Give permission. Don't give permission. They know where you are anyway

[mangopenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone]

Using firefox in strict mode with ublock origin, cookie auto-delete, and a VPN to change your IP should stop location tracking and cross-site tracking. Sites will still know you've visited them and what pages you've been to for that session but that is impossible to stop.

[breadstickninja@lemmy.world]

Storing it and associating it with all the other identifying information collected.

[priapus@sh.itjust.works]

Yeah, a middleman you get to choose. That's a huge improvement. There are plenty of trustworthy VPN providers.

[cyborganism@lemmy.ca]

Tor over VPN

[cyborganism@lemmy.ca]

That's an uninformed statement.

You get to pick your provider. So pick one that you trust.

It's FAR better than without as your ISP is probably selling your traffic to third parties or at least monitoring it. Some VPNs don't.

[cyborganism@lemmy.ca]

Is that tinfoil hat comfortable?

[bilb@lem.monster]

None worth pursuing

[telorand@reddthat.com]

Easier to ask forgiveness than permission. Most companies are so big, getting caught is relatively cheap with how low the fines are compared to their annual profits.

It's just a line item on their expense sheets, anymore, and most people don't have the money to get the justice they deserve in court.

[morys@lemmy.ml]

You'd want to be using only Linux apps that weren't recording and reporting everything. Much easier to get in Linux than Apple/android

[mbourgon@lemmy.world]

Latitude and Longitude are in there. As is screen brightness. He does acknowledge that he is on Wi-Fi, but that’s still super suspicious

[misk@sopuli.xyz]

This we can expect but there’s also a trend to idolise solo developers or small firms but everyone can be shitty and everyone should be accountable. In this case a smaller developer steals user data do defrauds Unity most likely because they think they’re too small to be worth investigating.

[mrvictory1@lemmy.world]

Use a custom DNS and/or hosts file. You can cut them off the grid by blocking data upload to SSP. Don't install many apps, for games that can be played offline, play them offline.

[mrvictory1@lemmy.world]

It may have estimated location data with IP from Wi-Fi. Location Services turns on GPS but that is not the only way of getting location.

[yetanotheruser@lemmy.ca]

But when Firebase gets that network/IP change report, what information does it get? Because if it only gets the public IP address, the reported IP will still be the VPN one, not the real one, right? So, if that were the only information reported to Firebase, wouldn't you still be protected? Does Firebase block requests when you're using a VPN (this could be detected, for example, if certain aspects of the network have changed but the IP hasn't)? Is that what you mean with not getting push notifications when simulating a local IP with filters?

PS: From my research, the WiFi's SSID can also be used to track someone's whereabouts, but depending on where you are and how many networks have used the same SSID, it may work work well or badly. You can see that by going to https://wigle.net/ (which is a database on WiFi networks with some publicly-available information), go to the map, type in the SSID field, and click "Filter".

[scrollone@feddit.it]

Using a VPN means that all your traffic is routed through a possibly malicious actor.

[oxomoxo@lemmy.world]

Like Kevin Spacey?

[appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

Google hardcodes DNS into their hardware appliances...
So you'd need to block outgoing DNS requests except for your DNS server and god forbid you change location with a smartphone.

[hendrik@palaver.p3x.de]

I think this is about apps and not the operating system. But yeah, the stock ROMs also phone home to Google. You'd need to patch that. For example like custom ROMs like GrapheneOS do. I don't see another viable alternative. But that still leaves you with the issues with the apps mentioned in the article.

[lurch@sh.itjust.works]

It gets your unique tracking ID, so it knows you're the same person now with different IP. If you use apps that store location data in firebase (eg. find my device, fitness trackers, emergency alert apps) it will upload your GPS location and maybe nearby wifi names, if you set it to be extra precise.

[melvin_ferd@lemmy.world]

Surprising that this data never heard gets leaked. It's always my social security number