ICT Security-Sécurité PC et Internet

A New York Times investigation has found that apps such as GasBuddy and The Weather Channel are among at least 75 companies getting purportedly “anonymous” but pinpoint-precise location data from about 200 million smartphones across the US.

They’re often sharing it or selling it to advertisers, retailers or even hedge funds that are seeking valuable insights into consumer behavior. One example: Tell All Digital, a Long Island advertising firm, buys location data, then uses it to run ad campaigns for personal injury lawyers that it markets to people who wind up in emergency rooms.

The Times reviewed a database holding location data gathered in 2017 and held by one company, finding that it held “startling detail” about people’s travels, accurate to within a few yards and in some cases updated more than 14,000 times a day. Several of the businesses whose practices were analyzed by the Times claim to track up to 200 million mobile devices in the US.

The data being sold is supposedly anonymous, as in, not tied to a phone number. The Times could still easily figure out who mobile device owners were through their daily routines, including where they live, where they work, or what businesses they frequent.

 

 

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

 

https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2013/12/21/privacy-in-the-digital-world-shouldnt-we-talk-about-it/

 

https://www.scoop.it/t/securite-pc-et-internet/?&tag=tracking

 

https://www.scoop.it/t/securite-pc-et-internet/?&tag=Privacy

 

https://www.scoop.it/t/securite-pc-et-internet/?&tag=Big+Data

 

Millions of apps leak personal identifiable information such as name, age, income and possibly even phone numbers and email addresses. At fault are app developers who do not protect ad-targeting data transmitted to third-party advertisers.

 

“The scale of what we first thought was just specific cases of careless application design is overwhelming,” said Roman Unuchek, security researcher, Kaspersky Lab, who introduced his research here at the RSA Conference on Tuesday. “Millions of applications include third party SDKs, exposing private data that can be easily intercepted and modified – leading to malware infections, blackmail and other highly effective attack vectors on your devices.”

Data sent unencrypted over HTTP can be collected by cybercriminals that share the same Wi-Fi network, or by an ISP or even by malware installed on a target’s home router, researchers said.

 

Not only can unprotected data be collected, but it can also be intercepted by a cybercriminal who can modify it to show malicious ads, enticing users to download a trojan application, which turn out to be malware, according to Unuchek.

 

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

 

https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2013/12/21/privacy-in-the-digital-world-shouldnt-we-talk-about-it/