[dzdt]

If you install 100 apps on your phone, and 50% are participating in the kind of ad network that this data is sourced form, and 10% of the apps convince you to enable location services either by having a plausible need for it or by dark patterns or by your carelessness, that means there are still multiple sources where this information gets out. The math is on the trackers' side, not the users'.

[gruez]

>If you install 100 apps on your phone

Why do you need 100 apps? Moreover why do you need 100 apps that have location permissions? Both android and ios makes it easy to tell which apps have location permissions. The list should be a very small list, and limited to "while using app".

>and 10% of the apps convince you to enable location services either by having a plausible need for it or by dark patterns or by your carelessness, that means there are still multiple sources where this information gets out.

I'm not claiming that nobody is getting picked up by data brokers. The fact that they're in business implies that there's enough people careless enough to make it a viable business. But what I am claiming that such tracking isn't too hard to avoid. You can see some people in this thread who think otherwise, thinking that they need to go of the grid or switch to burner phones, when they all need to do is spend 1 minute to check the location permissions list.

[doublerabbit]

> Why do you need 100 apps?

You don't. But a high percentage of the population will install apps for the sake they've been offered to install it.

I use eBay, I get bombarded by eBay telling me to install their app for 10% off. I use Gmail for work, if I don't use their app, I have the search engine to tell me to use their app. Facebook is an app, WhatsApp is an app too. Bejeweled Deluxe is an another app and $Reality_TV_show wants you to install their app. Your local supermarket has an app to give you % off your shopping list and probably not to far off in the future oxygen will be an app.

Some venue for a ticket for that odd one-off gig requires an app and every single restaurant order at the table has different app. You're then forced to install the app to use your Dishwasher, Fridge, TV, WiFi Router. I bought a new heater as my old one broke this winter and if I desire to configure WiFi for it, you guessed it I have to install an app.

And that's how you you end up with 100 of apps that are never really used, leaking information, spying on you and never deleted because people don't. I bought Christmas presents and I was unable to track delivery information without installing an app, I had forgotten about that until now. Thanks for reminding me you, can watch me delete it. That again is how you end up with apps.

We use discord at work and when I walk past co-workers screens they are within multiple of dead discord servers. They never leave and it's not just discord I've seen people idling in dead channels on IRC. I just question why and walk away as if the server is dead, I leave.

Hanging on to things that are never needed again is what we are best at it seems. FOMO?

> 1 minute to check the location permissions list.

Most users are not you and I, they don't know about permissions. They just want to accomplish what they set out to do. And if you do remove that permission; that app refuses to co-operate frustrating the user, nagging them until they do re-enable that permission.

It's now rather than how it used to be. Smart humans using a dumb phones, the now is dumb humans being used by smart phones.

* With sympathy to those who are actually mute/non-verbal, that must suck.

[array_key_first]

You should install the absolute minimum amount of apps possible and should prefer a website whenever you can. And, of the apps you do install, install them from trusted open source repositories, and allow them the absolute minimum permissions to do whatever you need them to do. They're tools for you.