I’m trying to understand how an app would even get that info in the first place, how that’s classified and why a mobile operating system even has a way to provide that data.
Am I correct in assuming that if an app is used without play store / play store framework that it would not be able to get access to that data?
Thanks!
Online purchases, stuff you’ve shared, monitoring your IP across the internet, your ISP, your “free to exploit me” email, the tracking id you use at the grocery store for discounts, pretty much everything you do and pay for that is not cash, is farming data to stalk you. These are also the places suggesting new content and generating search results when you look for new information. The two are entirely related, and there are no limits in place to remove manipulation from this feedback loop. You have no way of knowing that places like Amazon are designed to make direct searches impossible. The category options are ambiguous and several techniques are used to obfuscate results. This makes plausible deniability for any case against them for price fixing, but you are seeing the products and prices tailored to what they believe you will pay. It hasn’t been about dumb banner ads since internet 1.0. Everything you encounter is tailored to promote certain profitable or convenient behavior.
Stalking people looking for opportunities to exploit them is not only legal, it is encouraged as an industry by US political ineptitude in the most positive tint, and corruption in the most negative. It’s digital imperialism where everyone is a slave with no rights of ownership of individual identity and privacy; so long as it is restricted to the person’s digital identity. Proprietary hardware and software is a battle for a new age of feudalism. Neglecting ownership of one’s digital identity and property is a submission to serfdom. It is like stepping back one thousand years in human progress and development.