Some apps are sharing very sensitive information, such as an individual’s
sexuality or HIV status. And even though Grindr said it would quit sharing HIV
status, Google allows third parties to learn what apps you use—and if
advertisers know you use Grindr, they can make a pretty safe guess as to your
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it asks you personal questions about your drug use, political party, sexual
proclivities, and which side of the bed you like to sleep on. This info is used to
help select matches for you, but the company is also sending that information to
an adtech company called Braze.
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which it was able to use to discover the real identities of cell phone users as well
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political protesters. “They can see the places you go every moment of the day,
whom you meet with or spend the night with, where you pray, whether you
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story reported.
THE BUSINESS OF SELLING DATA
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shadowy network of hundreds (or maybe thousands) of third parties known as
“data brokers” (or sometimes the “adtech industry,” though the two terms are
not precisely interchangeable) collect and process data from many distinct
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data, browser history, loyalty programs, social media, credit card transactions,
connected devices, information scraped from web sites, market research, and so
on. Some of it is publicly available, and some of it is purchased.
These are companies you probably haven’t heard of. They use a unique
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know all about: They know which buttons to push or levers to pull and when to
get you to do what they want.