I’m trying to understand how an app would even get that info in the first place, how that’s classified and why a mobile operating system even has a way to provide that data.
Am I correct in assuming that if an app is used without play store / play store framework that it would not be able to get access to that data?
Thanks!
All due respect to my fellow lemmings, but the ones in these comments are vastly over complicating this. It’s extremely simple - you give that info away, and you do it happily. Here’s an extremely simple example of every single one of your questions:
You subscribe to websites with particular political leanings. The content you engage with on social media falls in certain political camps. You interact primarily with people that also have those leanings. You block or avoid content that is not to your politcal liking. Every like and subscribe is your personality and political affiliation.
You searched “symptoms of (insert thing here).” You ordered a next brace on Amazon. Your doctor sends your invoice to your Gmail account. Cvs emails you your receipts.
See politics.
Google literally sells everything you do. It’s their business model. Every time you’re signed in with Google it’s tracking what you do. Every email you receive. Everything you click on. Every item you purchase. Every review you fill out. Google sells it all, and you’d be amazed how fast they do it. Fun experiment, go buy something - jeans, a shirt, shoes, drums, and guitar, whatever from a new place you haven’t shopped before. Go buy it and have the invoice go to your Gmail account. Then get on Instagram…time how long or far you scroll before you see an ad for a similar product. Perhaps even a brand you comparison shopped.
You tell it all these things. Whether you realize you’re doing it or not, you tell it everything it wants to know just by using your phone. Google sells it, instametathreads buys it, learns more, and then sells what it learns back to Google and advertisers. Rinse, repeat.
Clarification, Google doesn’t sell the info itself, it guards that jealously, they sell targeted advertising. They say “we can make sure your advert gets to the people who want your stuff” to the ad companies and sell advertising space on that premise. The ad companies don’t know your political leanings, but Google does and makes its money by targeting you with ads relevant to that and other aspects they’ve identified about you.
Google/Meta don’t sell the info specifically because that info is how they provide their “unique” service.