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Comment on ICE to Buy Tool that Tracks Locations of Hundreds of Millions of Phones Every Day

Thanks for including the mirror, OP.

Companies that obtain mobile phone location data generally do it in two different ways. The first is through software development kits (SDKs) embedded in ordinary smartphone apps, like games or weather forecasters. These SDKs continuously gather a user’s granular location, transfer that to the data broker, and then sell that data onward or repackage it and sell access to government agencies.

The second is through real-time bidding (RTB). When an advert is about to be served to a mobile phone user, there is a near instantaneous, and invisible, bidding process in which different companies vie to have their advert placed in front of certain demographics. A side-effect is that this demographic data, including mobile phones’ location, can be harvested by surveillance firms. Sometimes spy companies buy ad tech companies out right to insert themselves into this data supply chain. We previously found at least thousands of apps were hijacked to provide location data in this way.

I really despise these practices. I don’t know how people can build these tools with a clear conscience.

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otacon239@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
That’s easy. You just ignore your conscience because money speaks louder to these people.

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- Venator@lemmy.nz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Or you use confirmation bias to tell yourself it’s an innocuous use case that won’t hurt anyone.
  
  Or you use the bandwagon argument of “everybody else is doing it, so why can’t we”
  
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  - otacon239@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Or even worse, “if we don’t it, someone else will anyway”
    
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    AcidiclyBasicGlitch@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The Peter Thiel Paradox (also the name of my new wave band) “It’s inevitable/you’re only fighting progress, and any regulations will turn it into an authoritarian nightmare. Which is what it’s turning into anyway.”
    
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Cruxifux@feddit.nl ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Jesus fucking Christ. Time to delete the two games I’ve ever downloaded. Dunno if that even helps at this point.

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- Beacon@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It's not specific to games, it's all apps that have ads
  
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  - Cruxifux@feddit.nl ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I should have just went back to the flip phone like ten years ago.
    
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- SL3wvmnas@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I switched to /e/ a while ago, they have a feature called advanced privacy. commercial Lemmy clients like Connect and Raccoon have trackers embedded and are blocked automagically. ^I use Jerboa btw^
  
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- limerod@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  You can instead use apps which block trackers. I can recommend 3.
  
  Netguard with tracker filters enabled, PersonalDNS filter – a fire and forget DNS filter app, or Adguard android app from Adguard website.
  
  The 1st one needs payment to access some pro features but can also block internet connection to all your apps.
  
  The 2nd one is a simple DNS blocker which can have millions of rules and won’t choke under the load.
  
  The last one is not Foss or available on fdroid like the 1st two are, but is much more powerful than the 1st two combined.
  
  Pick your tools and limit information now.
  
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gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It’s the same for anyone who works for Meta or MS or Google or Anduril or whatever these days: you look at your comp package that’s worth roughly half a million annually, and you say

Image

They have been paying people to not have morals for quite a while now.

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grue@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

I don’t know how people can build these tools with a clear conscience.

Have you seen the job market for programmers lately? It feels like it’s almost all for AI slop, abusive rentier middleman business models that add no real value, ~~defense~~ war contractors, or all of the above at once.

That’s not to say that it’s acceptable for people to work those jobs with a clear conscience; it’s to say that for a bunch of people the only ethical options would be to remain unemployed or leave the industry.

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- njordomir@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I’ve been seeing exactly that. Reading through these job descriptions is a bit depressing. I can’t virtue signal my lack of morality and unthinking subservience to my potential employer hard enough to make cutoff to become “Director of AI Shilling” or a “Dark Pattern Consent Violation Engineer”.
  
  I know the kind of environments that won’t work for me. This will always limit the jobs I can and can’t work and I’m generally okay with that. I would love some of that bountiful defence contractor money, but I can’t ethically justify doing work that harms others or limits their freedom. Advertising tech would have been a good fit for me… if I had no sense of ethics.
  
  It’s a tough realization that my gaming consoles, GPS Smart Watch, and fancy modern over-engineered car only became possible because tons of money was poured into building out related tech for defence and surveillance.
  
  I imagine the cognitive dissonance must be really strong in someone working for some of these companies that have monetized governmentally sanctioned or corporately opportunistic civil rights abuses. Then again, we’re often kept apart, working in our own little areas where we’re safe from having to see the whole horrifying machine.
  
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interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

build these tools with a clear conscience.

Because if they don’t their masters they will become destitute and starve while homeless

And all social interaction happen at veiled gunpoint

Under these conditions it is no surprise at all that conscience plays no role whatsoever, it is just a savage free-for-all for survival happening under our cursed star, an insane 10 billion years long churning of thinking meat, consciousness behind birthed into the wreckage, screaming uncomprehendingly at what is happened until it soon it is just as easily, mercifully and meaninglessly snuffed out again.

Fortunately we have a shot at scorching the surface of this planet thanks to global warming and really the question is, can we make it happen before we genocide ourselves, leaving this planet’s biosphere still capable of sustaining the horrors of life ?

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- treadful@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  You should really talk to some real in-the-flesh people.
  
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  - interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I met some real people this week, they were watching advertising.
    They thought the government cared about them.
    One wanted to upgrade their car to add another 100 horsepower they cannot use anywhere.
    Another told me, he does not like raising cows but he had to get more cows to make it more economical to raise cows.
    They were all bummed out that the end of the end of the week was upon us, and soon they would have to work 40 hours in the next 5 days, doing things they stopped liking doing a long time again, if they ever did at all.
    
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