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

Re:Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down throug... by sjtgraham on Sunday February 02, 2025 @07:42PM (#42913535)

> There's no "personal information" here, but honestly this amount of data shared with an arbitrary list of 3rd parties is scary. Why do they need to know my screen brightness, memory amount, current volume and if I'm wearing headphones?

> I know the "right" answer - to help companies target their audience better! For example, if you're promoting a mobile app that is 1 GB of size, and the user only has 500 MB of space left - don't show him the ad, right?

Author jumps to the incorrect conclusion here. The answer is fingerprinting.

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Re:Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down throug... by timsh on Sunday February 02, 2025 @07:56PM (#42913664)

The “right” answer is not the one I end up with but rather the version sold by the vendor. this is what Apple and Google would say.

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Re:Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down throug... by j16sdiz on Monday February 03, 2025 @02:24AM (#42915807)

I think they are pretty clear if you read the documentation. Accessing to the exact value of these always need some privacy-related privilege on ios and android.

Without those privilege, all you can get is an approximate.

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Re:Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down throug... by natdempk on Sunday February 02, 2025 @09:18PM (#42914225)

Yeah my mind also immediately jumped to fingerprinting. Somewhat required for anti-fraud to some extent, but also obviously used for more than that.

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Re:Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down throug... by debugnik on Monday February 03, 2025 @03:45AM (#42916215)

The mention of a "right" answer, quotes and all, makes it clear they understand this argument is a farce, doesn't it?

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