WTF!!! This went completely unnoticed!
A small U.S. company with ties to the U.S. defense and intelligence communities has embedded its software in numerous mobile apps, allowing it to track the movements of hundreds of millions of mobile phones world-wide, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Anomaly Six LLC a Virginia-based company founded by two U.S. military veterans with a background in intelligence, said in marketing material it is able to draw location data from more than 500 mobile applications, in part through its own software development kit, or SDK, that is embedded directly in some of the apps. An SDK allows the company to obtain the phone’s location if consumers have allowed the app containing the software to access the phone’s GPS coordinates.
+60% at the link. Rest behind a paywall.
www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-government-contractor-embedded-software-in-apps-to-track-phones-11596808801
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Yeah, as if this shit only works if the user allowes GPS coordinates! Complete BULLSHITZ!!!
According to the WSJ, two military veterans founded the Alexandria, Virginia-based marketing company Anomaly Six. The company has excellent relationships with the Department of Defense and several US intelligence agencies, says the article that the publisher has hidden behind a paywall.
Anomaly Six LLC pays smartphone app developers to integrate their internal tracking code into their applications. The trackers are apparently hidden in SDKs.
500 APPS!
h/t Anonymer Feigling