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by mrweasel 1313 days ago
> What they collect is literally nothing special.

For the most part I agree, but it depends on the owner of the phone. Danish politicians have increasingly been using TikTok. It doesn't take a Chinese genius to correlate the location of two or more MPs during the current talks, regarding how to form the next government, to gain insights into how that could possibly pan out. They've basically stuffed a tracking device into the pockets of the most important politicians in the country and are now able to know when they meet.
2 comments
sofixa 1313 days ago
Isn't this one of the reasons why phone permissions (at least on Android) have the option to share location data with an app only when it's in use?
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slashtab 1312 days ago
I don't know for sure but sneaky apps stills gets the location data through scanning nearby devices, looking for nearby wifi addresses, bluetooth, network traingulation etc. Few of these doesn't give them the exact location but still if you're a person of interest thar may be enough to connect the dots.
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sofixa 1312 days ago
> sneaky apps stills gets the location data through scanning nearby devices, looking for nearby wifi addresses, bluetooth, network traingulation

All of those are also gated behind permissions like location, at least on Android.

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clement_b 1313 days ago
Yes, true. I didn't think about that, but again, this isn't something new, relying on a more agressive than average tracking tech. West is just concerned about how it may be used.

Strava was similarly dangerous at times [0]. The difference is that the west has a strong grasp on western companies and what they do with the data, but what prevents the US to use the location data from, say, key Twitter users in other countries? From my understanding, it's legally possible for the govt to access that data. No one (really) budges.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42853072.amp

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