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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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vlan0 ◴[02 Feb 25 21:11 UTC] No.42911874[source]▶
Actually this could prove very useful for a resistance movement. Take them down with with their own medicine.
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josephg ◴[02 Feb 25 23:25 UTC] No.42912974[source]▶
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.
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ericjmorey ◴[03 Feb 25 01:34 UTC] No.42913953{3}[source]▶
They would make adjustments so that their details are protected, but the regular user is not.
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1. toast0 ◴[03 Feb 25 03:24 UTC] No.42914575{4}[source]▶
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.