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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: 0.278s | 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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gruez ◴[02 Feb 25 20:59 UTC] No.42911768[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.

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.

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ActorNightly ◴[03 Feb 25 00:25 UTC] No.42913397[source]▶
>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.

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gruez ◴[03 Feb 25 01:06 UTC] No.42913740[source]▶
>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?

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ActorNightly ◴[03 Feb 25 03:42 UTC] No.42914692[source]▶
Why do you inherently trust Apple?

Remember, the big celebrity photo leak happened because of a vulnerability within Apple Software.

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1. gruez ◴[03 Feb 25 04:23 UTC] No.42914958[source]▶
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.