Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Databroker Files: New data set reveals 40,000 apps behind location tracking (netzpolitik.org)

submitted 3 days ago by sp3ctre@feddit.org to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 16 points 3 days ago (2 children)

The obvious next question is: what features do these apps have in common? Do they share a development platform or ad network? Do they use Firebase or some other diagnostics/debug platform?

Because I suspect that they’re all using some sort of “free” or ad supported component that just happens to be owned by a shell company belonging to either a data broker or a company selling large amounts of data to one.

[–] phughes@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 days ago

I interviewed a bunch of years ago with a company called "xmode social" (I was in desperate need of a job. I fortunately did not get that one.) They had a framework that they paid app publishers in to include in their apps. That framework collected your location data and sent it to xmode who sold that data. That was their entire business AFAIK.

There don't need to be any shared features for companies to include shit like that in their apps. They just need a way to make the line go up.

[–] far_university190@feddit.org 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

There was recent hack on data broker use realtime ad bid stream for location without any code in app. Will link if find again.

Edit: https://feddit.org/post/6677139