Privacy

Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads is a great introduction on how we’re all trackable, always, everywhere. It’s so easy to forget how simple this can be even though I’m a software dev myself. It’s also so easy to get a wrong glimpse of hope when Apple says it now has better privacy mode or prevents apps from tracking you.

I once had the idea to bring location obscuring to the iPhone. Similar concepts exist for Android. However, the problem is way bigger than simply faking one’s location data. You would need to implement it on a system level to randomize just everything from device uuid to brightness and battery life. And then there’s no way for honest developers to work with those. A user should then be able to provide much granular permission on an app basis.