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A few years ago i bought a Samsung with a feature that when possible, it gives me the name of unknown caller, i guess from the database they were gathering from other people's contacts.

One day my neighbor call me, and i had not register his number, so Samsung shows "<his name> GRINDER", because someone else had him like that in their contacts ^^.

He was openly gay within the neightborhood but he was also working as some sales representant for real estate and he was not exactly happy when i told him Samsung was broadcasting his sexual orientation to unknown people he would call >< (not to mention he told me hadn't used grinder in like 7 years).



That seems absolutely insane! If this is (or was) actually happening, I’m surprised we haven’t heard more about this. As bad as your example is, I can easily think of way more damaging scenarios.


There is a rumor that Instagrams "People you might know" feature also works on physical proximity.


Instagram recently asked me for permission to “find devices on local networks”…


My understanding is that this is usually for ‘play on smart tv’ situations, but the permission is most unclear.


That's a common justification for access, but it is no assurance to how they will actually use the data they gain access to. Knowing how critical profiling is to the IG/FB business model, I bet it snatches a lot of data to exploit later.


iirc some samsungs come with truecaller or callapp, which do what you described.




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