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

(timsh.org)
1957 points apokryptein | 3 comments | 02 Feb 25 17:07 UTC | HN request time: 0.422s | source
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theptip ◴[02 Feb 25 17:58 UTC] No.42910331[source]▶
> 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.

replies(9): >>42910433 #>>42910476 #>>42910497 #>>42910702 #>>42914420 #>>42915971 #>>42916080 #>>42919652 #>>42937487 #
sizzle ◴[03 Feb 25 02:56 UTC] No.42914420[source]▶
Straight up fingerprinting us without consent it’s pure insanity.
replies(1): >>42915984 #
ErigmolCt ◴[03 Feb 25 08:01 UTC] No.42915984[source]▶
They’ve basically turned every phone into a tracking beacon
replies(1): >>42918187 #
1. blueflow ◴[03 Feb 25 13:48 UTC] No.42918187[source]▶
I'm sure there is a choir of "told you so"-singers somewhere.
replies(2): >>42927794 #>>42945158 #
2. pizzafeelsright ◴[04 Feb 25 04:07 UTC] No.42927794[source]▶
Who thought lugging a transponder with GPS, facial recognition, microphone, and keylogger could lead to human tracking and privacy violations?

We all did and yet here we are.

3. ErigmolCt ◴[05 Feb 25 07:32 UTC] No.42945158[source]▶
Yeah, at this point, the surprise isn’t that it happened. It’s that people still pretend it’s not a big deal