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Insurance company Allstate and its subsidiary Arity unlawfully collected, used, and sold data about the location and movement of Texans’ cell phones through secretly embedded software in mobile apps, according to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Lol. They were trying their damndest to get me and my family to install that. I'm like... there's a bit of a conflict of interest there. I can see some value in having location data of your family, who's driving too fast, if someone's in an accident. I will absolutely not be sharing that data with the company that earns money for its shareholders by outperforming the statistical likelihood of paying me money, by finding every way possible to not pay me money.
Cool. Punish them with jail time. No? No consequences you say? Okay then, I guess.
Shocked. I am shocked.
Someone needs to SLAM them.
As opposed to say Apple, Microsoft or Google?
That probably IS the "secret" software. Lol Plug a phone into your car? Insurance company gets the info one way or another.
Might even be as "sophisticated" as a Facebook advertisement..
As opposed to say, everybody. It's so freakin' hard to actually stay private these days. Annoying as fuck.
Not refuting this standard practice of collecting and selling data, including location, but this “article” is from a security software marketing blog.
Also, fuckin Ken Paxton sues EVERYONE.
I like the name and shame, maybe someday a company will care about the shame. But really, calling a phone app "secret software" is a lot stranger than an app sending info back to base.
It’s my understanding that the “secret software” is not the app itself, but code embedded into the app, that track your location and send it back to Arity. And it’s not one particular app, but many apps that were paid to add the code.
Well yeah. The apps main advetised purpose isn't going to be "we track you and sell the data". Every giant corporations app has tracking software embedded in it.
We shouldn't just roll over and take it though. I can't tell if you're saying "we should know better, of course they're all doing this shit" - which I agree with - or closer to "it's their app(s), they can do what they want, and we shouldn't expect them to be transparent", which I very much disagree with.
Im definitely in the first camp.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’re not understanding: it’s not only the insurance company’s app doing the tracking; it’s potentially any app that asks for location data.
Sometimes apps ask permission to use your location data and you find yourself wondering, why does this app need to know where my phone is?
This is one possible reason.
Whenever you are asked to share your location data with an app and there’s no clear reason why you might need to, deny the app that permission.
I’ll concede that maybe it’s me that is not understanding. 😊
Yes, that's why it's not "secret software". They all do it.