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

Re:Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down throug... by theptip on Sunday February 02, 2025 @08:40PM (#42913991)

I think this is a slightly different case no? If the ad network is using a very high precision variable to soft-link anonymized accounts, then randomizing the values between apps should break that.

Your analogy applies more to things like trying to anonymize your traffic with Tor, where using such an anonymizer flags your IP as doing something weird vs other users. I’m not convinced simply fuzzing the values would be detectable, assuming you pick values that other real users could pick.

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Re:Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down throug... by amanda99 on Monday February 03, 2025 @10:04AM (#42918852)

I'm sure the ad networks do a lot more than use high precision variables for soft-linking.

These are professional networks with a ton of capital thrown behind them. They have pretty decent algorithms, heuristics, etc; and you don't make money (compared to the other data correlation teams) if you do simple dumb stuff. I'm certain they take into account those trying to be privacy-conscious, if only to increase their match rates to be competitive.

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