FTC sues data broker that tracks locations of 125M phones per month

[Jets]

I saw this link on a another site I frequent, interesting read about device tracking. I don’t know the source website but it looks legitimate.

Link:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/08/ftc-sues-firm-for-selling-location-data-that-can-track-abortion-clinic-visits/

Regain your privacy! Adopt /e/ the unGoogled mobile OS and online services

[tcecyk]

Integrating those brokers sdks (or sdks they buy from) is an additional income for App developers that use any type of location data for their real functionality. Users want the function of the App (good games, car rental, shopping discounts etc) and can’t help but inflate those markets by their human nature. You can restrict it on the level of law (GDPR) and deliver hefty fines, but with some opt-in dialogues it can be agreed to and most users will if the core function of the App is barred.

I browsed through Location Data Brokers | Electronic Frontier Foundation what the current pick of companies are that sell location data - and a longer article by The Markup with an overview of those - There’s a Multibillion-Dollar Market for Your Phone’s Location Data – The Markup

it’s depressing - for most ! as /e/ offers the option to have your cake and eat it - e / os / tracker-list · GitLab - but it will be a cat+mouse game in network techniques, dns blocking is the least effort blocking mechanism, App developers can do more sophisticated exfiltration that doesn’t involve any dns at all and is hard to disrupt if you want to use the App itself.