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See the Thousands of Apps Hijacked to Spy on Your Location
- toomuchtodo 2y agoRelated: Candy Crush, Tinder, MyFitnessPal: See the Apps Hijacked to Spy on Your Location - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651115 - Jan 2025
- mvdtnz 2y agoYou're linking to this comment section.
- xnx 2y agoI thought that too, but it looks like 404media published the same article on two different sites.
- spondyl 2y agoTo clarify for anyone wondering, 404 Media and WIRED have a partnership so WIRED will occasionally publish their content and they hope to collaborate together on articles (although I'm not sure if this was one of them)
- dang 2y agoComments moved thither. Thanks!
- steeeeeve 2y agopaywall
- NelsonMinar 2y agoAnother article on this story without a paywall: https://www.wired.com/story/gravy-location-data-app-leak-rtb/ https://www.wired.com/story/gravy-location-data-app-leak-rtb... Mobile devices are pretty good at protecting location privacy these days: Android at least puts up a fuss if something wants location data. Are they also tracking via IP geolocation and ad surveillance?
- ungreased0675 2y agoWhy is location so valuable?
- baby_souffle 2y agoProximity lets you infer lots of things. If you have location over time, you can learn a lot about where a person spends their time which lets you infer what they like to do which advertisers will pay a premium for.
- voisin 2y agoAnyone have any insight into how they translate on scale location data to usable marketing data like you describe?
- baby_souffle 2y agoI haven't been in the industry for the better part of a decade but at least back then it was possible to see which grocery store(s) you went to versus drove past using the location data. Through other means, we could obtain your receipt / purchase data (never use PII when signing up for a discount program!) Now I know you're willing to drive past the cheap store to buy expensive produce at the bougie grocery store. If you're a high end retailer and your market is "affluent, healthy people", you're going to pay for a list of people that demonstrate some sort of preference for expensive, healthy things. Or, if my sales team is paying attention to what the data teams are finding, they'll get the cheaper grocery store to buy your info, too. "Hey, you're already driving past, here is $discount to come shop here instead..." Spend a lot of time at bars? Cool. We have people that want to buy your contact details. Most of those bars are queer friendly? Cool, we have a different bucket to sort you into and a different set of marketers that'll buy contact info from that bucket. You can learn a TON about a person from where they do (or, do not!) spend their time but in the real world and online.
- yread 2y agoFull list of 12k apps: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ukgd0gIWd9gpV6bOx2pcSHsVO6yIUqbjnlM4ewjO6Cs/edit?gid=1257088277#gid=1257088277 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ukgd0gIWd9gpV6bOx2pc... It seems about 2.7k are iOS apps.