US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data

Re:US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone lo... by random6547545 on Wednesday May 16, 2018 @09:56AM (#17082362)

It's android for the hardware manufacturers and OS crapware getting location data.

For iOS, assume every app using your location is selling the data. That means every app using a map or location smoothing SDK (GPS jumps around, there are services to smooth it out), since the map SDK providers (and there's not many) are selling your data even if the app itself isn't.

Google, Apple, Microsoft etc are pretty careful for good reason. Anyone below that is probably selling it.

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Re:US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone lo... by chatmasta on Wednesday May 16, 2018 @10:55AM (#17082885)

Every app that has access to nearby WiFi SSIDs (or even just the one you’re connected to) can also turn this data into location data.

In fact I don’t think that is even a gated permission on iOS.

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Re:US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone lo... by gergles on Thursday May 17, 2018 @10:42AM (#17091655)

This isn't a user-gated permission but an Apple-gated one. Apps can't retrieve the nearby SSID list unless they have the "Hotspot Helper" entitlement from Apple. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/networkextension/n...

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Re:US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone lo... by chatmasta on Thursday May 17, 2018 @01:07PM (#17093166)

Good to know, but that’s only marginally better, as a malicious app developer only needs to come up with a legitimate reason for the entitlement.

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