This post was made on 10/23/2018.
For a long time apps have used the location of the device they are installed on to enhance their performance. Some apps like Lyft and Uber, which are driving service apps, use your location to give both the user and the driver your location in order to figure out how the driver can pick you up and how they can get you to where you need to go. But this is not the only type of location sharing I’m talking about, I’m talking about the sharing of a users Internet history too.
App providers apparently need your Internet history to: “measure user reaction to app updates and other changes.” To make matters worse, the apps don’t even need you to give them permission to track your location, they use push notifications to do bypass the users permission entirely. Push notifications are used to keep the lifeline between the developer and the app in order to be regularly updated and refreshed without the user knowing. If the app is deleted, then this lifeline is cut between the developer and the app and the developer can target that user with advertisements of the app they just deleted in order to try and reel them back in.
Now not all app developers do this, but a majority of them do. They use tracking tools and services in order to target you with their ads. These tracking services, such as; Adjust, AppsFlyer and CleverTap, have the sole purpose to target the users Internet history just to sneak ads in to try manipulate the user into clicking the ad.
Now this push notification tracking can be used to to fix bugs in the app and make the app better, and easier to use. But of course companies and developers abuse them in order to try and keep the user attached to their platform. This also directly violates Google and Apples policies which states push notifications should not be used to target users with ads.
The fact that developers can get away with stuff like this is the reason why we have had so many data breaches over the years. Slimy business tactics allow developers to try and manipulate the user in order to keep them attached to their app. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that tactics like this can have unintended consequences. For example, developers can use these ads, even if they are not in the U.S., to push for their political agenda for specific users with specific Internet search history. This was a big problem for Facebook in the 2016 midterm elections and only now that they were caught doing it are they being questioned and fined by the government. Facebook wasn’t the only one effected by this data breach, pretty much all social media platforms were, but Facebook took the fall because its one of the biggest ones. It took the meddling of a U.S. election to get the U.S. public to care for the security of the users data and the big social media platforms are forced to actually protect user data from outside sources.
Now you can only imagine what apps can track without your knowledge; contact information, web history, location, etc, and they can do most of this without the users permission. This is absolutely disgusting. Developers should not be able to get away with this and should be held accountable to their actions and fined accordingly if they do violate users privacy. However, that’s probably not going to happen until it starts to get in the eyes of the American public or a huge scandal comes out because of this. In the end, companies and developers just want to make a quick buck and will do this until their caught doing it in a way the public doesn’t like. Companies need to be held accountable with what they decide to do with our data, it shouldn’t take a national scandal to get them to actually care for our data. Users are what make these websites functional and if you violate their trust behind their back, eventually users will figure that out and do their business elsewhere.
Cyberleech 