New Data Set Reveals 40,000 Apps Behind Location Tracking ⇥ netzpolitik.org

Ingo Dachwitz and Sebastian Meineck, Netzpolitik:

A new data set obtained from a US data broker reveals for the first time about 40,000 apps from which users‘ data is being traded. The data set was obtained by a journalist from netzpolitik.org as a free preview sample for a paid subscription. It is dated to a single day in the summer of 2024.

Among other things, the data set contains 47 million “Mobile Advertising IDs”, to which 380 million location data from 137 countries are assigned. In addition, the data set contains information on devices, operating systems and telecommunication providers.

This is, somehow, different from the Gravy Analytics breach. The authors note this data set includes fairly precise location information about specific users, and they got all this in a free sample of one day of Real Time Bidding data. This is all legal — at least in the U.S.; German authorities are investigating and have threatened sanctions — able to be collected by anyone willing to either pay or become a participant in RTB themselves.