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Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They're Not Keeping It Secret (nytimes.com)
Dozens of companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds. They say it's anonymous, but the data shows how personal it is. From a report: The millions of dots on the map trace highways, side streets and bike trails -- each one following the path of an anonymous cellphone user. One path tracks someone from a home outside Newark to a nearby Planned Parenthood, remaining there for more than an hour. Another represents a person who travels with the mayor of New York during the day and returns to Long Island at night. [...] An app on the device gathered her location information, which was then sold without her knowledge. It recorded her whereabouts as often as every two seconds, according to a database of more than a million phones in the New York area that was reviewed by The New York Times.
At least 75 companies receive anonymous, precise location data from apps whose users enable location services to get local news and weather or other information, The Times found. Several of those businesses claim to track up to 200 million mobile devices in the United States -- about half those in use last year. The database reviewed by The Times -- a sample of information gathered in 2017 and held by one company -- reveals people's travels in startling detail, accurate to within a few yards and in some cases updated more than 14,000 times a day.
At least 75 companies receive anonymous, precise location data from apps whose users enable location services to get local news and weather or other information, The Times found. Several of those businesses claim to track up to 200 million mobile devices in the United States -- about half those in use last year. The database reviewed by The Times -- a sample of information gathered in 2017 and held by one company -- reveals people's travels in startling detail, accurate to within a few yards and in some cases updated more than 14,000 times a day.
Most apps are complete shit whose sole purpose is to track you, show you ads, and sell the information about you.
If I install an app (very rare these days), if it asks for my contacts and my location information, I uninstall it.
If people would understand how much of their privacy they're giving up to asshole marketers, they'd be uninstalling this shit and realizing that most apps provide nothing that a web page can't give you.
I have very few apps on my phone, and have pretty much decided that most mobile apps are something I can live without.
I simply refuse to use location services, because the majority of that isn't going to benefit me, it's going to benefit some asshole ad company.
Fuck that, fuck apps, and fuck ad companies.
I recently visited a retirement home, for a community event which was held there. Nobody knew me there, and I didn't talk to or identify myself to anyone, I just listened. Shortly afterwards, I started seeing ads for the retirement home in my Android phone browser. I can only conclude that Google is sharing my GPS location with advertisers...
I was in my home and in bed by 9. My apps are disappoint.
Google doesn't need to share your GPS location in order to serve you the proper ad, they just need to know your location. They can serve you that ad without sharing that location to anyone.
Then next logical step would be to experimentally test this. Get a group of random people with Android phones and have them record the ads that they see on their phones over some span of time. Then have them spend an afternoon visiting a retirement home. Repeat the process of recording what ads they receive. If everyone is suddenly getting retirement home ads, it's a good indication that your location data is being sold.
Wait, what? How do you guys not know how this works? Location based advertising has been around for years. How do you possibly not know that one of the biggest ad agencies on the planet (Google) DOESN'T do this?
Remember when GPS chips started showing up in cell phones to "improve" our safety with 911 calls? There were a lot of privacy advocates that said it will undermine privacy and anonymity. Surprise! We were right. Now the FCC is mandating all cell phones beginning in 2019 to be privacy adverse. Better start leaving that addictive toy at home if you don't want Big Brother to watch over your shoulder. And pull the fuse on your Big Brother features on that new car too.
I was basically going to say something similar but add that iOS only allows an app access to location service "while using the app", otherwise, permission is refused by default.
Apple are pathological about battery usage, and quite rightly also take privacy far more seriously than most other companies, thus the reason iOS allowed you control over apps well before Android starting implementing similar controls - minus Google services that is, because, you know, Google is All Knowing.
Google doesn't need to share your GPS location in order to serve you the proper ad, they just need to know your location. They can serve you that ad without sharing that location to anyone.
I think that that is acceptable. It's when they share information about me, presumably anonymous or not, that it violates privacy. And it's not like we as consumers have a choice. If you buy a smartphone (which some will say is essential to a lot of jobs nowadays) you choose between Apple and Google; both of whom willingly share your data with lots of other people. Most of which come with apps like Facebook preinstalled as bloatware which tracks your information and sells it even if you don't use the app (you should be able to disable it though).
You have to go to a lot of work to protect your data, and even then, are you really?
It's got to the point where you can't protect your privacy easily and function in modern society. It has gone beyond consumer regulated- we're at the point where we need some sort of government regulation on who can share data and sell your information.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch