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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: 0s | source
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qingcharles ◴[02 Feb 25 20:40 UTC] No.42911578[source]▶
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)

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_heimdall ◴[03 Feb 25 01:01 UTC] No.42913708[source]▶
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.

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ironmagma ◴[03 Feb 25 01:43 UTC] No.42914006[source]▶
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.
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1. vladxyz ◴[03 Feb 25 02:10 UTC] No.42914174{3}[source]▶
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.