Researchers found North Dakota's contact-tracing app covertly sending location and advertising data to third parties
North Dakota debuted a contact-tracing app in April which uses geolocation to track the spread of COVID-19.
Analysis by privacy research firm Jumbo has found the app sends location data to data advertising firm Foursquare, despite saying privacy policy that it won't share data with any third parties. The app's maker admitted to sending data from iPhones to Foursquare, but said it wasn't being used for commercial purposes.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more storiesOne of the first US states to roll out a contact-tracing app has been caught sending user data to third parties without permission.to try and curb the spread of the coronavirus inside the state.
by privacy research firm Jumbo has found that although the app says in its privacy policy that users' location data will be kept private, it sends data to third parties including Google and data intelligence company Foursquare.Specifically Jumbo found the phone's anonymous code was being transmitted to Foursquare, a company that specializes in passing location data on to advertisers.
Significantly Jumbo found the app was sending location data to Foursquare, along with something called an Advertising Identifier . IDFAs are numbers assigned to phones that help advertisers target them. This IDFA number was also being passed along to Google."Sharing what is supposed to be an anonymous code along with an Advertising Identifier has serious privacy risks," privacy research firm Jumbo wrote in its analysis.
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