All that app tracking gets collected into bulk saleable units 'casue you've been sold down the river.
POSTED BY: 1KIKI
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 04:35
VIEWED: 1232
PAGE 1 of 1
U.S. Government Contractor Embedded Software in Apps to Track Phones
Anomaly Six has ties to military, intelligence agencies and draws location data from more than 500 apps with hundreds of millions of users
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-government-contractor-embedded-softwa
re-in-apps-to-track-phones-11596808801?mod=hp_lista_pos
For the non WSJ subscriber, there's this
Inside One Of Big Brother's 'Location Harvesting' Contractors, Which Tracks 'Hundreds Of Millions' Of Phones
A Virginia-based software company founded by two US military veterans with backgrounds in intelligence has been tracking hundreds of millions of mobile phones across the world, according to documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.
The company, Anomaly Six LLC, draws location data from over 500 apps - partly through their proprietary software development kit (SDK) which they've paid to embed directly in some of the apps, while the company gets location data from partner providers. The SDK allows the company to obtain a user's location if they have allowed the apps in question to access the phone's GPS coordinates.
App publishers often allow third-party companies, for a fee, to insert SDKs into their apps. The SDK maker then sells the consumer data harvested from the app, and the app publisher gets a chunk of revenue. But consumers have no way to know* whether SDKs are embedded in apps; most privacy policies don’t disclose that information. Anomaly Six says it embeds its own SDK in some apps, and in other cases gets location data from other partners. -Wall Street Journal
* https://www.wsj.com/articles/your-location-data-is-being-soldoften-wit
hout-your-knowledge-1520168400?mod=article_inline Your Location Data Is Being Sold—Often Without Your Knowledge
Anomaly Six holds contracts with several branches of the US Government - although they told the Journal that they 'restrict the sale of US mobile phone movement data to nongovernmental, private sector clients,' according to the report. Private sector clients - typically marketing companies or others in the advertising space - buy and sell geolocation data, sometimes 'reselling it to government agencies or contractors' according to the report.
And as the Journal notes, in the case of Anomaly Six, "the direct collection of such data by a business closely linked to US national security agencies is unusual."
Founded by defense-contracting veterans who spent most of their careers in close contact with government agencies, (the veterans) tailored their operation to interface with national-security, according to interviews and court records.
"Anomaly Six is a veteran-owned small business that processes and visualizes location data sourced from mobile devices for analytics and insights," the company told The Journal in response to questions for the article. "We leverage detailed location data from numerous first-party sources to provide insights into groups, behaviors, and patterns."
The company acknowledges the "intense scrutiny" surrounding government access to private location data - but insists they aren't breaking any laws, and that the data it peddles is 'commercially available.'
Anomaly Six said it would support regulation to require more disclosure by apps of how data is collected and used. The exact apps the company partners with couldn’t be determined and the company declined to comment, citing confidentiality agreements. The partnerships between data brokers and app makers are typically closely held trade secrets within the world of commercial-data sales. -WSJ
Marketing expert and founder of the Location Based Marketing Association, Asif Khan, says government access to harvested consumer location data has been a longstanding problem for the industry - and has insisted that app-makers provide greater transparency with consumers reg
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
"It’s really alarming to learn about companies like this that claim to have years’ worth of location data from all over the world. Revelations like this just keep coming," said Georgetown University law professor Laura Moy, who directs the school's Communications & Technology Law Clinic.
"Users have no idea that when they install a weather app, a game, or any other innocuous-seeming app that their private location data is going to be harvested and sold. Apparently that’s what’s happening here, and we have no transparency into the practice."
Alarming? Is it really anymore? Nobody else seems to care.
Put this on the list of things I've been telling people for years that was happening but they just said I was nuts.
Totally not going to worry about it. Especially since I don't have a phone, and if I ever go back it's just going to be a flip phone without any apps.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
U.S. Government Contractor Embedded Software in Apps to Track Phones
Anomaly Six has ties to military, intelligence agencies and draws location data from more than 500 apps with hundreds of millions of users
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-government-contractor-embedded-softwa
re-in-apps-to-track-phones-11596808801?mod=hp_lista_pos
For the non WSJ subscriber, there's this
Inside One Of Big Brother's 'Location Harvesting' Contractors, Which Tracks 'Hundreds Of Millions' Of Phones
A Virginia-based software company founded by two US military veterans with backgrounds in intelligence has been tracking hundreds of millions of mobile phones across the world, according to documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.
The company, Anomaly Six LLC, draws location data from over 500 apps - partly through their proprietary software development kit (SDK) which they've paid to embed directly in some of the apps, while the company gets location data from partner providers. The SDK allows the company to obtain a user's location if they have allowed the apps in question to access the phone's GPS coordinates.
App publishers often allow third-party companies, for a fee, to insert SDKs into their apps. The SDK maker then sells the consumer data harvested from the app, and the app publisher gets a chunk of revenue. But consumers have no way to know* whether SDKs are embedded in apps; most privacy policies don’t disclose that information. Anomaly Six says it embeds its own SDK in some apps, and in other cases gets location data from other partners. -Wall Street Journal
* https://www.wsj.com/articles/your-location-data-is-being-soldoften-wit
hout-your-knowledge-1520168400?mod=article_inline Your Location Data Is Being Sold—Often Without Your Knowledge
Anomaly Six holds contracts with several branches of the US Government - although they told the Journal that they 'restrict the sale of US mobile phone movement data to nongovernmental, private sector clients,' according to the report. Private sector clients - typically marketing companies or others in the advertising space - buy and sell geolocation data, sometimes 'reselling it to government agencies or contractors' according to the report.
And as the Journal notes, in the case of Anomaly Six, "the direct collection of such data by a business closely linked to US national security agencies is unusual."
Founded by defense-contracting veterans who spent most of their careers in close contact with government agencies, (the veterans) tailored their operation to interface with national-security, according to interviews and court records.
"Anomaly Six is a veteran-owned small business that processes and visualizes location data sourced from mobile devices for analytics and insights," the company told The Journal in response to questions for the article. "We leverage detailed location data from numerous first-party sources to provide insights into groups, behaviors, and patterns."
The company acknowledges the "intense scrutiny" surrounding government access to private location data - but insists they aren't breaking any laws, and that the data it peddles is 'commercially available.'
Anomaly Six said it would support regulation to require more disclosure by apps of how data is collected and used. The exact apps the company partners with couldn’t be determined and the company declined to comment, citing confidentiality agreements. The partnerships between data brokers and app makers are typically closely held trade secrets within the world of commercial-data sales. -WSJ
Marketing expert and founder of the Location Based Marketing Association, Asif Khan, says government access to harvested consumer location data has been a longstanding problem for the industry - and has insisted that app-makers provideNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
What I found interesting was the very specific details of HOW.
Because in tracking down the HOW, it exposed an entire ARMY of WHO is allied against the private citizen in all of this, from private business to think tanks to government spooks .
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME