6 ms·

> there was some startling behavior by a household name: Yelp. It was receiving a message that included my IP address -- once every five minutes. A message tha

• mixmastamyk 7y ago
  In the header or in the payload? The second is not typical and a clue something fishy might be going on.
  • threeseed 7y ago
    The second is incredibly common almost the default. Most libraries will just collect as much info as they are able to, put it in JSON and ship it to some server. That includes your IP address.
    • IggleSniggle 7y ago
      Can you provide a source for this? I haven’t noticed this happening, although I believe the information is available in aggregate data. Of course, I also use uBlock etc so quite possible I simply haven’t noticed the trend.
      • karambir 7y ago
        Can confirm companies do this. I have helped build custom analytics solutions for android and iOS where apps dump literally anything and everything they can get data of. Product Managers are so inclined to scrape everything. I was surprised few years back when we could get device battery stats, nearby wifi ssids and even connected audio output device, if any. Later moved on to other roles.
        • ryantgtg 7y ago
          As an example of how simple it is to get this info, check out the readme on this really popular React Native component: https://github.com/react-native-community/react-native-device-info https://github.com/react-native-community/react-native-devic... I’m not implying it’s a creepy component. This component captures some really useful information, depending on your needs. But yeah, simple stuff. And to back up an earlier comment in this thread, IP address is part of the user agent payload. That’s exceptionally common data to see, through browsers and apps. It doesn’t take a fancy library to capture that info. I really wanted to be alarmed by this article, but I left with more questions than answers. And I’m guessing Amplitude is bummed by this press. They actually responded to say they don’t share data with 3rd parties, yet their name is peppered throughout the article, with implications that they are sneaky and nefarious.
          • Tsubasachan 7y ago
            They all say that, words are cheap. On topic: your phone has many sensors and apps will use them. The only way to stop this is to literally disable the sensors. No more GPS, no more WiFi/Bluetooth scanning. Obviously this limits the functionality of your phone but it does work.
    • tinus_hn 7y ago
      It doesn’t really matter if it’s common. It’s not acceptable to do that.
      • threeseed 7y ago
        It's no different to your IP address coming in the request headers.
        • StrangeDoctor 7y ago
          Unless you’re behind a nat, home uses a 192. office uses 10. Favorite coffee shop uses 172. You're letting internal details leak and give another factor of correlation
        • tinus_hn 7y ago
          ‘collect as much info as they are able to, put it in JSON and ship it to some server.‘ is different from your IP address being known to that server.
• 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
  If I send a message over a VPN or something similar, does that apply?
  • dahfizz 7y ago
    Yes, your IP address on the VPN tunnel is sent with every packet.
    • 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
      Does that one give my rough location?
      • jsizzle 7y ago
        In the US it would give at least the city/metro area.
        • giancarlostoro 7y ago
          You mean of the VPN.
      • dahfizz 7y ago
        It would give the location of the VPN server you're connected through.