Comment by mdaniel
1 month ago
> such as AccuWeather, GasBuddy, Grindr, and MyFitnessPal that collect your MAID and location and sell that to brokers.
Welp, that's the final straw I needed to nuke that fucking GasBuddy app from my phone. Goddamn I hate them so much
I've been bitching about GasBuddy since at least 2018 (I'm sure even further I'm too lazy to keep looking).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16776028#16776762
I've pretty much deleted all apps. I'm working on dumping my phone all together but shit like mandated 2FA is screwing that up.
At this point, 2FA is the only thing I use my phone for anymore. It's the only reason I even have a phone; I spent about a year without one until I had to for 2FA. But I don't need to carry it around anywhere for that. It would be inaccurate to call it a "mobile" device.
It wouldn’t be too hard to create a physical device that can only be used to set up and retrieve Authenticator-app style 2FA codes.
All you’d need is a camera to read QR codes, a display, a few kB of storage and some pretty basic processing.
But then I guess that storage would need to be encrypted with some sort of authentication. Hmm.
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Most systems that have 2FA have MFA, TOTP or FIDO2 key. That’s what I use. Never SMS as it is unsafe.
You can still use the app. You get asked both to have the app get access to the MAID, and get access to location. If this is a problem, it is a problem because you said Yes to both. You could have said No. You can change that choice now.
If you go to Settings -> Privacy, the top two options in iOS 18 are:
* Auto-deny Advertising ID access
* Which apps have location access ("X always, Y while using the app" is summarized right at the top)
I thank goodness I don't use iOS because I enjoy having the ability to use MY phone as if I own it and not Tim Apple
I haven't used android in a while, how is it different?
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It's a damn shame. I've stopped using pretty much all apps because I can't trust any of them. My phone is practically stock.
It's worse than you think.
There are popular third-party libraries, used by apps, offering whatever functionality.
Those third-party libraries do deals with whoever, to include into the library whatever code it is the whoever wants to get out onto a ton of phones.
I worked for a company in Germany, who wanted to get some Bluetooth base station detection functionality out into phones, so they could track people.
Company put Bluetooth base stations into a bunch of locations, and then paid a major third-party library to include their code.
Bingo. One week later, millions of phones being tracked.
When you install an app, you are in fact installing God knows what from shady friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend, who's got money.
Do not install commercial apps. Only install open source apps. Anything else, you're going to be abused, whether you know it or not.
> Do not install commercial apps.
This advice is about as practical as "go live in a cave". At some point, you have to decide whether avoiding the privacy harm limits your ability to function, and sadly, that is increasingly the case.
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I guess I'm an oldhead millenial or whatever, but I thought this was standard procedure among "computer savvy" people post-Snowden.
Crazy I work with Zoomers that install seemingly every dumb retail app so they can get a dollar off a Big Mac or whatever.
There's no reason for a "McDonalds App" to be on anyone's phone. I can wait a few minutes in line, thanks.
Stay away from Samsung. Their default apps (which you often can't uninstall or disable) collect massive amounts of data. The default Samsung keyboard that came installed with an old Galaxy I had was logging every single letter I typed in every app and sending it to a third party whose privacy policy said it was being used for marketing research, to determine my intelligence, education level, habits, attitude, etc.
I would _guess_ that the systemic solution to this problem is one of those whole device VPNs that doesn't choose to hide your location but rather blocks access to ad and tracker networks. I actually have DDG's Privacy Pro VPN <https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy-pro/vpn...> but my life experience has been that it breaks more things than it helps but I guess it's time to at least try it
Seems like one of those apps that would work fine from the website.
(a) I'm about to find out (b) at least some casual tire-kicking shows that their mobile website is just as ragingly dumb as the app is, so that actually makes me feel a little better - it's not that the app itself is stupid, it's that their dev team is
Genuinely curious, since I've never heard of the app until this very moment - do you actually find that you save a noticeable amount on gas? I tend to notice that prices are incredibly similar from station to station in whatever general metro area I'm in, to the point where it almost doesn't make a difference which station I go to. Has it actually shown a benefit wrt driving out of your way as opposed to stopping at the most convenient spot on your commute?
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