Thread · 5 tweets · 15 Jan 2020

If you want to read about the outstanding work done to understand how dating apps share intimate details with third parties, I highly recommend this thread as having the highlights and the pointers:

One thing however that @WolfieChristl touches upon but that bears highlighting: this is only possible because Google and Apple actively enable it. They have the means to prevent it, and the means to police it, but instead they profit from it.

The key behind this surveillance is the Mobile Advertiser ID, or MAID as the adtechbros like to call it. It's an identifier that never needed to exist and that Apple and Google make available — to anyone — for the sole purpose of enabling your tracking.

This is something on which Apple could put some money where its mouth is. So long as they support mobile IDs all their excellent work on ITP will look like just a way to drive business into apps, where they control the money.

But more importantly: it's great that @NOYBeu and @Forbrukerradet are suing, but what of the enablers? Browsers, mobile OSs are user agents and when they choose to share data for their own ultimate benefit they should be treated as the data controllers that they are.