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The WSJ published their reporting (below), on August 7. Still, I
hope that this item will be of interest to a few here. The article
is behind a "paywall", but, we could potentially provide someone
having trouble reaching it, with a "fair-use" copy.<br>
<br>
On the whole, and to be certain, it must be understood that
CONTRACTORS perform work for customers, and their customers have
requirements (objectives), which need to be met. <br>
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<font size="+3"><b>"U.S. Government Contractor Embedded Software in
Apps to Track Phones"</b></font><br>
<b><font size="+1">Anomaly Six has ties to military, intelligence
agencies and draws location data from more than 500 apps with
hundreds of millions of users</font></b><br>
By Byron Tau<br>
<font size="+1"><b>The Wall Street Journal</b></font><br>
Aug. 7, 2020 10 00 am ET<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-government-contractor-embedded-software-in-apps-to-track-phones-11596808801">https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-government-contractor-embedded-software-in-apps-to-track-phones-11596808801</a><br>
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"WASHINGTON—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.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
App publishers often allow third-party companies, for a fee, to
insert SDKs into their apps. The SDK maker then sells the consumer
data harvested from the app, and the app publisher gets a chunk of
revenue. But consumers have no way to know whether SDKs are embedded
in apps; most privacy policies don’t disclose that information.
Anomaly Six says it embeds its own SDK in some apps, and in other
cases gets location data from other partners."<br>
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