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Wolfie Christl Profile picture
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2 Apr, 16 tweets, 7 min read
Location data secretly gathered from smartphone apps is potentially flawed, biased, untrustworthy or even fraudulent.

Overview of data harvesting companies who claim to help fighting the virus by providing data on the movements of millions #covidwashing

Ongoing thread:
Cuebiq, data on Italian smartphone users:
Unacast, data on US smartphone users:
X-Mode Social, data on US smartphone users:
Umlaut, data on German/EU smartphone users (sources in German):
Cuebiq, data on US smartphone users:
Foursquare, data on US smartphone users: enterprise.foursquare.com/intersections/…
"For academics, non-profits, and governments, we are actively donating SafeGraph data. Hundreds of these collaborators are actively working with [it] ... researchers have used SafeGraph data to understand coronavirus spread"

SafeGraph, data on US users: safegraph.com/dashboard/covi…
Placer, another location data company, who claims to track the movements of millions based on data from smartphone apps, provides covid-related analytics mainly for commercial clients, e.g. on visits for pharmacies in the US.
placer.ai/blog/promising…
placer.ai/blog/
Cuebiq, Unacast, X-Mode, Umlaut, FourSquare, SafeGraph, Placer and others are tiny to medium-size companies who gather huge amounts of data from apps.

Google is at a completely different level, uses 'data from users who have opted-in to Location History':
Facebook also provides location data for aggregate analytics ('COVID-19 Mobility Data Network'). The data sharing policy looks at least better than others.

However, Cuebiq and Camber Systems (never heard of this company) are also part of this initiative:
"X-Mode is also the source of location data that defense contractor Culmen International is using to map the virus' spread for federal agencies"

@levinsonc's investigation into location data brokers, their data sources, and how they approach app vendors:
Gravy Analytics, a marketing data firm whose subsidiary Venntel sold data on the movements of US citizens gathered from smartphone apps to DHS ICE, CBP and DEA: gravyanalytics.com/blog/covid-19-…
PlaceIQ.

They just acquired FreckleIOT, another location data harvesting firm (adexchanger.com/mobile/placeiq…). Oracle (oracle.com/us/solutions/c…) and Adobe (adobe-audience-finder.com/data_partner/p…) resell PlaceIQ data. Experian is a strategic investor (placeiq.com/2019/08/experi…).

On covid-related location data/tracking services by Phunware (who was hired by the Trump Campaign and sued by Uber for ad fraud) and Verint Systems (according to the Intercept, the CDC is among their clients):
"Flawed, incomplete smartphone location data is being used to fight COVID-19"

Good summary about the use of mobile location data and its problems/implications by @KateKayeReports: fastcompany.com/90489173/flawe…

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More from @WolfieChristl

Wolfie Christl Profile picture
16 Nov
So far the most comprehensive report on how all kinds of mobile apps share or sell location data with data brokers, who in turn sell it to US military and defense contractors, all without the users' knowledge.

The mobile app ecosystem is totally broken.
vice.com/en/article/jgq…
Who is to blame?

- Tech giants Google+Apple and lobbyists from many industries (especially in advertising/marketing) who fought any regulation
- US politicians, who didn't pass appropriate legislation
- EU politicians, who don't get the GDPR enforced
- App vendors who don't care
It's a systemic fail, and it's the whole surveillance-based web and app economy that is failing.

In many cases not even app vendors know who they actually sell user data to. However, they do know that the shady SDKs they embed into their apps share data in an uncontrolled way. Image
Read 10 tweets
Wolfie Christl Profile picture
2 Nov
So, Facebook (semi)automatically creates a kind of discussion forum ('crisis response'), everyone in the affected area is notified about it and can post disturbing photos/videos or misinformation, completely unmoderated #wtf @facebook
Seriously, I CANNOT believe that FB doesn't even have dedicated moderation resources for these kinds of 'crisis response' forums.
The crisis started a few hours ago. It's ongoing and FB still lets people post toxic stuff every minute.

I thought I've seen every kind of irresponsible business conduct by this billion-dollar corporation, but this beats everything.
Read 8 tweets
Wolfie Christl Profile picture
15 Sep
Android apps from dating to fertility to selfie editors share personal data with the Chinese company Jiguang via its SDK that is embedded in the apps, including GPS locations, immutable device identifiers and info on all apps installed on a phone.

Report: blog.appcensus.io/2020/09/15/rep…
Jiguang, also known as Aurora Mobile, claims to be present in >1 million apps and >26 billion mobile devices. Which seems wildly exaggerated.
jiguang.cn/en/

Anyway, researchers found Jiguang's SDK in about 400 apps, some of them with hundreds of millions of installs.
According to the paper, Jiguang’s SDK is "particularly concerning because this code can run silently in the background without the consumer ever using the app in which it is embedded". Also, the SDK uses several methods to "obfuscate and hide" its "behavior and network activity".
Read 17 tweets
Wolfie Christl Profile picture
14 Sep
"The personal details of millions of people around the world have been swept up in a database compiled by a Chinese tech company with reported links to the country’s military and intelligence networks, according to a trove of leaked data" theguardian.com/world/2020/sep…
Data includes "dates of birth, addresses, marital status, along with photographs, political associations, relatives", data scraped from social media and "information which appears to have been sourced from confidential bank records, job applications".
abc.net.au/news/2020-09-1…
Zhenhua Data looks like the Chinese version of US firms such as Babel Street, which sold its social media monitoring and data analytics products "to nearly every major defense, national-security or law-enforcement agency" in the US.

babelstreet.com
Read 15 tweets
Wolfie Christl Profile picture
2 Sep
"A threat intelligence firm called HYAS …is buying location data harvested from ordinary apps installed on peoples' phones around the world …and claims to be able to track people to their 'doorstep'."

Systemic misuse of data from apps and 'advertising': vice.com/en_us/article/…
"HYAS' location data comes from X-Mode, a company that started with an app named 'Drunk Mode,' designed to prevent college students from making drunk phone calls and has since pivoted to selling user data from a wide swath of apps"
According to an X-Mode spokesperson quoted by Vice, they 'obfuscate any user IDs' and they 'aggregate devices using generalization' when they sell location data gathered from apps. Whatever this means.
Read 7 tweets
Wolfie Christl Profile picture
1 Sep
Amazon is hiring 'intelligence analysts', who should work
on 'sensitive topics that are highly confidential, including labor organizing threats against the company' and spy on 'organized labor, activist groups, hostile political leaders'.

Via @jfslowik / amazon.jobs/en/jobs/102606…
Amazon's list of enemies, to be targeted by their corporate intelligence agency:

'hate groups, policy initiatives, geopolitical issues, terrorism, law enforcement, and organized labor'

...plus 'activist groups' and 'hostile political leaders'.
Here's another Amazon job listing with a similar description:
amazon.jobs/en/jobs/121361…

In both cases, 'preferred qualifications' include:

'Previous experience in Intelligence analysis and or watch officer skill set in the intelligence community, the military, law enforcement...'
Read 10 tweets

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