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

(timsh.org)

1957 points apokryptein | 1 comments | 02 Feb 25 17:07 UTC | HN request time: 0.229s | source

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AyyEye ◴[02 Feb 25 19:03 UTC] No.42910846[source]▶

> 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.

replies(1): >>42910882 #

maximilianthe1 ◴[02 Feb 25 19:08 UTC] No.42910882[source]▶

>>42910846 #

A lot of people have "autobrightness" on. I'd think brightness doesn't help much here

replies(2): >>42910896 #>>42911562 #

1. sky2224 ◴[02 Feb 25 20:38 UTC] No.42911562[source]▶

>>42910882 #

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.

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