.
| random3 wrote:
| I'm assuming you're using your Bilt card when this happens.
| Your Bilt agreement stipulates how itemized transaction data
| (level 3 in payment terms, with level 2 being "enriched" with
| subtotals/tax and merchant information- which is what you
| typically see with your normal bank)
|
| Card networks (Mastercard, VISA) have different fee structures
| that incentivize more detailed information like level 3 for
| lower processing fees for merchants - here's more details on
| levels https://na-
| gateway.mastercard.com/api/documentation/integrat...
|
| https://support.biltrewards.com/hc/en-us/articles/5536526023...
|
| Perhaps more interesting in your case is that if you had your
| card issues in or before 2022, it's likely with Evolve bank
| which was breached - https://medium.com/@HackLaddy/when-your-
| bank-doxxes-you-9152...
| Y_Y wrote:
| If you find the condoms overly sensitive you can try one of the
| "long lasting" versions.
| dspillett wrote:
| Is that my personality or my looks? :-)
| accidbuddy wrote:
| The best part of every post in the ycombinator is the comments.
| Always learn a lot.
|
| I think another big problem is pharmacies. The amount of data
| shared with health insurance companies must be huge.
| TheBozzCL wrote:
| This literally just happened to me last week. I emailed them to
| ask them how to stop this: > I understand you
| want to opt out of all points and rewards and not be tracked.
| > > We're constantly working to make Bilt as rewarding
| as possible. Currently, we don't have an option to opt out of
| points or rewards. To prevent your transactions from being
| tracked, the most effective step is to unlink your card from
| your Bilt account. > > To unlink the card:
| > > Go to the Wallet tab > Scroll down to the Your
| Linked Cards section. > Look for the card you would
| like to unlink and tap View all benefits. > Click the
| ellipsis [:] on the top right, then tap Edit > Unlink.
|
| Gah, I _hate_ this service and will avoid renting on buildings
| that use it in the future.
| conductr wrote:
| What's most strange to me is why this Bilt company would pay
| for that data feed and somehow think it provides some value to
| you. It's obviously just creepy way of saying we know too much
| about you
| m463 wrote:
| 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.
| psanford wrote:
| Don't use mobile apps that could just be websites.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Extended to add don't use websites without blockers. If they
| are willing to track via app, why would we think they would not
| track via browser?
| nicbou wrote:
| The browser has less access to your system, and usually only
| if you give a specific website permission to use these
| features. Mobile operating systems are slowly changing that
| though.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Have you looked at the latest JS standards?
| amatecha wrote:
| (and if you haven't... check out the APIs available to
| the developers/owners of all the websites you browse:
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API )
| mirkodrummer wrote:
| what should imply checking available web apis? the
| comments is correct, browser can't access your location
| without explicit confirmation from the user, the same
| apply for other web apis, or at least mention a bunch of
| them which you know don't apply instead of linkin MDN
| amatecha wrote:
| The more APIs available for JS to interact with, the more
| granular and detailed browser fingerprinting can be. For
| example, how your browser renders WebGL can differ
| depending on what graphics card (and drivers) you have.
| The resulting values can be read back and stored to
| create a detailed fingerprint of who you are -- this
| could potentially be done by Google Fonts or AdSense or
| any number of the countless ad and analytics frameworks
| loaded on basically all websites.
|
| Good overview about how fingerprinting works:
| https://www.privacyaffairs.com/browser-fingerprinting/
|
| Browse the source in the following directory to see a
| plethora of examples of how web APIs are used to
| fingerprint users -- and this is just one publicly-
| accessible library we can easily review the source code
| of (proprietary, obfuscated ones likely use additional
| methods): https://github.com/fingerprintjs/fingerprintjs/
| tree/master/s...
|
| One example used in multiple places in the above repo is
| "matchMedia"[0] which was a Web API method added a while
| ago (well, many years ago) to give a programmatic result
| of whether a given CSS media query matches or not. This
| can be used to detect, for example, user preferences like
| whether the display is HDR-capable[1], or the
| Accessibility setting "reduce motion" is enabled[2].
|
| [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/API/Window/matc...
|
| [1] https://github.com/fingerprintjs/fingerprintjs/blob/m
| aster/s...
|
| [2] https://github.com/fingerprintjs/fingerprintjs/blob/m
| aster/s...
| mirkodrummer wrote:
| what is contained in the latest js standard that does let
| you collect fine grained information of your users
| without their consent? web apis that have to deal with
| sensitive data all requires explicit user confirmation to
| be used
| scarface_74 wrote:
| The more access to your system that a web page has, the
| better it can fingerprint you. All of those ApIs aren't
| going to be opt in
| daghamm wrote:
| At least on android the browser is limited by the android
| permission system, i.e. if you dont give browser GPS
| permissionit cannot give pages dito. In addition the browser
| will ask if you want to grant an app access to something like
| positioning data.
|
| Furthermore, it is hard for a web page to run in background
| and receive user data.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| How will that help? It's even easier to track across websites
| than apps and websites can also get your ip address to track
| you.
| gruez wrote:
| >If it was LTE, I bet the lat/lon would be much more precise.
|
| False. Apps don't have access to cellid information unless they
| also have location permissions, in which case they can just
| request your location directly.
|
| >the free apps you install and use collect your precise location
| with timestamp [...]
|
| This is alarmist and contradictory given that the author admits a
| few paragraphs up that the "location shared was not very
| precise". It might be possible for the app to request precise
| location via location services, but the app doesn't request such
| permissions (at least on android, you can't check for requested
| permissions on iOS without installing the app and running it), so
| such apps are most definitely limited to "not very precise"
| locations.
|
| >At the same time, there is so much data in the requests that I'd
| expect ad exchanges to find some loophole ID that would allow
| cross-app tracking without the need for IDFA.
|
| At least in theory they're not supposed to do that, but it'd be
| hard to enforce.
|
| "If a user resets the Advertising Identifier, then You agree not
| to combine, correlate, link or otherwise associate, either
| directly or indirectly, the prior Advertising Identifier and any
| derived information with the reset Advertising Identifier. "
|
| https://developer.apple.com/support/terms/apple-developer-pr...
| anon7000 wrote:
| Eh. Zip code level location + timestamp is still pretty
| invasive, even if, pedantically, that's not very precise.
|
| We should compare if there a differences in the data sent in
| countries with better data privacy laws.
| eli wrote:
| "Precise" has a specific meaning for iOS Location Services
| and this ain't it. Presumably it's just doing IP geolocation
| which _could_ be the same post code, or it could be the wrong
| city entirely. I 'd expect it to be much worse on LTE than
| WiFi.
| gruez wrote:
| >Eh. Zip code level location + timestamp is still pretty
| invasive, even if, pedantically, that's not very precise.
|
| That's basically sent to multiple parties (ISPs, transit
| providers, CDNs, analytics/advertising/diagnostics/security
| vendors) everytime you visit a website. If this counts as
| "invasive" to you, you shouldn't be connected to the internet
| at all, much less buying a tracking device (a smartphone) and
| installing random ad-supported apps on it.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Cell carriers will gladly sell that information to apps. You
| can make calls to them over the cellular network (even if Wi-Fi
| is active!) and they will hand it back to you. No location
| services is required to do this.
| jmward01 wrote:
| 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 credentials on
| account creation, then I wonder how much that combination could
| figure out. Since it could act as a man in the middle it
| potentially could annotate credential source and see the ads and
| potentially track them to source. "This male enhancement pill ad
| is linked to your tire purchase." There is a lot of hand waving
| here, but I wonder if something like this could be built. The
| first step to stopping things like this is showing people who did
| it to them.
| gruez wrote:
| Wouldn't this require access to bid side data? The OP mentions
| it's pretty easy to get, but any company using this to expose
| advertisers is going to get their access cut off pretty fast.
| As the saying goes, "snitches get stitches".
| jmward01 wrote:
| My thought here is that there is likely a lot of leaked data
| on ads themselves, that is one of the reasons why you would
| need the VPN/proxy. Additionally you could (potentially)
| create fake browser fingerprint credentials on the fly to
| feed sites and have the VPN/proxy track the ads that show up
| for those credentials. (other credentials like email and the
| like could also be created by the app for you) You don't see
| the bid data, but you may be able to control the tracking
| that spurs it and you can see the results of it so a setup
| like this could likely make some inferences.
|
| I don't know this industry well and the tech here has long
| sense eclipsed me so I really don't know what is possible but
| I imagine there are possibilities with this setup.
| aorloff wrote:
| There's no question about who the players involved are.
|
| https://developers.google.com/authorized-buyers/rtb/openrtb-...
| oldherl wrote:
| You can't. Because the creation is done in some proprietary
| software either bundled in the App or (worse) in the server
| somewhere.
| jiri wrote:
| What does happen if I turn off location/gps? I guess that
| location has to be quite imprecise.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Stores have WiFi hotspots with very short range to track you
| that way while you're in the isle.
| daneel_w wrote:
| Only if you don't turn WiFi off. To my understanding even the
| "soft off" option present in iOS stops the phone from
| beaconing, and just listens in order to collect data for
| building augmented location services. I don't know what the
| Androids do. These days both of them also offer randomized
| MAC address to curtail such tracking.
| spencerflem wrote:
| right, they were saying it's enough just to turn off
| location though.
|
| tho tbh if i really cared, no phone/battery out/faraday
| cage is still the gold standard
| elmomle wrote:
| With GPS off, location can triangulated from cell tower usage
| to within 3/4 of a square mile (smaller uncertainty in urban
| areas where cell towers are closer together). I'd heard before
| that some data brokers do this, but in this article the writer
| mentions reverse DNS lookup on IP addresses, which they mention
| is less precise (ZIP-code level).
| spencerflem wrote:
| 5G is far more precise as well
| adrr wrote:
| It's not that accurate. E911 location was a few miles off.
| password4321 wrote:
| Is WiFi access point geolocation by SSID or MAC address? Do
| mobile OS's require additional permissions for apps to get either
| of these data points?
| gruez wrote:
| >Do mobile OS's require additional permissions for apps to get
| either of these data points?
|
| Yes on both iOS and Android as far as I can remember.
| Aachen wrote:
| Android for sure, since version 8 I'm certain but probably
| even 5 or 4.x (so 10+ years ago)
|
| Always annoys me when I want to use a WiFi scanner to
| determine the range of an access point in different locations
| for example and it needs me to turn on location access first
| before it can get WiFi data. The open source app doesn't have
| an Internet connection so there's no way for it to send back
| data to the mothership even if it had an SSID database baked
| into the apk. For me, and traditionally, the location switch
| is to turn on or off energy-hungry GPS hardware, not gatekeep
| when I trust apps to collect my location. I can set those to
| "only while in use", deny their Internet access, or just not
| install them if I don't trust them with the location
| permission
| radicality wrote:
| iOS definitely requires Precise location permission allowed for
| the app to see your WiFi name / ssid and other WiFi around you
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| But all it takes is one app with that permission to tie you
| to all the others. And there are always apps that need your
| location at some point to provide useful data. At this point
| I'm not sure there's any single app I trust.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _apps that need your location_
|
| And, triangulating client's public IP address will also
| give away location with decent precision:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37507355
|
| btw, we need a securephones.io [0] part 2 focusing on apps.
|
| [0] cert has expired
| scarface_74 wrote:
| On iOS at least you can set the MAC address to be different per
| access point or to rotate on the same access point or to use
| your normal MAC
| theptip wrote:
| > 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.
| gruez wrote:
| Everything listed changes way too often to be useful for
| tracking. My guess is that it's for anti-fraud purposes.
| Someone setting up fake devices and/or device farms is likely
| to get similar values, which means they can be detected via ML
| or whatever.
| Groxx wrote:
| > screen brightness, memory amount, current volume and if I'm
| wearing headphones
|
| None of those are likely to change when you navigate from one
| website to another, _with tracking /ads disabled_, which is
| what they want to be able to track. Otherwise they'd just use
| their cookies.
|
| One device visits a site where you sell ads. A minute later,
| an unknown device with identical battery, volume, headphone,
| brightness, model number, browser version, _and boot time to
| the second_ arrives on another site you run ads on. There 's
| a _pretty_ good chance they 're related, because the odds of
| _all_ those being the same _plus those two sites and recent
| timings involved_ is rather low:
| https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
|
| Plus it doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be good
| enough in bulk to sell.
| jmward01 wrote:
| It would be amazing if you could build and send fake profiles
| of this information to create fake browser fingerprints and
| help track the trackers. Similarly, creating a lot of random
| noise here may help hide the true signal, or at least make
| their job a lot harder.
| nickburns wrote:
| Unfortunately fingerprinting prevention/resistance tactics
| become a readily identifiable signal unto themselves. I.e.,
| the 'random noise' becomes fingerprintable if not widely
| utilized.
|
| _Everyone_ would need to be generating the same 'random
| noise' for any such tactics to be truly effective.
| jmward01 wrote:
| A sufficient number of people would need to, not everyone.
| And if I were the only one then tracking companies wouldn't
| adjust for just me. Basically, if this were to catch on
| then ad trackers wouldn't adjust until there was enough
| traffic for it to work. Also, that doesn't negate the
| ability to use this to create fake credentials that aids in
| tracking ads back to their source.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| They don't need to adjust.
|
| Here's a real-life example: You show up alone at the
| airport with a full-face mask and gray coveralls. You are
| perfectly hidden. But you are the only such hidden
| person, and there is still old cam footage of you in the
| airport parking lot, putting on the clothes. The
| surveillance team can let you act anonymous all you want.
| They still know who you are, because your disguise IS the
| unique fingerprint.
|
| Now the scenario you're shooting for here is:
|
| 10 people are now walking around the airport in full-face
| masks and gray coveralls. You think, "well now they DO
| NOT know if it's ME, or some terrorist, or some random
| other guy from HN!"
|
| But really, they still have this super-specific
| fingerprint (there are still less than 1 person in a
| million with this disguise) and all they need is ONE
| identifying characteristic (you're taller than the other
| masked people, maybe) to know who's who.
|
| They didn't need to adjust their system one bit.
| jmward01 wrote:
| Swapping fingerprint details is different than your
| example since it happens immediately and out of view. You
| could change fingerprints very often/create a new set for
| every browser tab. Additionally, as I pointed out before,
| they won't adjust until there is enough usage and when
| there is enough usage then the random settings are hard
| to distinguish because it isn't 1 in 1m. I get that they
| will keep trying to track down things that make browsing
| specific, but that is what updates are for. We need to at
| least make it hard.
| theptip wrote:
| I think this is a slightly different case no? If the ad
| network is using a very high precision variable to soft-
| link anonymized accounts, then randomizing the values
| between apps should break that.
|
| Your analogy applies more to things like trying to
| anonymize your traffic with Tor, where using such an
| anonymizer flags your IP as doing something weird vs
| other users. I'm not convinced simply fuzzing the values
| would be detectable, assuming you pick values that other
| real users could pick.
| amanda99 wrote:
| I'm sure the ad networks do a lot more than use high
| precision variables for soft-linking.
|
| These are professional networks with a ton of capital
| thrown behind them. They have pretty decent algorithms,
| heuristics, etc; and you don't make money (compared to
| the other data correlation teams) if you do simple dumb
| stuff. I'm certain they take into account those trying to
| be privacy-conscious, if only to increase their match
| rates to be competitive.
| araes wrote:
| It's kind of how people used to make fun of the CIA types
| and "undercover" operatives.
|
| Look for the guy wearing a conspicuously plain leather
| jacket and baseball cap. "Why hello there average looking
| stranger I've never met. Psss, 'tis a fair day, but it'll
| be lovelier this evening.'" "Oh ... it's Murphy the spy
| you want."
|
| Also, found out the CIA declassified a bunch of jokes
| several years back in searching to respond. [1] Most are
| already dead links on CIA.gov, yet there's a few
| remaining. Nother one on people commenting on the CIA.
| [2] "These types are swin- Ask in Langley if they work
| for the CIA. Every- Ask in Langley. They will tells one
| knows them." 'You, it's the big building behind.'
|
| [1] https://nationalpost.com/news/the-cia-has-
| declassified-a-bun...
|
| [2] https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-
| rdp75-00149r000...
| AndrewOMartin wrote:
| The garbage in the last sentence of this comment is due
| to the second link including incorrectly OCR'd text from
| an image of a newspaper using a two column layout. Both
| links are very amusing.
| gitgud wrote:
| That's why it should be the browsers & OS's that enforce
| such privacy measures... it shouldn't be an option that my
| Grandma needs to enable...
| jmward01 wrote:
| Unfortunately the fox is building the hen-house. They
| 'should' build products that improve my experience but
| they have very little incentive to do that when they get
| paid so much for the data they can extract. What would
| actually do it is regulations similar to financial
| regulations. OS/browser companies shouldn't be allowed to
| do business with data brokers. Then they would have one
| primary customer, the consumer, and competition would
| focus on the correct outcome. But 'regulation' is an evil
| word so we aren't likely to see anything like that
| actually happen.
| Xen9 wrote:
| It's also useful for making ads more effective & manipulation
| overall. As long as you can connect the data you track & buy,
| you can use Thompson sampling. In fact, why would we think
| knowing the name of a person is anything but bad business?
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| > adding entropy to de-anonymize users
|
| _removing_ entropy, by adding more information bits
| ohisaysir wrote:
| Technically, information are the bits you DON'T know. Once
| you know the bits, it isn't "information" in the Shannon
| sense, in that it takes no energy to reset a message if you
| know all the bits, but takes N-units of energy for N unknown
| bits of information. (See; Feynman's lectures on computation)
| sizzle wrote:
| Straight up fingerprinting us without consent it's pure
| insanity.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| They've basically turned every phone into a tracking beacon
| blueflow wrote:
| I'm sure there is a choir of "told you so"-singers
| somewhere.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| Combine this with IP, timestamp, and some behavioral patterns,
| and you've got an extremely robust tracking mechanism that
| operates outside of explicit consent mechanisms.
| claw-el wrote:
| I believe some apps actually have to automatically brighten up
| your screen when displaying a QR code for scanning, and then
| reduce back the brightness of its previous setting when moving
| out of the QR code. I believe the Whole Foods app does this for
| its first screen.
| emaro wrote:
| Surely that could be done without sending the brightness to
| some 3rd party.
| xkzx wrote:
| Screen brightness can identify weather you are outside or
| inside.
| fumblebee wrote:
| 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.
| ksec wrote:
| May be Steve Jobs was right all along. We dont need Smartphone
| with App Store. Either 1st Party Apps and Everything else should
| be on Browser or Apps that uses Browser Engine.
| voytec wrote:
| What? [0]
|
| [0] Steve Jobs introduces App Store -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU3X6Fu5JiE
| collinvandyck76 wrote:
| Probably referring to Jobs' initial stance that HTML5 is more
| than sufficient for "apps". Of course, he acquiesced and
| eventually added the App Store.
| nabaraz wrote:
| Steve jobs embraced web apps as much as he could.[0]. But
| people weren't willing to give up desktop apps.
|
| [0]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20070809174426/http://www.apple....
| RedComet wrote:
| Websites tend to have more ads and tracking than native apps,
| and they're still getting your ip address.
| amelius wrote:
| > 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?
| noonething wrote:
| yes and China/make money.
| eli wrote:
| Blaming China is easy and has bipartisan appeal while actual
| data privacy regulations are hard and do not.
| Argonaut998 wrote:
| Are the police evil state actors? They purchase location data
| from private companies to target protesters[1]
|
| [1]https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/08/how-law-enforcement-
| ar...
| pas wrote:
| Congress is pretty ok with whatever Trump says, we have always
| been at war/peace with TikTokia.
| coldpie wrote:
| Zuck's lobbyists pay better than China's.
| noman-land wrote:
| This is honestly a masterpiece.
| TZubiri wrote:
| That you can get an approximate address based on an IP address is
| not very new, and is in fact a feature baked into the very IP
| protocol.
| motohagiography wrote:
| great writeup. keep forensic faraday bags around.
| sureglymop wrote:
| A while ago a co worker told me "why would you care about your
| privacy? all my data is already out there anyway and what can
| even be done with it anyway".
|
| What would be the ideal response to such an absurd comment? At
| the time I found it hard to answer because she surprised me with
| that opinion.
|
| Edit to note: the explanation should be compatible with a
| professional context. I don't want to scare my co workers or
| appear crazy/paranoid.
| noman-land wrote:
| Seriously, anyone who ever says they have nothing to hide, show
| them this story.
|
| "A Redding Police Department officer in 2021 was charged with
| six misdemeanors after being accused of accessing CLETS to set
| up a traffic stop for his fiancee's ex-husband, resulting in
| the man's car being towed and impounded, the local outlet A
| News Cafe reported. Court records show the officer was fired,
| but he was ultimately acquitted by a jury in the criminal case.
| He now works for a different police department 30 miles away."
|
| California Law Enforcement Misused State Databases More Than
| 7,000 Times in 2023
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/california-police-misu...
| gvkoo wrote:
| There are a few examples I use when I hear such ignorant
| statements: 1. Not caring about privacy cuz you've got nothing
| to hide is like saying you don't care about freedom of speech
| cuz you've got nothing to say. 2. If you don't care about
| privacy, why don't you poop with an open door, for everyone to
| observe?
| fragmede wrote:
| Because I don't want to rest of the house to smell?
|
| A different argument that appeals to some is that you might
| not have something to hide, but what about the people who
| _do_? For the greater good of society, whistleblowers are
| needed to expose malfeasance by the corrupt and it 's going
| to make it much harder for any of them to come forwards if
| their reward is _literally_ exile to Russia. If you 're in
| support of a slow slide into dystopia, go ahead and argue
| against all privacy. Whether a given situation rises to that
| level is an different but adjacent topic, but appealing to
| something some people can believe in, such as not letting the
| rich and powerful get away with being utterly corrupt in
| their dealings is a way to find common ground, with some. not
| everyone cares about that though, but it's an additional
| argument for privacy.
| sureglymop wrote:
| The problem is, I could not formulate anything in this way in
| a professional setting. I want my co workers to understand
| because I feel a bit uneasy working with people who do not
| but I also don't want to scare them.
| JW_00000 wrote:
| See https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1drrjtu/i_dont_have
| _....
|
| My examples:
|
| - You get an HIV diagnosis (or other terrible disease). Do you
| want everyone you meet to know?
|
| - You feel depressed or burnt out. Should your employer know?
|
| - You're financially in a bad place. Do you want your kids to
| know? Do you want your kids' friends to know?
|
| - Do you share your salary with everyone?
|
| - If someone's gay, should this be public information?
|
| - Should your religion be public? Your political points of
| view?
| phba wrote:
| Losing privacy makes you more vulnerable to economic
| exploitation (price discrimination, salary negotiation,
| insurance premiums, etc). Therefore protecting your privacy is
| a form of economic self-defense.
| asdf6969 wrote:
| Just ask for their email password and see what they say.
| Usually though this comment is just them trying to change the
| subject because very few people know or care about any of this
| volume wrote:
| neat details shared, might check out later.
|
| Does this apply to Brave browser?
| sunnybeetroot wrote:
| Whilst I trust that the author did in fact look at the data of
| each request eventually, the screenshot they provided of Charles
| could not have been of the exact requests they intercepted given
| Charles is indicating that those are not yet SSL proxied (except
| for the 2 GET requests).
|
| EDIT: please ignore, author did it differently to what I
| expected.
| timsh wrote:
| I decrypted them all by installing Charles SSL cert on the
| iphone. This is why the requests seem not SSL proxied.
| sunnybeetroot wrote:
| My apologies, thank you for clarifying and thank you for the
| brilliant article. Have updated my comment.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| This technique doesn't work anymore on android because you
| can no longer add certificates to the system store and apps
| are free to choose to accept the user store CAs or not. That
| was changed in Android 7. For "security" they say. Security
| of Googles business model I'm sure.
| everdrive wrote:
| I'm really happy to see this level of detail and research. So
| many privacy-related articles either wholly lack in technical
| skill, or hysterically cannot differentiate between different
| levels of privacy concerns and risks.
|
| People commonly point to Mozilla's research regarding vehicle's
| privacy policies.
| (https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-on-...)
| But that research only states what the car company's lawyers felt
| they must include in their privacy policies. These policies imply
| (and I'm sure, correctly imply) that your conversations will be
| recorded when you're in the vehicle. But, they never drill down
| into the real technical details. For instance ..... are car
| companies recording you the whole time and streaming ALL of your
| audio from ALL of your driving? Are they just recording you at a
| random samples? Are they ONLY recording you when you're issuing
| voice commands, and the lawyers are simply hedging their bets
| regarding what sort of data _might_ come through accidentally
| during those instances? Once they record you, where is the data
| stored, and for how long? Is it sent to 3rd parties, etc? Which
| of these systems can be disabled, and via what means? Does
| disabling these systems disable any other functionality of the
| vehicle, or void its warranty? Lastly, does your insurance shoot
| up if you have a car without one of these systems? etc ...
|
| The list of questions could go almost indefinitely, and
| presumably, would vary strongly across manufacturers. So much of
| the privacy news out there is nothing but scary and often not
| very substantiated worst case scenarios. Without the details and
| means to improve privacy, all these stories can do is spread
| cynicism. I'm really glad to see this level of discourse for the
| author.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I'll answer the, "Does disabling it void your warranty?"
| question. The answer is almost always "no". Unless the
| modification you make to something actually directly or
| indirectly caused damage to it, companies in the US cannot
| "void the warranty".
| lesuorac wrote:
| I'm sure the company will argue the warranty is voided akin
| to how trucks have "not liable for damage from rocks" or w/e
| (they are).
|
| IIRC, this is under the Magnuson-Moss act but I didn't find
| it when skimming wikipedia.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty.
| ..
| shakna wrote:
| This is usually side-stepped by being a violation of Terms of
| Service, which is a much lower legal hurdle.
|
| The warranty is intact, but the device is bricked, because it
| can't bypass any of the authentication that is required to
| do... Pretty much everything.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Those aren't questions that have fixed answers. The data
| available is pretty far beyond what _I 'm_ personally
| comfortable with though.
|
| One OEM I'm familiar with had such a policy. My org determined
| that we needed a statistical reference to compare against
| within a certain area. Some calls were made to the right people
| and shortly after we had a (mildly) anonymized map of high
| precision tracks for every vehicle of that brand within the
| area over some period.
| everdrive wrote:
| That's pretty interesting. What was the purpose of the
| statistical sample? What did your company want to know
| precisely?
| jon9544hn wrote:
| I'm assuming insurance or commercial trucking? Or both?
| AdieuToLogic wrote:
| > Lastly, does your insurance shoot up if you have a car
| without one of these systems?
|
| This question I can answer with a reasonable degree of
| certainty; no, it does not.
|
| Insurance companies increase rates for automobile coverage for
| many reasons, real or illusionary. But "does your insurance
| shoot up" strictly for not having a recording device in a
| vehicle is not one of them.
|
| 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.
| sfink wrote:
| > 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
| water, $3 extra to add lemon.
| AdieuToLogic wrote:
| >> 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 lemon.
|
| I believe a better analogy is: The drink
| costs $5. If you don't want lemon in it, we'll knock
| off $3. Those are your options.
| sfink wrote:
| 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.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| Defaults matter.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > A discount for allowing surveillance is identical to an
| extra charge for disallowing it.
|
| I don't think this is necessarily true. You're right that
| there's an unknown base rate, but that means you can't say
| what you're saying as well. And if you have other companies
| that offer non-driving-pattern policies as well, and
| they're a similar price, you can see it's a discount not an
| added cost.
|
| In fact, regardless, other companies are your best bet in
| combatting rising prices for any reason.
| sfink wrote:
| Yes. That is what "...unless the base rate is set
| externally somehow" means.
|
| It _is_ different initially, when only one company is
| offering the "discount" and they have not yet adjusted
| their base price upward. In fact, the people who want the
| discount will presumably flock to their service, which
| may even mean they won't raise the base price all the way
| up if it makes their costs lower. But if that works, the
| other companies will follow suit.
|
| In short: there's a period of time when there's a
| difference, and you have a real choice. If the difference
| is real, it will get locked in to the entire industry.
| It's a positive economic profit, and those go away.
|
| cf https://robert.ocallahan.org/2014/08/choose-firefox-
| now-or-l...
| lilsoso wrote:
| Would be interesting to know how much data leaks on a new iPhone
| with some of the iOS privacy settings enabled and a handful of
| popular apps installed (WhatsApp, Instagram, Google Maps, Uber,
| etc).
|
| And then if you use a commercial VPN with DNS ad-blocking
| enabled, how much more does this help?
| ignoramous wrote:
| Going by TFA, _not much_.
| diimdeep wrote:
| All these companies operate from within USA jurisdiction, that
| should send the world clear message.
|
| Snowden in one of interviews talks about exactly this kind of
| tracking with Amazon example (ts 01:18:00)
| https://x.com/JohnStossel/status/1885382675810181612
|
| Basically, all these companies, ad networks, data brokers, big
| tech with absence of basic privacy laws (not to be confused with
| 4th amendment that binds Fed and State gov only, but does not
| restraint companies) act with wilful conspiracy with US
| government regulators, washing each other hand like a monopoly.
| This data gets enriched and collided and is perpetually on a
| permanent record.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_Record_(autobiograph...
|
| So next time you talk about totalitarian regimes around the world
| look in the window.
| ktimespi wrote:
| Minor nitpick, but aren't ads sold to the highest bidder?
| AyyEye wrote:
| > There's no "personal information" here, but honestly this
| amount of data shared with an arbitrary list of 3rd parties is
| scary. Why do they need to know my screen brightness, memory
| amount, current volume and if I'm wearing headphones?
|
| Screen brightness, boot time, memory, and network operator could
| probably fingerprint any device all by itself.
| maximilianthe1 wrote:
| A lot of people have "autobrightness" on. I'd think brightness
| doesn't help much here
| landr0id wrote:
| Kind of a joke, but it could be useful for determining if
| they should serve light-mode or dark-mode ads. But I suppose
| they could just detect if dark/light mode are enabled.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Why would you serve dark-mode ads? Clearly you would pick
| the brightest option all the time.
| sky2224 wrote:
| Automatic brightness probably helps honestly. It could help
| confirm whether someone is in fact in an area that has high
| levels of lighting around them (e.g., in a store, at a beach
| on a sunny day, etc.)
|
| Everything little piece of data that is gathered and used can
| help even if it isn't immediately apparent.
|
| Now I could be wrong on this, but I feel like advertisers
| don't need to _know_ something is true about a user, they
| just need to be _confident_ something is true about a user
| and that 's where data points like screen brightness can be
| of help to them.
| afarah1 wrote:
| NetGuard with DROP OUTBOUND policy once again proves helpful. The
| only app that shows ads that I have on my phone is a PDF scanner,
| and I don't allow it internet access.
| switch007 wrote:
| GrapheneOS also allows you to toggle the Network permission of
| any app
| timsh wrote:
| wow @apokryptein thanks for posting my article here... I'm
| shocked it's #1 rn. if anyone has any questions regarding the
| post - I'm here to answer & talk!
| pas wrote:
| how the MAID/IDfV gets into the PII-ID databases?
|
| It seems that part is completely missing. (Or I missed it.)
|
| So for example can/do airlines sell it? Or telecom/utility
| companies, when you use their app?
| timsh wrote:
| I don't know the answer to this, which is why I didn't
| mention it in the post. However, I could speculate that these
| data-broker companies scrape leaked [hacked and stolen] data
| from various panels and then match records on their end.
| kinda OSINT for bad reasons.
| forgingahead wrote:
| Great article, thanks for taking the time to research and write
| it all up! Definitely learned some new things from it.
| Dhruv_Gheewala wrote:
| Wow, such a beautiful article you have written. Usually, I'm
| not into reading much but after very long I've completed a full
| article with such interest. Thanks for it !!
| amarcheschi wrote:
| Another "funny" thing regarding Microsoft xandr
|
| I sent them my uid2 and they still say they can't link to an
| identity and don't have a match in their database
| lysace wrote:
| I wonder: to which extent are purchased/brokered app real-time
| location data feeds used by various intelligence services to
| target missile strikes in war zones? In e.g. Ukraine/Russia.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| The leaked tools that NSA used, like XKEYSCORE, used publicly
| available data collection methods, including purchasing
| advertiser lists, to cross correlate all the data and form a
| profile. So anybody could do this stuff.
| supertrope wrote:
| https://taskandpurpose.com/news/russia-ukraine-cell-phones-t...
|
| Not riding off ad geolocation but hijacking a UA app:
| https://www.crowdstrike.com/wp-content/brochures/FancyBearTr...
| beders wrote:
| I'm surprised people think they have any kind of privacy -
| especially when using free services. They are not free. You pay
| with whatever data can be extracted from your devices and
| behavior.
|
| Also, there's a looong list of companies who know the location of
| your mobile device, starting from the cell phone tower operator
| to Apple/Google and many in between.
| pas wrote:
| The article does not explain how PII gets into the databases,
| and the critical link the IDfV... how do databases connect it
| to people's name/address?
|
| It gets leaked if the app I use gets my name/address, like
| Uber, right?
| AlgebraFox wrote:
| True. But even paid apps have access to these data and can
| collect it without our knowledge. A genius called Stallman
| proposed solution decades ago. Free software aka. open source
| software. But outside of tech community, open source is not a
| known term. Maybe we should market it wherever possible, if we
| want true privacy and freedom.
| xyst wrote:
| Apple's "privacy protections" are nothing more than marketing.
|
| "Ask app not to track" is a wash and privacy theater at best. One
| of the reasons I still run ad blocking on _all_ websites and at
| the network layer. Sorry "content creators" but you need to get
| your revenue from elsewhere (ie, sponsored content).
|
| Now I want a phone that scrambles all of this data on a per app
| (or phone) basis.
|
| Malicious app wants this data? Sure you can have it. But you will
| get randomized values for every bit of information -- resolution,
| lat/lon, brightness, battery level (user can set range of
| 90-100%), ....
| anurag wrote:
| I'm a very happy paying customer of NextDNS (https://nextdns.io)
| which blocks known adware and tracking hosts across all mobile
| and desktop platforms.
| nickburns wrote:
| Which does absolutely nothing if your device or the app in
| question is permitted or otherwise not prevented from making
| DNS-over-HTTPS (or, less commonly because of its discrete port,
| DNS-over-TLS) queries.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Don't all the ad-blocking DNS providers also support DNS-
| over-HTTPS now as well? I use it with AdGuard Home, and I saw
| PiHole supports it as well.
| nickburns wrote:
| I'm referring to devices and apps that are 'hard-coded' to
| query specific DoH servers/providers, therefore bypassing
| and regardless of any user-configured DNS server/s. And
| because DoH operates on outbound TCP/443, the lookups are
| indistinguishable from any other 'web' traffic.
|
| Even some of the most popular desktop web browsers are
| configured to utilize DoH by default nowadays.
|
| The most that a network administrator can do to prevent
| this is configure firewall IP blocklists of known DoH
| servers and NAT all outbound 53 (and 853) traffic to a
| desired resolver (like a local Pi-hole instance, for
| example).
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _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.
| nickburns wrote:
| A firewall (which must also host a resolver)
|
| Is that true? Per what spec are you referring to?
| Zak wrote:
| 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.
| sriacha wrote:
| what app?
| ignoramous wrote:
| https://github.com/celzero/rethink-app
| Argonaut998 wrote:
| Facebook hard-code IP addresses when their domains are blocked.
| I found this out while using NextDNS alongside that logging
| functionality that iPhones have. It's insane the lengths that
| they go to.
| ssklash wrote:
| It's not insane at all. It is the entirety of their business
| model, so it makes sense that they will do everything
| possible to keep that sweet surveillance cash flowing.
| ornornor wrote:
| One more reason I don't use Facebook and will never install
| their app on my phone.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _Facebook hard-code IP addresses when their domains are
| blocked_
|
| Sounds like an anti-censorship or a generic connectivity
| robustness feature [0]? WhatsApp and Instagram do this, too.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41959945
| mdasen wrote:
| This is a wonderful write up. The part that isn't clear to me is
| how they're getting the geolocation data if location services are
| turned off. Are they just going off geo-ip lookups? If you grant
| access to Bluetooth or finding devices on your local network,
| they can get more information to track your location. Absent
| that, how would they get better than geo-ip?
| secondcoming wrote:
| https://www.maxmind.com/en/home
| petee wrote:
| They say the leaked list is 2000 apps, but the linked spreadsheet
| has over 12000...
|
| And are these getting pulled from the store due to privacy
| violations? I'd assume Google would be aware at this point?
| araes wrote:
| Parts I found relevant: - It was a clean state of
| a somewhat old phone (iPhone 11, factory defaults + new apple id)
| - A single (old) app was installed (Stack by KetchApp, 10-12
| years old) - Was sending out an update a second pretty much
| instantly (5 kB - ~300 KB every second) - Within a minute:
| IP, Lat / Lon, country, phone model, carrier / network operator,
| vendor, OS version, connection type (wifi), headphone status (?),
| volume setting (?), screen brightness setting (?), battery status
| (?), CPU count, system RAM, free RAM allocation, free hard drive
| capacity, system boot time (?)
|
| Might as well just screen grab the Task Manager equivalent and
| hand it to them. Have better, quicker data about my own current
| RAM allocation and free hard space than I do. It hands them when
| the system booted for an ad? 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.
|
| Edit: It's almost Remote Desktop, on an iPhone. Realtime (~1 Hz)
| RAM / ROM allocation. Not sure how many Apple user even know how
| to check their realtime RAM / ROM allocation. The free hard drive
| space especially is just asking for botnet downloads.
|
| Edit: Right, and ... disabling tracking doesn't mean anything
| because numerous updates blatantly ignore the setting ("uc": "1",
| // User consent for tracking = True;) and it's just a flag while
| they still send your vendor specific customer identifier anyways.
|
| Really interesting article, and great investigation, just
| disturbing how much on an effectively clean phone.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > 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.
| araes wrote:
| 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. Pretty sure the last ad that was even clicked on
| was one of those little windmills that swirls crazily, cause
| it seemed like it might make a cool lawn ornament. Turned out
| it was tiny. Years of online purchases, and they don't even
| suggest stuff I want.
|
| It just seems like an excuse.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| 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.
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| I dislike that as a developer, knowing something like the
| headphone status could be useful for the functionality of the
| app. But some other unscrupulous person is just exfiltrating
| it! This is part of the reason I agree with Apple's stand
| against apps with sub-apps/"desktop like" due to not fine-
| grained enough permission settings. There is a significant
| privacy downside to "superapps" and now Elon is pushing for the
| X everything app.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah and if you ask for permission for every little thing
| then users are going to get bombarded even when it's needed
| for legit purposes. It's a difficult tradeoff to make, even
| if you want to do the right thing (and I'm not really sure
| that Apple and especially Google really do)
| qingcharles wrote:
| 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 marketplace, find an exec
| and buy their details for pennies and call them up on their
| cellphone. (this is usually successful, but can backfire badly --
| CashApp terminated my account for this shenanigans)
| hughesjj wrote:
| > CashApp terminated my account for this shenanigans
|
| Did you call to complain about the termination?
| qingcharles wrote:
| What's funny is that the exec I got on the phone was super
| supportive and helpful and was genuinely amused to hear from
| me and hear what was happening. He put me in touch with their
| "Executive Support Team" and it was after this that I guess
| someone realized they didn't like the route I had taken.
|
| I feel somewhat vindicated after this announcement (though it
| does nothing to bring my account back):
|
| https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/cfpb-fines-
| block-175m...
|
| > Accessing any kind of customer service for Cash App was a
| challenge, too, according to the CFPB. Block included a
| customer service number on Cash App cards and in the app's
| Terms of Service, but calling it would it ultimately lead
| users to "a pre-recorded message directing consumers to
| contact customer support through the app."
| nehal3m wrote:
| Assuming these marketplaces operate within the bounds of the
| law, would it break HN's ToS to post them? I'd be interested in
| pursuing the same strategy.
| gruez wrote:
| Most online forums ban "doxing" even if it's theoretically
| legal.
| nehal3m wrote:
| Technically it's one step removed from doxxing, but I'll
| take your point.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| More than one step unless you planned to post it
| publically. "I need a phone number, where can I get it"
| is all good!
| gruez wrote:
| >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.
|
| Fortunately this is changing with iOS 18 with "limited
| contacts" sharing.
|
| https://mobiledevmemo.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/image.p...
|
| The interface also seems specifically designed to push people
| to allow only a subset of contacts, rather than blindly
| clicking "allow all".
|
| The far bigger issue is the contact info you share with online
| retailers. Scraping contact info through apps is very visible,
| drawing flak from the media and consumers. Most of the time all
| you get is a name (could be a nickname), and maybe some
| combination of phone/email/address, depending on how diligent
| the person in filling out all the fields. On the other hand
| placing any sort of order online requires you to provide your
| full name, address, phone number, and email address. You can
| also be reasonably certain that they're all accurate, because
| they're plausibly required for delivery/billing purposes. Such
| data can also be surreptitiously fed to data brokers behind the
| scenes, without an obvious "tiktok would like access to your
| contacts" modal.
| create-username wrote:
| People will share their whole list because it's simpler
| taneq wrote:
| 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.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| 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.
| noja wrote:
| 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.
| 55555 wrote:
| This sounds absolutely insane.
| dkga wrote:
| This is a big thing, is there any evidence? Not
| implausible unfortunately...
| saagarjha wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn#Use_of_e-
| mail_account...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Wasn't this also how some services would connect e.g.
| your bank accounts? They'd ask for your credentials and
| log into your bank to scrape its contents.
|
| And I kinda get it, some services external to your bank
| can help you manage your finances etc. But it's why banks
| should offer APIs where the user can set limited and
| timed access to these services. In Europe this is PSD2
| (Revised Payment Services Directive).
| amanda99 wrote:
| I think the key point is that they would take _your
| Linkedin password_ and try to use that on your email
| _without asking you_ , in case you reused passwords.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Ok I didn't know that. Very good point. Wow.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| This is how a load of emails were sent out from my
| Hotmail account to anyone I had ever contacted (including
| random websites) asking if I want to connect with them to
| Facebook. The onboarding seemed to imply it would just
| check to see if any of my contacts were already using
| facebook.
| jorts wrote:
| 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.
| x0x0 wrote:
| I think it's not properly appreciated that Apple fully
| endorses all of this. For two reasons: (1) the provision of
| the output of billions of dollars of developer time to their
| users for no up front cost (made back via ads) is super
| valuable to their platform; and (2) they uniquely could stop
| this (at the price of devastating their app store), but
| choose not to.
|
| In light of that, perhaps reevaluate their ATT efforts as far
| less about meaningful privacy and far more about stealing
| $10B a year or so from Facebook.
| gruez wrote:
| >I think it's not properly appreciated that Apple fully
| endorses all of this. [...] they uniquely could stop this
| (at the price of devastating their app store), but choose
| not to.
|
| A perfectly privacy respecting app store isn't going to do
| any good if it doesn't have any apps. Just look at f-droid.
| Most (all?) of the apps there might be privacy respecting,
| but good luck getting any of the popular apps (eg.
| facebook, tiktok, google maps) on there.
|
| >In light of that, perhaps reevaluate their ATT efforts as
| far less about meaningful privacy and far more about
| stealing $10B a year or so from Facebook.
|
| What would make you think Apple's pro-privacy changes
| aren't "about stealing $10B a year or so from Facebook"? At
| least some people are willing to pay for more privacy, and
| pro-changes hurts advertisers, so basically any pro-privacy
| change can be construed as "less about meaningful privacy
| and far more about stealing".
| Aeolun wrote:
| > good luck getting any of the popular apps (eg.
| facebook, tiktok, google maps) on there
|
| That makes sense, considering they're not privacy
| respecting.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| F-Droid will never have popular apps because it requires
| them to be open source. In fact F-Droid does the build
| for you, generating reproducible builds and avoiding the
| risk of adding trackers to the binary that aren't
| actually in the source code. With F-Droid the code you
| see is what you get.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _A perfectly privacy respecting app store isn 't going
| to do any good if it doesn't have any apps._
|
| 40 years ago apps were sold on floppy disks. 30 years ago
| they were sold on CD-ROMs. 20 years ago, DVDs.
|
| Online-only apps are a recent thing. A privacy respecting
| app store certainly _can_ be a thing. Apps being blocked
| or banned from stores for choosing to not respect your
| privacy is a good thing.
| gruez wrote:
| >Online-only apps are a recent thing. A privacy
| respecting app store certainly can be a thing.
|
| I'm not sure you're trying say. I specifically
| acknowledged the existence of f-droid as a "privacy
| respecting app store" in the quoted comment.
|
| >Apps choosing to not respect your privacy, and being
| blocked or banned from stores, is a good thing.
|
| "a good thing" doesn't mean much when most people haven't
| even heard of your app store, and are missing out on all
| the popular apps that people want. Idealism doesn't mean
| much when nobody is using it. Apple might not be the
| paragon of privacy, but they had a greater impact on user
| privacy than f-droid ever will. To reiterate OP's point:
| what's the point of having a perfectly private OS and app
| store, when there's no apps for it, and your normie
| friends/relatives are going to sell you out anyways by
| uploading their entire contact list and photos (both with
| you in it) to google and meta?
| x0x0 wrote:
| > _[Apple] had a greater impact on user privacy than
| f-droid ever will._
|
| Sorry, that's nonsensical, unless you mean a negative
| impact. Apple's privacy is pretend only, as this article
| makes quite clear.
| otteromkram wrote:
| Then there wouldn't be any free ones.
| sneak wrote:
| How about a no/limited internet setting? So many apps spy on
| you and they don't need network at all to function.
| coin wrote:
| I would love an iOS setting that blocks all network access
| for certain apps
| dylan604 wrote:
| Until the app's devs get wise to this, and do not allow the
| app to function without the network access. It could be as
| simple as a full screen, non-closable screen that says the
| app requires network access with a button to the proper
| setting to correct the issue.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah like the ChatGPT app that doesn't work without a
| Google account. I have Google play on my phone, just no
| account logged in. I do have Google play services like
| firebase push which many apps legitimately need. But
| ChatGPT just opens the login screen in the play store and
| exits itself.
|
| I'm always wondering why these idiots force the creation
| of an account with their direct competitor. It's the only
| app I have that does this. But anyway I don't use their
| app for that reason, only use them a bit through API.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Such "go away" screens are in violation of Apple's
| AppStore rules. You cannot make a permission a condition
| of using the app, and stop the user from using it if they
| don't grant that permission. The app should gracefully do
| as much as it possibly can without the permission.
| maeil wrote:
| This holds for every app and every permission? Because
| I'm quite sure I recently used an app that closed for not
| allowing a permission. May be misremembering..
| ryandrake wrote:
| 5.1.1 (iv) Access: Apps must respect the user's
| permission settings and not attempt to manipulate, trick,
| or force people to consent to unnecessary data access.
| For example, apps that include the ability to post photos
| to a social network must not also require microphone
| access before allowing the user to upload photos. Where
| possible, provide alternative solutions for users who
| don't grant consent. For example, if a user declines to
| share Location, offer the ability to manually enter an
| address.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/
|
| This wording is actually a lot weaker than I remember it
| back when I wrote iOS apps. The developer also was not
| allowed to exit the app or close it against the user's
| intent, however I can't find that rule anymore.
| maeil wrote:
| Yeah, "unnecessary" is the word that may as well render
| the whole section moot unless it's actually properly
| enforced. If I can remember I'll test it today and see
| how it goes.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I agree with these guidelines (although they could be
| improved), although I think that some things could be
| done by the implementation in the system, too.
|
| > For example, if a user declines to share Location,
| offer the ability to manually enter an address.
|
| This is a reasonable ability, but I think that the
| operating system should handle it anyways. When it asks
| for permission for your location, in addition to "allow"
| and "deny", you can select "manually enter location" and
| "custom" (the "custom" option would allow the user to
| specify their own program for handling access to that
| specific permission (or to simulate error conditions such
| as no signal); possibly the setting menu can have an
| option for "show advanced options" before "custom" will
| be displayed, if you think it would otherwise make it too
| complicated).
|
| > that include the ability to post photos to a social
| network must not also require microphone access before
| allowing the user to upload photos
|
| This is reasonable, that apps should not be allowed to
| require microphone access for such a thing.
|
| However, sometimes a warning message makes sense but then
| to allow it anyways even if permission is not granted;
| e.g. for a video recording program, it might display a
| message about "Warning: microphone permission is not
| allowed for this app; if you proceed without enabling the
| microphone permission, the audio will not be recorded."
| Something similar would also apply if you denied camera
| permission but allowed microphone permission; in that
| case, only audio will be recorded. It might refuse to
| work if both permissions are denied, though.
| jjcob wrote:
| Try signing in in any Google app without allowing data
| sharing with Safari. It's not possible. They don't let
| you.
|
| It's kind of weird that Apple introduced this big fat
| tracking consent popup, but they don't really do anything
| to actually prevent cross-app tracking...
| miki123211 wrote:
| You can't do this, because some users are genuinely
| offline sometimes.
| eudhxhdhsb32 wrote:
| GrapheneOS has that. It asks every time you install a new
| app whether it should have network permissions.
| hellojesus wrote:
| 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 was a folder with a pic of
| a birth certificate.
| miki123211 wrote:
| iOS and Mac also let you do this, for photos, contacts
| and files.
|
| Apple is also pushing developers toward using native
| picker components. That way, you don't need to request
| consent at all, as you only get access to the specific
| object that the user has picked using a secure system
| component.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > That way, you don't need to request consent at all, as
| you only get access to the specific object that the user
| has picked using a secure system component.
|
| This is an interesting contrast with the earlier
| philosophy of phone OSes that the file system is
| confusing to users and they should never be allowed to
| see it.
| miki123211 wrote:
| They still (mostly) aren't.
|
| From an user perspective, photos aren't files. Music
| isn't files. Contacts aren't files. Apps aren't files.
| App data isn't files.
|
| The only things that "walk like a file and quack like a
| file" are documents, downloads, contents of external
| storage, network drives and cloud drives, and some
| Airdrop transfers.
|
| Yes, it's technically possible to use the files app to
| store photos, music etc, but if you do that, "you're
| holding it wrong."
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| 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.
| discostrings wrote:
| Fully denying internet access for an app is actually in iOS
| and has been there for many years.
|
| But it's only available in China.
|
| https://tinyapps.org/blog/202209100700_ios_disable_wifi_per
| _...
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| Android can do this
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >Fortunately this is changing with iOS 18 with "limited
| contacts" sharing.
|
| Its not. Apple still owns your stuff. There is no difference
| between Apple and other 3p retailers. Apple just wants more
| of your money.
| gruez wrote:
| >Its not. Apple still owns your stuff. There is no
| difference between Apple and other 3p retailers.
|
| That could be taken to mean anywhere between "Apple
| controls the software on your iPhone, therefore they
| control your contacts" and "Apple gives out your data like
| the data brokers mentioned in the OP". The former wouldn't
| be surprising at all, and most people would be happy with,
| and the latter would be scandalous if proven. What
| specifically are you arguing for?
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Why do you inherently trust Apple?
|
| Remember, the big celebrity photo leak happened because
| of a vulnerability within Apple Software.
| gruez wrote:
| The "vulnerability" part doesn't seem to be
| substantiated. From wikipedia:
|
| >The images were initially believed to have been obtained
| via a breach of Apple's cloud services suite
| iCloud,[1][2] or a security issue in the iCloud API which
| allowed them to make unlimited attempts at guessing
| victims' passwords.[3][4] Apple claimed in a press
| release that access was gained via spear phishing
| attacks.[5][6]
|
| Regardless of their security practices, it's a stretch to
| equate getting hacked with knowingly making available
| data. Moreover you can opt out of icloud backup, unlike
| with whatever is happening with apps mentioned in the OP.
| zxvkhkxvdvbdxz wrote:
| And why do you assume bad faith without any proof of foul
| play?
| jcul wrote:
| On android you can choose whether to grant access to
| contacts. And most apps work fine without.
|
| GrapheneOS, which I use, also has contact scopes, so
| troublesome apps that refuse to work without access will
| think they have full access. You can allow them to see no
| contacts or a small subset.
|
| There's also multiple user profiles, a "private space", and a
| work profile (shelter) that you can install an app into,
| which can be completely isolated from your main profile, so
| no contacts.
|
| It surprises me how far behind iOS is with this stuff.
| Recently I wanted to install a second instance of an app on
| my wife's iPhone so she could use multiple logins
| simultaneously, there didn't really seem to be a way to do
| it.
| loxs wrote:
| The point is that it doesn't matter whether YOU grant
| access to your contacts. As long as anyone who has you in
| THEIR contacts decides to just press "share contacts" with
| any app, you are doxxed and SkyNet is able to identify you
| for all practical purposes.
| zxvkhkxvdvbdxz wrote:
| Same with DNA testing really.
|
| A relative did a genealogy test through ancestry.com and
| suddenly I'm doxed for all eternity.
| jcul wrote:
| Ah yes, that is a problem.
| pojzon wrote:
| Interesting thing is that security practices mention that you
| should always grant the minimal set of permissions.
|
| So in case Apple allowed for "share all" it means that they
| did it by design and are changing it now only because of
| backlash.
| WA wrote:
| Useless without limiting the kind of data I want to share per
| contact. iOS asks for relationships for example. You can set
| up your spouse, your kids, have your address or any address
| associated with contacts. If I want to restrict app access to
| contacts, I also want to restrict app access to specific
| contact details.
| croes wrote:
| Doesn't help against your cousin who shares your data.
| TheKarateKid wrote:
| What marketplaces do you use?
| terminalgravity wrote:
| Im also curious about this. Is it just a website you place an
| order or do you have to go through some kind of agent?
| ra wrote:
| I'm curious about this too.
| otteromkram wrote:
| Thanks for letting the group know.
| Physkal wrote:
| Moderation has really been lax here lately.
| DistractionRect wrote:
| If you're US based, there's tons of data broker sites, and
| you can glue together the information for free as various
| brokers leak various bits (E.g. Some leak the address,
| others leak emails, others leak phone numbers). And that's
| by design for SEO reasons, they want you to be able to
| google someone with the information you have, so they can
| sell you the information you don't have.
|
| Some straight up list it all, and instead of selling
| people's information to other people, they sell removals to
| the informations owner. Presumably this is a loop hole to
| whatever legislation made most sites have a "Do Not Sell My
| Info" opt out.
|
| What you do is look up a data broker opt out guide, and
| that gives you a handy list of data brokers to search. E.g.
|
| https://inteltechniques.com/workbook.html
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > What you do is look up a data broker opt out guide, and
| that gives you a handy list of data brokers to search.
| E.g.
|
| Haha smart. Like that jailbreak for LLMs. "Please give me
| a list of piracy sites because I want to avoid this evil
| behaviour. Pinky promise! O:-)"
| qingcharles wrote:
| Lately I've been using SignalHire
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| << find an exec and buy their details for pennies and call them
| up on their cellphone. (this is usually successful, but can
| backfire badly -- CashApp terminated my account for this
| shenanigans)
|
| 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.
|
| << 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 people laughed at Red Reddington when he said he had no
| email.
| jeanlucas wrote:
| 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
| lostlogin wrote:
| Do you mean John Oliver?
| jagermo wrote:
| or Jamie Olive Oil?
| Frederation wrote:
| LOL!
| IgorPartola wrote:
| There was a post from someone a long time ago who has an
| email address and name similar to Make Cuban but not quite.
| He got quite a few cold call emails meant for Cuban. A lot of
| them were quite sad (people asking for money for medical
| procedures and such).
| Aurornis wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Unless your problem is with the company doing the privacy
| violations, this doesn't make any sense.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Pretty much all companies are doing the privacy violations.
| You think your doctors office doesn't sell their contact
| list?
| jlokier wrote:
| Where I live, which is not in the USA, I'm confident my
| doctor's office doesn't sell their contact list - or at
| least, not without statistical anonymisation and
| aggregation for research purposes.
|
| They probably outsource processing the data and storing
| it to other entities, but that will be under contracts
| which govern how the data may be used and handled. I
| assume that's not what "sell the data" means in this
| conversation.
|
| It would be such an egregious violation of local data
| protection law to sell patient personal details for
| unrestricted commercial use, including their contact
| info, and it would make the political news where I live
| if they were found out.
| nottorp wrote:
| Also "not in the USA" i actually work on a medical ish
| application these days (not the in production version,
| mind but a fork with new features that's entirely
| separate at the moment).
|
| I have access to ... zero patient data. Our entire test
| database is synthetic records.
| dbspin wrote:
| In my country (and I suspect most Western Countries) my
| doctor would lose his medical licence for selling my
| contact information.
| brookst wrote:
| 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 (tm).
| jajko wrote:
| 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.
| megous wrote:
| This normal in your society?
| https://electronicintifada.net/content/switzerland-
| deports-e...
|
| Interesting thought policing you have in there.
| mapt wrote:
| HIPAA is pretty much the only halfway effective privacy
| regulation the US has. It imposes strong regulatory,
| licensure, and even criminal censure for violations.
|
| It's formulated so that they can give those contacts away
| rather than sell them, but only to the rest of the
| medical goods & services supplychain that are involved in
| your care, who are also bound by HIPAA.
|
| The worst dark pattern this has generated so far seems to
| be pharmaceutical company drug reps bribing your doctor
| to change what they would prescribe you.
|
| The worst that's likely to happen without regulation, as
| far as I can tell, involves an associated provider just
| leaking UnitedHealthcare's full database of every patient
| and every condition.
| ajcp wrote:
| It's odd that of the two replies referencing people, both got
| their names obviously wrong. Is that a new phishing tactic?
| otteromkram wrote:
| New AI tactic.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| salting the fields are we? total informational warfare,
| the digital equivalent of Sherburne's March to the sea
| during the American Civil War.
| notduncansmith wrote:
| Russian bot tactic? Guessing it's an easy way to farm
| interaction as people comment back to correct the mistake.
| pphysch wrote:
| An innocent coincidence, by two established users that
| link their contact info in their profile. It must be the
| Russians!
|
| It's genuinely sad that this level of Cold War paranoia
| has been normalized again.
| cutemonster wrote:
| Which are those comments? Aha, "Make Cuban" is one such
| comment and Mr Oliver someone
| stavros wrote:
| Where do you buy their details from?
| qingcharles wrote:
| Right now, my goto is signalhire
| stavros wrote:
| Thank you, though I have a feeling that they get their
| data from their own sign up form.
| mathgeek wrote:
| This is to be expected as a source of their data, no?
| stavros wrote:
| Yeah, it would be, it's just a bit ironic.
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| 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.
| vlan0 wrote:
| Actually this could prove very useful for a resistance
| movement. Take them down with with their own medicine.
| josephg wrote:
| 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.
| codazoda wrote:
| I'm relatively sure they would bring the hammer down on the
| sender.
| whatshisface wrote:
| What hammer? It's legal, that's the problem.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Getting access to someone's contact info legally doesn't
| mean you can do whatever you want.
|
| This would very easily be covered under harassment laws,
| which are a separate matter.
| hnisoss wrote:
| Doesn't mean you won't get hammered my friend.
| mathieuh wrote:
| To use a line sometimes attributed to Beria, "give me the
| man and I will give you the case against him". By which I
| mean that I'm sure they will find some means of making
| you sorry.
| ericjmorey wrote:
| They would make adjustments so that their details are
| protected, but the regular user is not.
| toast0 wrote:
| Eh, California protects politicians from having their
| real estate holdings posted online by government, and
| afaik, most county recorders have decided it's easier to
| not let any of it be online than to figure out who is a
| politician and only restrict their information.
|
| Of course, much of it is public information so businesses
| can go in person, get all the info and then list it.
| triceratops wrote:
| Run for city council or the school board. Boom, now
| you're a "politician".
| amelius wrote:
| I'm not familiar with these marketplaces. Could you name a few
| examples?
| qingcharles wrote:
| I'm using SignalHire most of the time recently
| XorNot wrote:
| The thing is...contact details aren't really private
| information, basically by definition.
|
| The distinction is contact details privacy is based on the
| desire not be interrupted by people you didn't agree to be
| interrupted by - i.e. it's a spam problem - and realistically
| to solve this requires a total revamp of our communications
| systems (long overdue).
|
| The basic level of this would be forcing businesses to
| positively identify themselves to contact people - i.e. we need
| TLS certificates on voice calls, tied to government issued
| business identifiers. That would have the highest immediate
| impact, because we could retrain people not to talk to anyone
| claiming to be a business if there phone doesn't show a
| certificate - we already teach this for email, so the skill is
| becoming more widespread.
|
| A more advanced version of this might be to get rid of the
| notion of fixed phone numbers entirely: i.e. sharing contacts
| is now just a cryptographic key exchange where I sign their
| public certificate which the cellphone infrastructure validates
| to agree to route a call to my device from their device (with
| some provisioning for chain of trust so a corporate entity can
| sign legally recognized bodies, but not say, transfer details
| around).
|
| This would solve a pile of problems, including just business
| decommissioning - i.e. once a company shuts down, even if you
| scraped their database you wouldn't be able to use any of the
| contact information unless you had the hardware call
| origination gear + the telecom company still recognized the
| key.
|
| Add an escrow system on top of this so "phone numbers" can
| still work - i.e. you can get a random number to give to people
| that will do a "trust on first use" thing, or "trust till
| revoked" thing (i.e. no one needs to give a fake number
| anymore, convention would be they're _all_ fake numbers, but
| blocking the number would also not actually block anyone you
| still want to talk to).
|
| EDIT: I've sort of inverted the technical vs practical details
| here I realize - i.e. if I were implementing this, the public
| marketing campaign would be "you can have as many phone numbers
| as you want" but your friends don't have to update if you
| change it. The UI ideally would be "block this contact and
| revoke this number?" on a phone which would be nice and
| unambiguous - possibly with a "send a new number to your
| friends?" option (in fact this could be 150 new numbers, one
| per friend since under the hood it would all be public key
| cryptography). I think people would understand this.
| gog wrote:
| What definition of contact details makes them not private?
|
| Contact details (your phone number, email or address) are
| definitively private information, you should be the one that
| decides who gets them and who doesn't.
| XorNot wrote:
| Literally explained in the second paragraph there.
|
| You can't have private information which is meant to also
| be shared widely. It is the distinction between Access and
| Authorization.
| gog wrote:
| But it's not meant to be shared widely, for most people
| it's meant to be shared with consideration and/or
| permission.
|
| Also, it's not just about "a desire not be interrupted by
| people you didn't agree to be interrupted by", it's about
| not having the data in the first place, for any reason,
| including tracking of any sorts.
| Brybry wrote:
| Pre-internet/cell phone nearly everyone had their
| name/phone number/address in phone books. Libraries had
| tons of phone books. And you could pay for the operator
| to find/connect you to people as well.
|
| Contact info being private is a relatively recent
| concept.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Thread is discussing business contact details.
| asdf6969 wrote:
| Give me your personal phone number
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| Check out Simplex chat. I just read about it from this HN
| submission yesterday:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42904966
| liontwist wrote:
| > find an exec and buy their details for pennies and call them
| up on their cellphone
|
| There is a vendor for this very thing in relation to business
| and government position called "zoominfo"
| tcoff91 wrote:
| Could you please tell me how to buy this stuff? This sounds
| like a great way to get customer service when normal channels
| fail.
| Atotalnoob wrote:
| What kind of marketplace do you use?
| Aurornis wrote:
| > (this is usually successful, but can backfire badly --
| CashApp terminated my account for this shenanigans)
|
| When I was at a medium-sized consumer-facing company whose name
| you'd recognize if you're in the tech space (intentionally
| vague) we had some customers try this. They'd find product
| managers or directors on LinkedIn then start trying to contact
| them with phone numbers found on the internet, personal email
| addresses, or even doing things like finding photos their
| family members posted and complaining the comments.
|
| We had to start warning them not to do it again, then following
| up with more drastic actions on the second violation. I
| remember several cases where we had to get corporate counsel
| involved right away and there was talk of getting law
| enforcement involved because some people thought implied
| threats would get them what they wanted.
|
| So I can see why companies are quick to lock out customers who
| try these games.
| opello wrote:
| I realize why this is bad. Full stop.
|
| I wonder if it ever evoked an dive into exactly what happened
| to leave these customers with thinking this was the most
| likely avenue for success? Hopefully in at least some cases
| their calls with CSRs were reviewed and in the most
| optimistic of best cases additional training or policies were
| put into place to avoid the hopelessness that evokes such
| drastic actions.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| That would require empathy from someone who is, right now,
| bragging about how they sicced their lawyers and the cops
| on customers they were fucking over.
|
| I'm going to guess that the answer would be "nope, didn't
| care." That Cirrus isn't going to pay for itself,
| friend...and you can't retire at 40 without breaking a few
| eggs.
|
| I remember when Google was locking accounts because people
| had the audacity to issue a chargeback after spending
| _hours_ trying to resolve Google not delivering a working,
| undamaged phone they 'd paid well over half a grand for.
| Nobody at Google cared, but when the money (that Google
| never fucking deserved in the first place) was forcibly and
| legally taken back, the corporation acted with narcissistic
| rage...
| maeil wrote:
| > So I can see why companies are quick to lock out customers
| who try these games.
|
| Most of the companies who customers try these "games" against
| are places like Google and Meta that literally do not provide
| a way for the average customer to reach a human. None.
|
| Those have got it coming for them, the megacorps' stance on
| this is despicable and far worse than the customers directly
| reaching execs who could instantly change this but don't
| because it would cut into their _$72 billion per year net
| profit_.
|
| This is a case where laws simply did not catch up to the
| digital era. In the brick and mortar era it was by definition
| possible to reach humans.
|
| I get that your company was smaller and probably did allow
| for a way to reach a human but that's not generalizable.
| ajcp wrote:
| > but that's not generalizable.
|
| You only referenced two companies...
| maeil wrote:
| Two companies that are so gigantic they combine to a
| great percentage of number of "company interactions" the
| average Westerner has on a daily basis.
|
| Anyway, I don't think it contradicts my point? Your
| company exist, mom and pops exist and there's a whole
| spectrum between them, so it's not generalizable.
| otteromkram wrote:
| 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.
| bruce511 wrote:
| My only connection to Amazon support has been for AWS.
|
| Perhaps though this should be an example of good customer
| service where talking to a human is easy, and not lumped
| in with the likes of Google where its impossible.
|
| Perhaps your experience with the online shop is
| different, but frankly they're in my "good" column, not
| my "bad" column.
| cauefcr wrote:
| AWS was, indeed, very easy to reach when i did an oopsie
| and spent over my desired limit.
| tclancy wrote:
| This is not like for like: AWS assigns reps because the
| dollar amounts are significant compared to your monthly
| cell phone bill or a purchase at Amazon. It's not
| surprising that buying a car gets you better customer
| service than renting one.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| 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.
| rixed wrote:
| Regarding the evolution of the law:
|
| Long ago when Google tried to launch its very first phone
| somewhere in Europe I can distinctly remember that it was
| initially not allowed to because of some regulation that
| mandated a company selling telephones to have a customer
| service.
|
| Can't remember if they eventually found a loophole or if
| the regulations were changed.
| balderdash wrote:
| Honestly not condoning people crossing the line of
| threats/abusive behavior, but it sounds like you worked at
| one of those companies that make it impossible to get ahold
| of someone, don't respond to customers, or other poor
| customer service issues, and then are surprised people resort
| to this
| _heimdall wrote:
| It is possible to just not use a phone number.
|
| I mostly connect through Signal. I do technically have a phone
| number that my close friends and family have, but its a random
| VoIP number that I usually change every year or so.
| Surprisingly no one has really cared, I send out a text that I
| got a new number and that's that.
| ironmagma wrote:
| How? Most of the services I use, from Walgreens to banks to
| retirement accounts, require a phone number either for 2FA or
| just to verify that you're you when signing up. After
| changing my phone number this year and having to go through
| the rigamarole for each service, I decided never again.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yeah, companies are not dumb, and they know when you have
| VoIP number vs a full account with an "accepted" company.
|
| I can kind of see why not allowing 2FA to a number that
| could be easier to loose, but that's weak argument. Of
| course they don't want someone from .ru to get a US number
| with all of the baggage that would entail
| ironmagma wrote:
| There are flaws to their methodology. For half the
| companies, to change your number from A to B, you first
| must verify a NONCE with A, then verify a NONCE with B.
| This just means you have to possess two phone numbers for
| a period of time -- Weeks, or in reality, months -- while
| you change the long list of services over to the new
| phone number.
|
| There is a simpler/better way and that is to verify you
| have your email address before allowing you to do a NONCE
| with B.
| vladxyz wrote:
| I've had limited luck feigning ignorance with a bank
| recently. "I don't know why I'm not getting a code" "No, I
| don't have another phone number" "I still can't log in to
| the web portal". They dropped the phone number requirement
| in favor to sending the OTP to email in the end, but it
| took way more effort than is reasonable. I tend to include
| a request to the CS person to pass along a request for
| TOTP/authenticator apps but given the request for a phone
| number is likely intentional I doubt the feedback is
| getting too far. In my naive mind, if enough people do the
| same, maybe they'll get the message.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I have a few services that require a phone number for 2FA,
| maybe 5 or 6?
|
| I just change those when I get a new number, its usually
| just a matter of getting a text confirmation code from them
| to verify the new number.
|
| I change passwords every year or two. That's really a pain,
| at this point its somewhere around 30 or so accounts I have
| to go through and update.
| casenmgreen wrote:
| _Never_ give a phone number to _anyone_.
|
| Phone number is _the_ gold standard identifying for third
| party data collation services.
|
| This is why so many companies demand it.
|
| One solution is a burner phone and burner SIM, for SMS
| only.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| I can relatively easily skip trace people but where are you
| buying specific peoples information? Do you mean youre skip
| tracing or buying directly from data brokers?
| wkat4242 wrote:
| And the combination of contacts are also unique enough to
| identify you. Even though they change over time. Some fuzzy
| matching, take in another few bits of fingerprint like device
| type and country and voila no advertiser ID required.
|
| Ps smart idea to use it for that purpose. If I failed to get
| proper service I'd just review bomb the company everywhere and
| soon enough I'd get a call fixing my problem and asking to
| remove them :)
| miki123211 wrote:
| > And I buy this stuff. Every time I need customer service and
| I'm getting stonewalled I just go onto a marketplace, find an
| exec and buy their details for pennies
|
| The article author claims that you can't get this stuff for
| under $10k. Where do you find it for pennies?
| habosa wrote:
| Try cold outreach software like Apollo.io
|
| As a test I downloaded it and got my wife's full email and
| cell phone number easily from their free trial. And the full
| price would be on the order of pennies per contact.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Right now I use SignalHire most of the time
| _pktm_ wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this approach. I gotta say that I'd love to
| hear more about how/where you are buying this data, and the
| CashApp story too.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| So your data is only as private as the least privacy-conscious
| person in your social circle.
| speleding wrote:
| 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?
| emsixteen wrote:
| 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.
| adr1an wrote:
| You can. There's DND mode and Favorite contacts. I use
| auto-DND scheduling option too.
| speleding wrote:
| Yes, thanks, I've configured that for kids and other loved
| ones. But I can't pick up anything else, even sales people
| from India manage to use a number that appears local (in
| The Netherlands for me), so I might miss a call from the
| kid's school.
| bluehatbrit wrote:
| I've just added the numbers of my kids school onto the
| list and it's been fine for me. I've never had them
| contact me from anything other than the schools number,
| but I'm in the UK and I would be very surprised if a
| teacher tried to call me from their mobile phone or
| something.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Oh wow, I knew this was a rampant problem in the US, but
| I didn't realise we had that at that scale here in the
| Netherlands as well. Hoping I can dodge the bullet a
| little longer...
| WrongAssumption wrote:
| The emergency call may not be coming from their phone.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > What if there is an emergency with my kids?
|
| Hopefully rather than just stupidly giving up, they'll send
| an accompanying text message.
| laserbeam wrote:
| >> And I buy this stuff. Every time I need customer service and
| I'm getting stonewalled I just go onto a marketplace, find an
| exec and buy their details for pennies and call them up on
| their cellphone.
|
| I find it funny how easy it is to find scammy websites which
| promise to remove your data (right...), but how hard it is to
| find the actual marketplaces where people trade this data. It
| also makes you think about what other systems have similar
| asymmetric interfaces for the public and the ones in the know
| (yes, I know there are plenty).
| adulion wrote:
| I have done this as well. I once got an travel insurance claim
| rejected by some outsourced handler and found out who the CEO
| of the insurance startup was. I emailed him and magically it
| got resolved
| casenmgreen wrote:
| 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.)
| skrebbel wrote:
| What do you do when the car repairman wants to call/text you
| when the car is finished? Or any other similar situations?
| gausswho wrote:
| I use VOIP numbers for that. One per business.
| casenmgreen wrote:
| No car.
|
| But in general, email.
|
| I can make calls from my phone/laptop, using VOIP.
|
| I could receive as well if I wanted to, but I rarely need
| to be called, so I do not normally keep a number, and I
| could not be called when out and about anyway, because
| wifi-only, but you do get an answerphone, so people can
| leave a message.
| secondcoming wrote:
| How do you do online banking?
| gausswho wrote:
| Given the rampant privacy abuse on phones, I use a laptop.
| casenmgreen wrote:
| Laptop, running over Tor.
|
| I use cash for all physical payments; never the card. I use
| the card to withdraw cash, once a month.
|
| I very rarely buy on-line, because I stopped using Amazon
| (treatment of warehouse staff) and buying off of Amazon is
| hell on toast.
| oldherl wrote:
| 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.
| ebri wrote:
| How do you do this? This is genius
| dheera wrote:
| I just block all unscheduled calls and calls from unknown
| numbers. If there isn't a calendar event and it isn't coming
| from a known family member or close friend, the call doesn't go
| through.
|
| I also have multiple cell and virtual numbers and give
| different ones out to businesses, banks, friends, and family.
| Businesses that don't need to ship me stuff also get a
| different address than ones that do.
|
| I don't register to vote anymore because they leak my
| residential info. When they can agree to stop leaking it, I
| will participate again.
| leoqa wrote:
| 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.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| you can call anyone for any reason if you aren't doing it for
| your own business
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| I'll call anyone I please, thank you very much!
| triceratops wrote:
| Don't do not call laws apply to marketing companies? OP isn't
| marketing or selling anything.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > 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.
| youcouldalways wrote:
| Changing your number every year could mitigate as it would
| introduce entropy and stale data into the system. When done at
| scale, data lifetime would behave similar to the automatic
| deletion of messages on whatsapp. Somewhat mimicking an in
| person verbal conversation where only people's memories
| remember what was said and even their version gets changed
| every time memory recall takes place. Systems already exist in
| real life that protect privacy, it's just that we do a poor job
| of reproducing them with tech.
|
| Changing your telephone number every year could be an
| artificial holiday like valentines day or halloween. It can be
| done if people deem it's important.
| idoitalready wrote:
| I already do this. It gives me an opportunity to trim the
| contact list to people I actually talk to regularly which I
| send the new number too. Also shows me my footprint online
| since I have to update the number. I only change it for
| places I actually use regularly or are important.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > 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.
| wand3r wrote:
| 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
| z02d wrote:
| There was a nice talk on the recent Chaos Communication Congress
| (from Chaos Computer Club):
|
| https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-databroker-files-wie-uns-apps-un...
|
| (English audio available)
| zzo38computer wrote:
| Even just to look at the picture near the top (which is also
| repeated near the bottom), if you do not allow the app to track
| you that only disables one of the items of the information and
| not all of them. This is explained later in the document, that it
| is not explained very well to end users. I agree that it could be
| explained better. Perhaps, "Allow app to track your activity..."
| can have a option to display a more elaborate description,
| explaining that it only affects the Advertising Tracking ID (and
| what that means) and has no effect on other methods of tracking.
|
| And, looking further in the document, we can see there is more.
|
| Some of them, such as IP address and timestamp it is reasonable
| to use for programs that access the internet (although it should
| be possible for the user to set up a proxy and/or adjust the
| clock in order to change these things, the server would still use
| its own timestamp anyways).
|
| Available memory also makes sense to be readable (although
| ideally, the user should be allowed to limit the amount of memory
| available to specific programs, in order that there is enough
| memory remaining for other programs; the reported total memory
| should then include only the memory available to this program and
| not to all programs), and the same should be true of the number
| of CPU cores and the amount of available disk space.
|
| Others probably should not normally be known by most programs
| (but some are usefulf or some kind of programs), and even when
| they are, the operating system ought to allow users to reprogram
| what information is available and what filters, logging, etc will
| be used.
|
| The presence of wired headphones probably should not be
| accessible by software, and the redirection should be handled by
| hardware. Perhaps an exception makes sense if the settings need
| to be different, e.g. mono vs stereo, although even then,
| programs should only see those settings (and only if they have
| audio output), and the user should be allowed to override them
| due to preferences (e.g. some users might want mono even if
| connected to external speakers or headphones; on my computer
| sometimes only one speaker works and sometimes both, so it is
| useful to me to be able to switch to mono).
|
| Furthermore, there is the consideration, if the advertisers/spies
| are stealing your power and network bandwidth and quota in order
| to do these things; then, that is theft.
| ec109685 wrote:
| There is more to it when a user disallows an app to track your
| activity. From Apple and enforced in their review guidelines:
|
| "The app is also not permitted to track your activity using
| other information that identifies you or your device, like your
| email address."
| secondcoming wrote:
| > if the advertisers/spies are stealing your power and network
| bandwidth and quota in order to do these things
|
| They're not. The app developer is.
| EveOffline wrote:
| Very interesting and disturbing research, definitely a wake up
| call for me. Does anyone know/can anyone recommend me software
| that can block these sorts of requests from going through? I know
| of pihole which blocks adds but does it also filter out these
| sorts of things?
| ActorNightly wrote:
| You need to have a wifi only android phone, rooted, no google
| apps, and uninstall anything that talks to the internet. That
| includes analyzing network traffic, open ports, and so on.
|
| I did this with a Kali Nethunter distro back in the day for
| "reasons", privacy not being one of them. This makes the phone
| very hard to use for regular things.
| daqhris wrote:
| "no-root firewalls" to control data flows on devices (sorry for
| not publicly naming my preferred one).
| simonw wrote:
| Anyone understand why an apparently accurate latitude/longitude
| showed up in one of those traces despite location services not
| being enabled for the app in question?
| ec109685 wrote:
| A previous request maybe mapped their IP back to the geo, and
| that data was used subsequently, maybe?
| withinboredom wrote:
| Probably Mozilla location services (which I happily block)
| which does pretty accurate passive location tracking.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Phones send out probe requests to get a list of open wifis. If
| you have a static access point, with a known geo location,
| software can be running on that point to remember a mac address
| of the phone from a probe and store it. Thus enabling real time
| tracking.
|
| Im like 60% sure this is how they figured out who the Bomber
| was in Austin TX.
| rpigab wrote:
| This is also why some Chinese apps put everything inside a
| single app and request every permission there is, then track
| you through Wifi SSIDs seen by your device.
| rollulus wrote:
| Thanks for asking. Came here to ask since I was curious about
| this too. I don't find any of the replies here convincing:
|
| - List of open wifis: AFAIK, and in my experience, apps need
| special permissions to do anything at the wifi level. And yes,
| iOS location services use wifi info but it's disabled, that's
| the point;
|
| - IP back to geo: then why not send the IP itself directly?
|
| - Mozilla location services: same as above, why not send the
| info you send to Mozilla directly to the data harvester which
| can call Mozilla itself?
| krupan wrote:
| Anyone working on this tech used for tracking people should feel
| bad.
| OtomotO wrote:
| No they don't, because:
|
| I have location services disabled 99% of the time
|
| And I often leave the house without my smartphone (when walking
| or bicycling), much to the dismay of my better half... I am
| sorry, I forget!
| pyromaker wrote:
| I don't think there is a hope when it comes to our privacy and
| ads and our data being sold - none. Even if I'm somewhat off the
| grid or low in activities, the indirect way of targeting me still
| exists, by my family members, friends, people associated with me.
| I surrender.
| secondcoming wrote:
| There is hope. The upcoming US State privacy laws are resulting
| in IP addresses having the last octet blanked out, and IDFA's
| zeroed out, at least for SSPs and DSPs. Companies such as Apple
| and Google will still have this info since they control the OS.
| parkersweb wrote:
| This makes me wonder - is there not a 'Little Snitch' equivalent
| for iOS?
| BubbleRings wrote:
| I clicked the link at the beginning of your article, that led to
| the Google sheet with the list of apps. That list had 12,373
| lines, not "over 2,000", fyi. And while most of the apps looked
| like small time games that I have never downloaded and would
| probably not download, I saw included there "Microsoft Office
| 365". Interesting.
| timsh wrote:
| agreed, however there are duplicates in that list + same app
| for ios / android. if I'm not mistaking I did a simple unique
| count on it (or catch the 2000 number from 404media post)
| thadk wrote:
| Here's my messy list of all the apps I recognized in that
| Google Sheet: meetup, tinder, crunchyroll
| zynga/wordswithfriends, Microsoft Outlook
| com.microsoft.office.outlook, Weather channel, Microsoft 365
| (Office) com.microsoft.office.officehubrow Opera Mini browser
| beta com.opera.mini.native.beta, BuzzFeed - Quizzes & News
| com.buzzfeed.android Tetris(r) Block Puzzle
| com.playstudios.tetris4 Sonic the Hedgehog(tm) Classic
| com.sega.sonic1px Grindr Flipboard: The Social Magazine
| Flightradar24 | Flight Tracker Bejeweled Blitz
| com.ea.BejeweledBlitz_row FarmVille 3 - Farm Animals Plants vs
| Zombies(tm) 2 com.ea.game.pvz2_row SimCity BuildIt 913292932
| Tetris(r) 1491074310 Opera Mini: Fast Web Browser
| com.opera.mini.native TuneIn Radio: Music & Sports 418987775
| Yahoo Mail - Organized Email
| com.yahoo.mobile.client.android.mail Angry Birds 2
| com.rovio.baba Skip-Bo 1538912205 CamScanner - PDF Scanner App
| com.intsig.camscanner Rakuten Viber Messenger com.viber.voip
| Candy Crush Saga 553834731
| LegitShady wrote:
| most of the modern internet just seems to be the greatest
| inescapable surveillance system in all of human history.
| bvrlt wrote:
| How is the MAID <> IDFA link constructed?
| timsh wrote:
| MAID = IDFA on ios + GAID on Android
| [https://www.start.io/glossary/mobile-ad-id-maid/]
| fmkamchatka wrote:
| I think he meant MAID <> PII
| atum47 wrote:
| Reddit app has no permissions on my phone, but the feed suggests
| communities based on my location never the less. I've been
| traveling for the last two months, every city I've been has been
| suggested
| scarface_74 wrote:
| It's just an IP look up. I travel a lot and you can tell where
| certain podcast episodes were downloaded based on dynamic ad
| insertion
| nedt wrote:
| Just check https://ipinfo.io/ to see how close your IP points
| to your location. For most targeted content the city is good
| enough. And honestly if I'm one of 1 million people it's ok.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| I paid for pcapdroid, it's a network monitoring app that use the
| vpn protocol on Android to monitor every packet sent, register
| which app made the request, to whom, dates and so on.
|
| In it's paid feature, you can select app to block internet
| connection or you can select country, ip and host.
|
| After browsing my internet logs, it shocked me to see some app I
| had absolutely no idea were spying so much.
|
| Xiaomi home ? Yeah I knew Xiaomi app would be spyware. But
| Spotify for instance, how could I guess it sends every few hours
| data to remote server including Facebook ones.
|
| Until I find replacement for Spotify, but most music streaming
| app do spy on its user (and I don't mean just learning what music
| you like), I can still block all the graph.facebook.com
| tracking.eu.miui.com Google ads.gdoubleclick.net and so on.
|
| It's open source but firewall is paid feature, i highly recommend
| it if you're on Android.
|
| https://f-droid.org/fr/packages/com.emanuelef.remote_capture...
|
| There is even the possibility to decrypt packet and analyze them
| although it require root, i did it on another phone and yeah it's
| similar to what the author found. Every single bit of data, ip
| adress, since how long the phone is on, the wifi connections,
| when did I unlock the phone and so on.
|
| Every data taken individually is not important to me but this
| stream of little data constantly going God knows where is creepy
| as fuck.
| adeon wrote:
| If you have the equipment (e.g. a spare Linux computer and WiFi
| router) and know-how, you can set up something like mitmproxy
| (looks very similar feature set to the Android App, but likely
| requires more effort to set up) to your home network. That's
| what I did some weeks ago, and then basically the same exercise
| you did (just my whole network instead of just phone), looking
| what's going on. And yeah...it's not good.
|
| Even if I trust some companies to be trustworthy, I can't
| possibly vet a gazillion entities getting telemetry requests,
| and not all of them can have their shit together, security,
| privacy or ethics-wise.
|
| It made me ditch some Microsoft software, but overall escaping
| spying feels like a lost battle, unless you go do spartan
| Richard Stallman-like computing (IIRC he had pretty hardcore
| stance over the software he'll use).
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| Well I believe it's Feasible.
|
| Anyway like most things it's a journey, not an on off switch.
| First you get aware then you make change and the situation
| gets better, it doesn't have to be perfect to be better.
|
| On my Android phone, I had to make clear cut on which app I
| could keep after seeing the logs. The apps from Google,
| microsoft, amazon they are all gone. Even the play services
| and the play store replaced with aurora.
|
| It cuts at least 2/3 of the network requests.
|
| Then you have the case of individual apps that use Facebook
| SDK or other advertiser, there are often alternatives in the
| open source community and when it's not the case there are
| always less privacy invasive alternative on the store.
|
| For instance, my default Samsung weather app was sending lots
| and lots of data. The alternative on the froid were not in my
| taste.
|
| I eventually found out about weawow, it's not open source but
| it doesn't require any weird permission, no ads, it's not
| constantly sending data in the background and my logs says it
| only connect to weather.weawow.com.
|
| I mean it's fine.
|
| After spending weeks with the firewall, i was able to
| identify the spying app and replace most of them. My network
| log now is pretty empty when I'm not using the phone.
| itissid wrote:
| I think one thing people are discussing a lot here about Privacy
| around contacts and sharing. Limiting access to contacts ,
| completely or partially, is the wrong way to design such systems.
| There are two problems with this approach:
|
| 1. Having permission to contacts is NOT a capability. Running a
| function on it that is by design not leak PII is infinitely more
| valuable and a capability.
|
| 2. Asking users to grant permission is broken by design: You are
| giving a very bad multiple choice to the user: `(a)Creepy? (b).
| LessCreepy (c). Don't Use App`
|
| Instead if we only granted operation rights and hid the actual
| information instead it would be so much better. We need a
| _separation_ of data from the function to empower apps to give
| better choices to users.
| mickgardner wrote:
| 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.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Probably because people like us have more visibility on the
| huge scope and consequences of this kind of privacy invasion.
| Most people don't actually see this with their own eyes. They
| probably know it's happening in the back of their heads but
| it's not 'real' to them. It's very real when you know you could
| technically run a report of all your users that also have
| grindr installed.
|
| I'm sure most of us would prefer not to work somewhere that
| does it but we need to eat too.. And we have no input in this.
|
| For example recently I was given a presentation on a new IoT
| product at work. Immediately I asked why we're not supporting
| open standards stuff like matter as a protocol. And I was told
| that'll never fly with marketing because they want to have all
| the customers to have eyes on their app for their 'metrics' and
| upselling. I told them fine but I'm definitely not using this
| crap myself. But it was shrugged off. We are too few for them
| to care about. And it makes us very unpopular in the company
| too. So it's a risky thing to do that doesn't help anyway. The
| "don't fight them but join them and change from within" idea is
| a fallacy.
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| That seems like trying to tie two separate groups together.
| Most people are not working on software remotely adjacent to
| this.
| conductr wrote:
| There's no code of conduct or rule book that anyone should
| follow so ethics is determined at the individual level. That
| quickly turns to, either I build it for them or the next guy
| will. Resistance is futile type thing.
|
| Most other types of engineering have published rules and
| standards and industry credentialing including ethics tied into
| it and loss of credentials for an ethics violation would be
| career ending in many cases.
| pas wrote:
| Can you give a few examples where that helped?
|
| (I can only think of straw-man examples. Does the private
| prison industry have problems getting architects, civil
| engineers, electrical engineers? Does the pharma industry
| have problems getting chemical engineers for manufacturing
| addictive painkillers?)
| conductr wrote:
| Architects have to build to codes and have their plans
| signed off by an engineer that is very much liable for the
| basic safety of the structure.
|
| I'm a CFO and the CPA credential helps a whole industry of
| accountants avoid outright shenanigans that would take
| place if we could report financials the way sales,
| marketing and some others would prefer. We also have a
| whole layer of audits to help make sure what we say is
| true, is true.
|
| It's obviously not perfect and There's always going to be
| bad actors but having industry guardrails does help a lot
| more than is obvious. This is one of those things we're the
| absence of data is the data. The fact it's pretty rare for
| a skyscraper to structurally fail and Enron type financial
| fraud situations are relatively rare. It's hard to imagine
| how much things around us would be worse without checks and
| balances.
|
| As for pharma example, I think it's a good point but also a
| bit of a case study in where this should have worked but
| didn't. Those sometimes are necessary things. Just like how
| originally technologists thought social media was
| beneficial to society, it could perhaps be revisited with a
| different opinion with a different perspective with benefit
| of hindsight. It's pretty subjective and opinionated but I
| personally think R&D should be pretty loose. In pharma, you
| have to be pretty open minded as it seems sometimes things
| are discovered while in search of something else. The
| business of pharma, the sales people pushing those
| addictive pain meds, should be able to push them (with an
| expectation of presenting accurate data of research/side
| effects/etc). Prescribing physicians are ultimately the
| best check. Even when lied to about addiction stats, they
| didn't seem to perform the appropriate check/balance as
| their profession would normally have done and sound alarms
| / stop prescribing. Instead, as a whole, they leaned into
| the idea that pain should be more aggressively managed than
| it has been in the past. They were all very slow to act
| even when addiction had been identified as a problem. The
| confluence of all these things has caused the industry to
| become introspective and change some things in hopes to
| avoid a similar repeat. Just like Enron did for finance and
| household accident data drives improving building
| guidelines. Software remains the Wild West without
| something similar in place.
|
| To circle back to the CPA example as that's what I'm most
| familiar with, it doesn't tell me not to work in a
| particular industry. Like, private prisons need
| accountants. But it tells me what type of accounting
| practices are acceptable. I'd imagine a similar example for
| the context of this topic, is you wouldn't be told not to
| work for an adtech company but in that employment you would
| be able to say certain types of data sharing is decidedly
| inappropriate according to your industry standards and you
| would be putting your career in jeopardy by building a
| feature sales requested. Furthermore you have things like
| whistleblowing hotlines and eventually other companies that
| couldn't work with your adtech company because doing so
| would be considered an ethics violation on their part. Etc
| etc.
| nedt wrote:
| We might not be the same. Every time someone asks for tracking
| anything I complain and question a lot. People hate me, but if
| there is no real use case for storing all information we can
| get I will veto as much as I can.
|
| The IT folks working in the advertising industry are much more
| the "who cares, everyone has all our data already anyway".
| boesboes wrote:
| Yes, because everyone on Hackernews is identical and working on
| the exact same stuff. It's not like it's a few companies
| enabling this and each marketing department going like oooooh i
| want that.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| Brother, I work on internal software at a non-tech company and
| have never generated a single revenue.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| These are not the same people, obviously.
| genevra wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway_2898 wrote:
| Posting here from an anonymized account about Meta. No one
| probably recalls that meta stopped most of their background
| location services(Remember Nearby Friends) on the main
| application ~2021-2022[1]. It was just not even worth a repeat
| NYT story with this much money on infra to collect locations.
|
| But, this is basically after they figured how to do "good enough"
| location targetting using IP and a bunch of this info this guy
| talked about. You don't actually need a lat, long, just the 1
| mile radius/city area is good enough to run ads and they have ALL
| of that.
|
| This was why meta's revenue dropped so much after apple's move,
| they could not fall back to collecting precise location. This is
| the last game in town. You shut this down, meta's precise
| targetting will suffer gravely, ads will become flakey.
|
| One last thing. You may ask, who are the businesses that need
| precise lat longs? are like this one[2]. These businesses are
| like whack-a-mole. They saturate the app market steal data get
| money and shit down when someone yells and in a few months and
| comeback again, rebranded and come back as another app. They
| exist not just to collect data but to act as an arbiter on who
| get eyeballs on IRL activities to influence behavior at the (Top
| of the funnel) TOFu. In the Worst. Possible. Way.
|
| [1] https://techcrunch.co/2022/05/09/facebook-to-shutter-its-
| nea... [2] https://www.joinpogo.com/
| itissid wrote:
| does incogni work to erase your data and prevent these SSP/DSPs
| from never collecting your data?
| jetbalsa wrote:
| I was just screwing around today with data like this. I was
| making it to have as a exhibit at a up coming event at my
| university
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/balsa.info/post/3lh7z776lbk2w
|
| You connect to a special WiFi SSID and compares your traffic to
| known tracking/ad domains (Pi-Hole Lists mostly) and the "food"
| is the packets being sent to those servers.
|
| its crude and has some high false positive rates, but it does
| have a chilling effect for me when exploring what data is going
| where
| sjtgraham wrote:
| > There's no "personal information" here, but honestly this
| amount of data shared with an arbitrary list of 3rd parties is
| scary. Why do they need to know my screen brightness, memory
| amount, current volume and if I'm wearing headphones?
|
| > I know the "right" answer - to help companies target their
| audience better! For example, if you're promoting a mobile app
| that is 1 GB of size, and the user only has 500 MB of space left
| - don't show him the ad, right?
|
| Author jumps to the incorrect conclusion here. The answer is
| fingerprinting.
| timsh wrote:
| The "right" answer is not the one I end up with but rather the
| version sold by the vendor. this is what Apple and Google would
| say.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| I think they are pretty clear if you read the documentation.
| Accessing to the exact value of these always need some
| privacy-related privilege on ios and android.
|
| Without those privilege, all you can get is an approximate.
| natdempk wrote:
| Yeah my mind also immediately jumped to fingerprinting.
| Somewhat required for anti-fraud to some extent, but also
| obviously used for more than that.
| debugnik wrote:
| The mention of a _" right" answer_, quotes and all, makes it
| clear they understand this argument is a farce, doesn't it?
| adeon wrote:
| Starting earlier this year I've set up a mitmproxy a lot on my
| entire home network, and often have it on for all traffic at
| times. I put up an old NAS and I'm abusing it as a mitmproxy tool
| for my home.
|
| There would be so much to write about what I've seen. I've
| thought of making a blog post. I use mitmproxy to check on
| sketchy apps and to learn in general.
|
| The information sent out is fascinating. I knew extensive
| telemetry is pretty norm these days, but it's another thing to
| see it with your own eyes. My exercise has also made the typical
| "yes, we collect data/telemetry, but it's
| deanonymized/secured/etc. and deleted after X days so no worries"
| sound very hollow; even if a company goes in good faith by their
| own rules, how am I supposed to trust the other 1000 companies
| who also do data collection. If someone hacked my mitmproxy
| itself and downloaded all the payloads it collected, they would
| probably know me better than I do.
|
| Random examples on top of my head from mitmproxy (when I say
| "chatty" I mean they talk a lot to server somewhere):
|
| I had GitHub CoPilot neovim plugin. I didn't realize how chatty
| it was until I did this (although I wasn't surprised either,
| obviously completions are sent out to a server, but it also has
| your usual telemetry+AB test experiment stuff). I had wanted to
| ditch that service for a long time so I finally did it after
| seeing with a local setup since open stuff has mostly caught up.
| Also it's not actually open source I think? I had no idea (I
| thought it would just be a simple wrapper to call into some APIs,
| but: no PRs, no issues, code has blobs of .wasm and .node:
| https://github.com/github/copilot.vim)
|
| Firefox telemetry, if it's turned on, is a bit concerningly
| detailed to me. I think I might be completely identifiable on
| some of the payloads if someone decided to really take a go at
| analyzing the payloads I send. Also I find it funny that one of
| the JSON fields says "telemetry is off". Telemetry is actually on
| on the menu (I leave it on purpose to see stuff like this); just
| in the JSON for some reason it says off. I'm not sure if that
| telemetry is meant to be non-identifiable though in the first
| place.
|
| Unity-made software (also mentioned in the article) send out a
| Unity piece at start-up that looks similar to the article,
| although I didn't take a deeper look myself.
|
| Author mentioned the battery: I also noticed that a lot of mobile
| apps are interested in the battery level. I didn't connect the
| pieces why but the article mentions Uber 4% battery surcharge,
| and now it makes a bit more sense.
|
| One app that has at least once been on HN at high scores starts
| sending out analytics before you've consented to any terms and
| conditions. One of the fields is your computer hostname (one of
| my computers has my real name in my hostname...it does not
| anymore). Usually web pages have "by downloading you accept terms
| and conditions" but this one only presented that text after you
| launch app before you get to the main portion. I never clicked it
| (still haven't), but I allowed the app mellow on background to
| snoop on its behavior.
|
| Video games: The ones I've tried seen mostly don't do anything
| too interesting. But I haven't tried any crappy mobile games for
| example. One unity game on the laptop, Bloons TD 6 sends out
| analytics at every menu click and a finished game sends a summary
| and is the "chattiest" game so far, although seems limited to
| what the game actually needs to do (it has an.online aspect). The
| payloads had more detailed info on my game stats though, they
| should add those to the game UI ;)
|
| Apple updates don't work through mitmproxy (won't trust the
| certificates). Neither do many mobile apps (none of the banking
| ones did, now I know what a mitm attack would look like to my
| bank app).
|
| Some requests have a boatload of HTTP headers. I've thought of
| writing a mitmproxy module to make a top 10 list. I think some
| Google services might be at the top that I've seen. (I think
| Google also has developed new HTTP tech, is it so that they can
| more efficiently set even more cookies? ;)
|
| I think anything Microsoft-tied may be chattiest programs overall
| on my laptop. But I haven't done stats or anything like that.
|
| Aside from mitmproxy, I'm learning security/cryptography (managed
| to find real world vulnerabilities although frankly very boring
| ones so far...), Ghidra, started learning some low-level
| seccomp() stuff, qemu user emulation, things in that nature to
| get some skills in this space. Still need to learn: legal side of
| things (ToSes like to say 'no reverse engineering'), how to not
| get into trouble if you reverse engineer something someone didn't
| like. I've not dared to report some things, and to not poke some
| APIs or even mention them because I don't know enough yet how to
| cover my ass.
|
| Modern computing privacy and security is a mess.
|
| I've worked a good part of my career at a DSP company (it would
| be in the box that says "Criteo" on it on the author's article).
| So I have some idea what companies in that space have as data.
| nipperkinfeet wrote:
| I am using AdGuard DNS and its absolutely sickening how many ads
| and trackers it is blocking on a daily basis. Just on my
| smartphone alone.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| I don't understand how this isn't considered an incredible
| national security issue, e.g., what stops an actor buying data
| for high value targets known to use certain apps, like the
| President or Prime Minister of a country?
| rsync wrote:
| How much money is tied back to, or generated from, wifi AP SSID
| databases for geolocation ?
|
| Because _wow_ that would be simple to spoof and chaff and spam.
|
| It's dinnertime here but if I had a few minutes I could make (my
| own house) appear indistinguishable from (Chase Center) from the
| perspective of SSID landscape.
|
| It would cost nothing and is trivially easy. Even if they pair
| MAC addresses that's not a big hurdle. I'll bet relative signal
| strengths are not measured.
|
| It might be a good flushing action[1].
|
| [1] https://kozubik.com/items/FlushingAction/
| vv_ wrote:
| Google's Geolocation Services used to charge 4$ for 1000
| requests to their Cellular/Wi-Fi Geolocationing Service.
| Essentially you send a list of Wi-Fi MAC addresses and their
| associated RSSI values and get back a latitude and longitude
| with an accuracy metric. It was surprisingly good, when GPS
| wasn't available (sub 50 meters accuracy).
| vanillax wrote:
| This is wild.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| From TFA:
|
| > This is the worst thing about these data trades that happen
| constantly around the world - each small part of it is (or seems)
| legit. It's the bigger picture that makes them look ugly.
|
| No it doesn't seem legit to me at all. Any of it.
| bigs wrote:
| This write up is fantastic
| ggm wrote:
| 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 crossmatched, to confirm
| "who you are" in some sense.
|
| There is no such thing as "private" browsing inside the factory
| installed browser, with factory installed DNS, and any kind of
| location data, or other cross-collating information along with
| your IP. The loss of privacy may be contextual and somewhat
| statistical, but it would be wrong to assume you weren't
| identified.
|
| What it does do, is let you see how bidding mechanisms in
| services like flights and hotels will change bid when the same
| location as you comes to request service and doesn't have the
| prior search cookie state. Thats useful I guess.
|
| "find things at a different pricepoint" cookie monster mode?
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| "Private browsing" is just a polite request for companies to
| pretend they didn't see you before
| dangus wrote:
| "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.
| Uptrenda wrote:
| What do you think a design would look like for the web and
| internet where users actually have privacy on it?
| sedatk wrote:
| It's a bit ironic that Privacy Badger extension finds 7 trackers
| on the article's page.
| dlikren wrote:
| It looks like these all come from the Reddit embed in the
| middle of the article. Default uBlock Origin settings blocks 13
| urls (and more, due to Reddit's frequent pings), but disable
| 3rd-party frames brings it down to 1 url (since the original
| embed was blocked).
| timsh wrote:
| oops, here comes the price of a nice-looking Reddit embed. next
| time I'll stick to a screenshot :) thanks!
| Khaine wrote:
| This is why I am so against letting Web Browsers have access to
| so much device information. Every time, a web dev says they
| should be able to push notifications, or get battery information,
| or whatever, this is why they should be ignored.
| udev4096 wrote:
| Total bs. Do not give location permissions to untrusted apps. If
| the app insists on it, use mock GPS feature on android which will
| spoof your location. Can we all please stop exaggerating the
| slopiness of normies with their pretentious acts of being shocked
| after not being cautious about their privacy? Privacy is not by
| default, you have to put some effort into it
| saagarjha wrote:
| Maybe privacy should be by default.
| monksy wrote:
| The people who reported about the Gravy analytics leak is
| 404media. They're an independent techincal media group that has
| been reporting on stories I haven't seen elsewhere. They're
| pretty awesome. I've personally paid-subscribed. (I'm not
| affilated with them, nor am I receiving comp to say this)
| nromiun wrote:
| How many people only turn on GPS for maps? Aside from that all
| tracking methods are pretty inaccurate anyway.
| nomilk wrote:
| > 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
| may not track by an _id_ , but could easily 'fingerprint' users
| (given how much other data is sent), so even without a unique ID,
| enough data would be provided for them to know who you are 99% of
| the time.
|
| Amended Dead Privacy Theory:
|
| The Dead Internet Theory says most activity on the internet is by
| bots [0]. The Dead Privacy Theory says approximately all private
| data is not private; but rather is accessible on whim by any data
| scientist, SWE, analyst, or db admin with access to the database,
| _and third parties_.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory
| K0nserv wrote:
| 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
| alexvitkov wrote:
| It's not the only technical control they have - every single
| datapoint an app can gather is ultimately provided from the
| OS. They could let you disable access to metrics that have
| proven to be useful for fingerprinting. They could also
| attempt block known tracking code - all games with IronSource
| ads will run the same tracker binary, byte for byte. There's
| a lot of things they could do, but don't, since in the
| mainstream they have a pretty good reputation when it comes
| to privacy.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| 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.
| xyzal wrote:
| I would like to bring attention to this project. They aim to
| function in an application firewall like manner and manage to
| block connections by category, classified by domain name. Android
| only though, and the 'full' version is available only on f-droid
| due to some anti-adblock-like Play store policy.
| https://trackercontrol.org/
| Jean-Papoulos wrote:
| By "location", the OP means country. So not exactly a GPS point
| to 6 decimals... This is the second time I've seen a post with
| this problem here.
| Einenlum wrote:
| There's also, latitude, longitude and IP.
| nedt wrote:
| But that latitude and longitude might still be the middle of
| some city or country and not an exact location. It's not
| really clear how close it is.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| The fact that your "do not track" preference makes almost no
| difference in practice? Depressing but not surprising...
| pandemic_region wrote:
| Related: has anyone else noticed the practice of using cheap
| commodity 'living room' appliances to get access to your data? A
| while ago I bought a ceiling light for my daughters' bedroom,
| brand unknown to me. It had a built-in speaker controlled via
| bluetooth, and dozens of light patterns and colors it could emit
| via a ring of small leds. My daughter was extactic looking at the
| youtube promo vid. Turned out that to use any of these features,
| you needed to install their app. Fine okay installing. Then the
| app demanded access to contacts and camera or it refused to
| connect to the ceiling light. Fine okay uninstalling the app and
| returning that crap.
| Arech wrote:
| [emotions redacted]
|
| Long ago there was XPrivacy project for Android that allowed to
| granularly set permissions for each app & system service and
| ensure they won't get the real private data. It's no longer alive
| these days, I guess. Can someone share their experience with the
| alternatives for the modern latest Android?
| PatronBernard wrote:
| > Moloco ads is a DSP network
|
| A digital signal processing network? A bit annoying to introduce
| an acronym without defining it. Great article otherwise.
| aprilfoo wrote:
| It seems still possible to avoid being tracked (protections,
| filters, degoogle, etc), and the business is not very interested
| in the minority willing to trade off functionality, practicality
| and ease for privacy. For how long?
| black_puppydog wrote:
| I realize this feels like a pipe dream, like a million miles away
| from our branch of reality in 2025, but I really think the entire
| online surveillance advertising industry needs to be burnt to the
| ground and (maybe, partially) rebuilt. Many of the problems we
| see nowadays are rooted in the fact that data is being collected
| and used to (supposedly) profitable ends.
|
| Sure, there may be the occasional honest actor in the industry,
| but they're so marginal and outcompeted by dishonest and shady
| ones that it really doesn't matter. IMHO the right move is to
| simply ban any collection that's not strictly necessary. Kind of
| like GDPR but without the "if the user agrees" exceptions.
|
| Reminds me of a regulation about artificial stone (?) being
| banned in Australia, not because it's impossible to use safely
| but because the regulator concluded that the entire supply chain
| is unwilling to and disincentivized from using the material
| safely, so the best move at this point was to ban it outright.
|
| Edit: found that article
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38634213
| Arch-TK wrote:
| This is one of the many good reasons to avoid the google app
| store but most apps in general.
|
| Let it be known, having an app to do something which used to be
| doable by a website is to me a red flag. Although I refuse to
| install anything other than what I genuinely trust.
| Developer_Tom wrote:
| Imo, the real takeaway here is that ad-tech isn't just tracking
| people -- it's that it's becoming a decentralised surveillance
| network where no single entity takes any responsibility. Even
| with "Ask App Not to Track," your IP, geolocation, and device
| fingerprint still end up being leaked! It shows that tracking
| isn't a feature anymore -- it's the business model.
| sharpshadow wrote:
| Punish Unity and Facebook even more.
| welder wrote:
| How do I dump a list of installed app identifiers to cross
| reference with the list of apps selling this data? [0]
|
| 0:
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ukgd0gIWd9gpV6bOx2pc...
| wslh wrote:
| Is it correct to assume that if you disable the GPS for apps the
| exact location is not sent or I am missing something?
| gfiorav wrote:
| 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 feed. Yep, as long as you
| logged in with a known account on both devices, they're now
| linked by device id. An all you do on those devices (regardless
| of the account) can be traced back to you.
|
| I read about this in "Chaos Monkeys" but it never really hit me
| until this experience.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| 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.
| moominpapa wrote:
| I really find this fascinating - great article. As an experiment
| if you like, can anyone identify anything about me from this
| post? And if not, why not? Would love to know.
| sheerun wrote:
| At the same time "know your location" notification is less it
| seems to ask (ask lawyers), also portals
| buro9 wrote:
| 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.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Mobile phones suck as computers. NetGuard PCAP files are must
| read if using a mobile phone as a computer.
|
| One setup that works reasonably well is
|
| NetGuard --> Nebulo --> DNSdist on own router
|
| On phone,
|
| (a) set DNS in Wifi to localhost, i.e., disable service
| provider DNS
|
| (b) set VPN to Block all connections without VPN
|
| (c) set Netguard to forward port 53 to Nebulo
|
| (d) set Nebulo to run in non-VPN mode
|
| (e) set DNS configuration in Nebulo to DNSdist on router
|
| On router, point DNSdist at nsd or tinydns serving custom root
| zone containing all needed DNS data. Apps like NetGuard,
| Nebulo, PCAPdroid, etc. allow one to easily export the DNS data
| needed for the zone file.
|
| There is at least one leak in this setup. Nebulo's "Internal
| DNS server" can only be set to Cloudflare, Google or Quad9. In
| theory this should only be used to resolve the address of the
| DoH provider and nothing else. But not allowing the user to
| choose their own DNS data source and forcing the user to keep
| pinging (querying) Cloudflare, Google or Quad9 is poor design.
| Those addresses are unlikely to change anyway.
|
| Using a browser in place of other apps seems like good strategy
| but the browser "app" is far, far more complicated than many
| open source "apps" and much more difficult to control.
|
| Firefox is not only filled with telemetry, almost no one
| compiles it themselves, it has more settings than any normal
| user can keep track of and it is constantly changing. Layer
| upon layer of unneeded complexity.
| oldherl wrote:
| I thought this was common knowledge among (at least) IT industry
| workers. It's been like this for a long time.
| afiodorov wrote:
| I wonder if Apple will extend their iCloud+ private relay service
| to apps as a result of this.
| megous wrote:
| With articles like these, I'm glad for my dumbphone. At least
| that sends data only to my mobile operator, hopefully.
| grues-dinner wrote:
| When someone wants to install an app rather then go to a website
| that could do the same thing, they are advertising that they are
| up to something nefarious.
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