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from the Every-breath-you-take-every-move-you-make dept.
No one here will be surprised by the size and reach of the data broker industry and the desire to identify and track individual users. From a data standpoint, the majority of human interaction now happens on mobile devices, and these devices end up collecting and storing a very large amount of our information. US privacy laws allow sharing and selling of anonymized data, which are those that do not contain Personally Identifying Information (PII), and the much ballyhooed GDPR imposes strict inform and consent requirements on collecting and using personal information. To comply with these laws many entities simply throw away all the personal information and keep the rest of the data, which sounds like a great thing until one realizes that it turns out to be relatively easy to deanonymize this data using otherwise innocuous data on the mobile device anyway.
The reason that so many apps report to third parties what other apps are installed on a phone is because these other apps create a remarkably unique fingerprint of each person. The aggregate of the installed apps and their relative usage turn out to be very unique for over 99% of people. So ad blockers can block cookies, and users can reset things like the Android Advertisement ID, but users can't reset or fake their app usage stats.
Some researchers looked at a data set of millions of people spanning 12 months and 33 countries and found that 91% of the people could be identified by looking at just the usage of four apps. They also looked at seasonal and cultural differences for identifying users. They found that people have more unique app fingerprints during summer months making them easier to identify then. They also saw significant variations in uniqueness across countries and found that American users are the easiest to identify while Finns have the least unique app fingerprints.
Sekara, V., Alessandretti, L., Mones, E. et al. Temporal and cultural limits of privacy in smartphone app usage [open]. Sci Rep 11, 3861 (2021).
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-82294-1
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 19 2021, @05:47PM (10 children)
It must be obvious to the most naive person alive that data collection is profitable. Corporations build billions of dollars worth of infrastructure for the purpose of collecting, storing, and manipulating that data, then making use of that data. There has to be a profit in this, or the corporations wouldn't spend all that money.
Why do we stand idly by, and allow some privileged segment of society to exploit us, and our data?
Europe's GDPR is a step in the right direction. We need that same step to be taken world wide. Every government in the world should be imposing restrictions on the data that may be collected, as well as how the data may be used.
Bottom line, any data collected for me, or about me, should be under my own personal control, and used for MY BENEFIT. It should only be used for Google's benefit if and when I specifically approve of some instance in which Google (or Facebook, or whoever) will benefit. My data is my data, it is not Google's data.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hubie on Friday February 19 2021, @06:22PM (1 child)
What is disturbing about this research paper is that, for mobile devices at least, the GDPR is worthless. The app developers are willingly and gladly throwing away all the data tied to personal information because they know they don't need it. Perhaps that is why this law was able to pass, that it actually gives the data brokers cover. They can honestly say they aren't collecting any personal information (the article mentions this is done in practice where the personal data is typically encrypted and the encryption key is thrown away). I think that if the next round of privacy laws expand the definition of personal information to be something like ANY and ALL data on a user's computer or device, then I'd bet they'd fight like hell to oppose it (unless they figured out a different way to track people).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @07:03PM
If you want privacy, you need to get rid of all 3rd part apps on your iPhone (and if you have an Android, ditch it for an iPhone, obviously).
Next, get rid of potential invasive standard Apple apps like stock market and Apple news.
Finally, delete your current Apple ID and get a new one, along with a new iCloud email address.
And enjoy the shitstorm when iOS 14.5 comes out and your web browsing automatically goes through apple’s proxies.
Free proxy service kind of kills Mozilla’s pivot to offering paid secure browsing as a service, but it was never viable anyway given the existing competition that was cheaper and actually had a track record, but that’s another story.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @10:07PM (5 children)
Left, right and center leaning people all agree that they don't want to be spied upon and tracked by these stalker corporations (unless the question is re-phrased to emphasize safety, fighting terrorism, etc. to manipulate people).
Yet, surveillance capitalism is the rule of the land-- further evidence that our "representatives" do not represent voters, but rather represent their donors.
So, the fix for surveillance capitalism, as so many other issues, must start with getting money out of politics, so our representatives represent their voter's interests instead of their donor's interests.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @11:00PM (3 children)
You can put an end to your contribution to the problem. Don’t use Android, don’t use 3rd party apps, don’t use social media.
Companies can’t trade in your data if you don’t hand it over to them in return for a bit of a dopamine hit from a meaningless “like”.
Normally you don’t blame the victim, but in this case it’s warranted.
The billions of people on social media remind me of the poster “Eat shit. 10 trillion flies can’t be wrong.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @11:32PM (2 children)
The tracking works just as well on iPhones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 20 2021, @12:06AM (1 child)
Not if you don’t install any 3rd party apps. Problem is Android is spyware, leaving iPhone as the only viable platform. How are 3rd party apps going to ask what other apps you have installed if you never installed any 3rd party apps in the first place.
Or did you not read the summary, which made the point that apps are able to identify you be asking what other apps you have installed.
No 3rd party apps installed? Then no 3rd party apps asking what other apps you have installed.
Unlike Android, where even the base apps and the whole phone is designed to gather your data, no fingerprinting required.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by CloudStroller on Saturday February 20 2021, @05:04AM
It sort of defeats a lot of the point of a smartphone if you don't have any apps installed except those which the vendor provided.
I must admit this is news to me, how is it that the operating system gives apps permission to see what else is installed? I thought apps are pretty well sandboxed from each other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 20 2021, @07:51PM
Donors understates the real issue. Representatives, for both parties, represent nobody except the political establishment. The political establishment is a mish-mash of career politician, intelligence agency career types, heads/chairs of major corporations (commercial + military industrial complex), and people who have "retired" from one formal role or another yet remain in the game.
The reason this understates the issue is because by speaking of their donors it suggests some distinct separation. That separation does not really exist. And so it leads to a much more insidious problem. Even if you managed to "get money out of politics" you'd have achieved pretty much nothing because the connection between corporations and politicians has become far more incestuous than just some sort of corrupter-corrupted type relationship.
(Score: 2) by gtomorrow on Saturday February 20 2021, @05:09PM
As far as the intent of your post, we are both on the same page...on the same sentence. As for the reality of the situation, that ship has long sailed, behind everybody's back I might add. Like Henry Paulson said in Too Big To Fail [imdb.com]...
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Saturday February 20 2021, @11:58PM
Data collection is only profitable in that you can sell it to someone who wants to sell it on for a profit. Like the market for antique fine art, it does not mean it is intrinsically worth the amounts paid. Eventually pieces of the data are sold to someone at the bottom of the pyramid, like a marketing company doing "targeted" ads for a client company making widgets, The client is probably paying far more for the service than it is worth in returns.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @06:23PM
Phone app data collection isn't possible through black holes, so I'm good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @07:29PM
Duh... they're the ones that weight over 300 pounds and have a waddling gait.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Friday February 19 2021, @07:52PM (1 child)
This must be Fake News. Otherwise, why would Bill Gates need to inject me with a chip?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 20 2021, @07:53PM
> This must be Fake News.
Nah, it wasn't posted by you.
(Score: 1) by js290 on Saturday February 20 2021, @01:47AM
Your data privacy matters. [e.foundation]
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Saturday February 20 2021, @09:05PM
Why should one app have any idea what other apps are installed? That's a security hole you could drive a truck through.
If some apps need this info, maybe that should be yet another permission?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.