Are my phone apps all sharing data with each other?

[u/kinkyfatoaf]

I am beginning to become interested in privacy now with flock cameras and increased surveillance. A few days I read an article about how your phone is a massive breach of personal privacy. A few minutes ago I ordered food from Wendy’s on DoorDash. Now as I browse on Reddit the Wendy’s subreddit pops into my recommendations. I have never looked up or read anything on that Subreddit ever before. How bad is the current state of phone surveillance? Maybe I should delete all apps other than apple products.

[u/YeetiestWave]

native apps gather way more telemetry than mobile websites. if you wanna cut down on tracking without going full tinfoil hat, delete app versions of food and shopping services and just use them through safari with a content blocker like adguard or brave

[u/Habikki]

Look into how data brokers operate and you'll quickly realize that it's not just one dimension that contributes to what you're saying.

LexisNexus, a data broker that I know very well back in a previous life where we purchased data from them to formulate risk scores that go beyond a simple FICO score, holds more information than you'd ever feel conformable anyone knowing. It's a combination of public information, and data collectors that attach more information about a signal, then attribute that information to an identity when they can... such as when you go from browsing, to logging in, to making a purchase.

To your question, no, Apple and Google do a very good job at isolating apps on a device from communicating with each other ON THE DEVICE, but any app can communicate externally to contribute to their own profile of you, or share that information with a data broker, to create a larger profile of you that others may tap into EXPECIALLY when the app can read what's called the Advertiser ID from the device that helps correlate an (and I'm using quotes here) "anonymous" identifier to pull information together. Which is likely what you're seeing.

Advertiser ID's can be changed on the device, but the next time you do something, such as do something that's authenticated as YOU somewhere, that new Advertiser ID is associated with your profile and it's like you never changed things. The power of big data at play.

You made a purchase on door dash, or even browsed, and that information was shared with a larger ad network which now knows... you like hamburgers with frosties. Reddit's ad network pulls that in and now you get more Wendy's ads. Which is a bit redundant for an advertisement to me, I just ate Wendy's for lunch, I don't want it for Dinner.

The gist is: You can anonymize yourself in a number of ways, VPN's, Proxies, "privacy" based browsers, TOR Networks. In the end, if one signal leaks out that can connect you with some piece of information, all that information is now associated with you and you get identified. The only real way to keep yourself off the grid, is to stay completely off the grid. You can get a separate device, with different credentials that never share with each other. But send a single email between the two or connect to the same WIFI network, and it's all connected. Do it enough times, they now know you have multiple phones and will profile you as someone that is privacy aware, usually just to sell you more privacy centric products.

Switch off. Go camping. Hug a tree. Avoid a bear. Accept that by being online comes with companies knowing more about you than you likely are ever aware of, and do your best to keep real information (like biometrics and SSN's) as confidential as possible.

[u/MatthewScythes]

its not actually your apps directly talking to each other, doordash, reddit, and google all buy data from the same ad brokers

[u/apps4realpeeps → u/MatthewScythes]

And provide, that's one of the crazy parts. It's amazing to me how many class action lawsuits have come and gone about aggregious data sharing and yet it only seems to be getting more intrusive 😞

[u/PM_ME_LOVELY_NIPPLES]

doordash and reddit both use the same ad networks to match your device id. turn off allow apps to track in your iphone privacy settings and it will stop happening

[u/JunDoRahhe]

Not likely they are not in the same bed. They got their own data sharing clusters for sure though

[u/Superb_Football_7783]

Just like when I had a conversation with my friends about VPN and my phone started showing VPN ads. I'm not super techy, I've seen videos people say to turn off a feature on your phone to eavesdropping conversations. I've done that, still seen ads on my Instagram whatever topics i was talking about.

[u/LeapIntoInaction]

Your phone is part of a universal communication, and some of it wants to sell you things. I don't take it seriously but, I've also long since sold my soul to both God and the Devil, and they can argue about that themselves.

[u/Ok-Bit8893]

Yes

[u/Sajgoniarz]

They don't. At least they don't do it directly.

There are several mechanisms how this happens, but overall scenario looks like this:
1. You use app X that is using N data collection/advertising platforms
2. You search Z at app X
3. That app is sending that search info to N ads platforms.
4. N platforms gets the info that somebody at that location searched for Z
5. You open app Y
6. App Y talks to ad platform O to display ads
7. Platform O happens to be in the N set (or close to it) and it decides to send you back ad about Z, because it's a popular search in your location and matches few other metrics
8. App Y displays you ad of Z

[u/ellen-82]

When you install an app on your phone, you quite often have to answer a question similar to "ask app not to share information". Not sure how that works though.