It seems like the drama that surrounds NSAand its famous surveillance tactics on citizens around the globe is never-ending, a new New York Times article describing the methods through which the American agency monitors our activity on the web. According to the article, those from NSA use data transmissions between Google Maps and smartphones to locate users with amazing accuracy, but neither Angry Birds do not escape, the information available through advertisements being used to identify smartphones and information about the age, gender and location of users.
The secret report noted that the profiles vary depending on which of the ad companies — which includes Burstly and Google's ad services, two of the largest online advertising businesses — compiles them. Most profiles contain a string of characters that identifies the phone, along with basic data on the user like age, sex and location. One profile notes whether the user is currently listening to music or making a call, and another has an entry for household income.
Most of this data is collected thanks to large advertising networks such as Google Ads, and the applications Facebook, Instagram and not only that, it provides very detailed data about the people who use them. Practically, the NSA takes this data thanks to the unsecured connections used by users on various occasions, so we are talking about a very large amount of information that reaches the agency's servers and is then used for identifications and locations without the users knowing.
Unfortunately, Apple can do absolutely nothing against these practices, but companies like Facebook and Google could improve their security systems to protect users' privacy more effectively.
