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Wow, just like. . . .WOW. Mozilla found the AI girlfriend apps used an average of 2,663 trackers per minute, though that number was driven up by Romantic AI, w

Wow, just like. . . .WOW. Mozilla found the AI girlfriend apps used an average of 2,663 trackers per minute, though that number was driven up by Romantic AI, which called a whopping 24,354 trackers in just one minute of using the app.

coldtea 3y ago
What's a tracker in this context? Distinct parties interested in the data?
- charcircuit 3y ago
  and what exactly was sent? Sending personal information is much different than sending what pages you opened on the site (view counter).
  - autoexec 3y ago
    Sometimes just seeing what pages you open on a site is extremely revealing personal information. If what they were collecting wasn't meaningful they wouldn't be bothering to collect it.
- sgift 3y ago
  I think this is the article from *PNI Gizmodo is referencing: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/happy-valentines-day-romantic-ai-chatbots-dont-have-your-privacy-at-heart/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/article... - and here's the detail page for the AI Bot in question: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/romantic-ai/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/romanti... All I could find was this: > As part of our research, we looked to see how many trackers the app sends out when you use it. Trackers are little bits of code that gather information about your device, or your use of the app, or even your personal information and share that out with third-parties, often for advertising purposes. We discovered that Romantic AI sent out 24,354 ad trackers within one minute of use. That is a LOT of trackers (for reference, most apps we reviewed sent out a couple hundred trackers). Now, not all these trackers are necessarily bad. Some might be for legitimate reasons like subscription services. However, we did notice that at least one tracker seemed to be sending data to Russia, whose privacy laws aren't necessarily as strong as those elsewhere. So, probably requests to third parties?
  - autoexec 3y ago
    > Russia, whose privacy laws aren't necessarily as strong as those elsewhere. Are they somehow worse than the non-existent ones we have in the US?
    - coldtea 3y ago
      Also there's the "at least one tracker", which is out of 24,500+ trackers, making it even more insignificant. But they just had to mention it, as it's a popular baddie to single out.
wolf89618 3y ago
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jncfhnb 3y ago
Probably something like a keypress event?
- gkbrk 3y ago
  Who presses 24 thousand keys a minute?
  - XCSme 3y ago
    A troop of 24 thousand monkeys trying to write Shakespeare.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    240 key presses sending events to 100 trackers or something like that. Seems way more believable than 24k unique trackers?
ptek 3y ago
That's a lot of bandwidth :(, especially for people who don't have unlimited data on their cell phones or have wifi at home.

coldtea 3y ago

What's a tracker in this context? Distinct parties interested in the data?

charcircuit 3y ago
and what exactly was sent? Sending personal information is much different than sending what pages you opened on the site (view counter).
- autoexec 3y ago
  Sometimes just seeing what pages you open on a site is extremely revealing personal information. If what they were collecting wasn't meaningful they wouldn't be bothering to collect it.
sgift 3y ago
I think this is the article from *PNI Gizmodo is referencing: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/happy-valentines-day-romantic-ai-chatbots-dont-have-your-privacy-at-heart/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/article... - and here's the detail page for the AI Bot in question: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/romantic-ai/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/romanti... All I could find was this: > As part of our research, we looked to see how many trackers the app sends out when you use it. Trackers are little bits of code that gather information about your device, or your use of the app, or even your personal information and share that out with third-parties, often for advertising purposes. We discovered that Romantic AI sent out 24,354 ad trackers within one minute of use. That is a LOT of trackers (for reference, most apps we reviewed sent out a couple hundred trackers). Now, not all these trackers are necessarily bad. Some might be for legitimate reasons like subscription services. However, we did notice that at least one tracker seemed to be sending data to Russia, whose privacy laws aren't necessarily as strong as those elsewhere. So, probably requests to third parties?
- autoexec 3y ago
  > Russia, whose privacy laws aren't necessarily as strong as those elsewhere. Are they somehow worse than the non-existent ones we have in the US?
  - coldtea 3y ago
    Also there's the "at least one tracker", which is out of 24,500+ trackers, making it even more insignificant. But they just had to mention it, as it's a popular baddie to single out.

wolf89618 3y ago

[dead]

jncfhnb 3y ago

Probably something like a keypress event?

gkbrk 3y ago
Who presses 24 thousand keys a minute?
- XCSme 3y ago
  A troop of 24 thousand monkeys trying to write Shakespeare.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  240 key presses sending events to 100 trackers or something like that. Seems way more believable than 24k unique trackers?

ptek 3y ago

That's a lot of bandwidth :(, especially for people who don't have unlimited data on their cell phones or have wifi at home.