from Hacker News

Everyone knows your location, Part 2: try it yourself and share the results

by mtlynch on 4/17/25, 1:41 PM with 70 comments

  • by ebfe1 on 4/20/25, 1:16 AM

    Not exactly related but on the topic of finding target's location, A few years ago i used to run a little demo of capturing probe wifi ssid network on prefered network list of nearby devices and used https://wigle.net/ to identify places that people has visited... it was eye opening for some people in the audience for sure.

  • by ddxv on 4/20/25, 2:28 AM

    I have something similar:

    https://appgoblin.info which let's you see trackers installed on mobile apps and an Android app that lets you see those on your phone.

    I'm working on automating a flow similar to the OPs but with an emulator so it can run on a server, but it's pretty difficult.

    If anyone has advice I'd love to hear it. My biggest problem is how finnicky getting the rooted emulator plus apps is.

    My current flow for mitm and waydroid is here: https://github.com/ddxv/mobile-network-traffic

    Hope anyone has some advice!

    Edit: just want to mention that the OPs flow is definitely better for capturing real data and endpoints, but I didn't see how I could automate it?

  • by 3abiton on 4/20/25, 7:27 AM

    I know this topics comes up ever so often here, but this is really amazing demo. A reminder that on Android you can use tools like XPL-EX (previously XprivacyLua) to heavily block such calls and libraries, or something simpler even like something like [App Manager](https://muntashirakon.github.io/AppManager/).

  • by 0x008 on 4/20/25, 5:59 AM

    We all kind of know this is true, but it’s always really eyeopening to see to what extent these companies know everything about us.

    Even worse is, I think, that somehow they are allowed to sell all the data and that you can basically buy data about everybody easily online[1]

    [1]: https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-databroker-files-wie-uns-apps-un...

  • by lrvick on 4/20/25, 8:47 AM

    You actually can opt out of this. Personally I have not had a cell phone subscription in ~5 years and only use cash IRL.

  • by timsh on 4/17/25, 7:53 PM

    author here to answer any questions or discuss an app

  • by bix6 on 4/20/25, 12:44 PM

    Most of us need cellphones so are we just out of luck?

  • by tedunangst on 4/20/25, 5:22 PM

    Has anyone else actually tried it themselves?