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Comment by cyberlab | Hacker News Reader

Remember: some apps check for what apps are installed on the device, and if they see this installed they can deduce you're poisoning the well.

Also if you want to research obfuscation and how it thwarts surveillance, check these:

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/11/obfuscation_a...

https://www.science20.com/news_articles/obfuscation_how_to_h...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/24/obfuscati...

https://adnauseam.io/

https://bengrosser.com/projects/go-rando/

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>> some apps check for what apps are installed on the device

I can't believe that's allowed by the OS - seems like a horrible policy.

agreed. Id like to see a source or reference for this.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/4000-...

But the app in the original article doesn't even work on Android. It is an ios app. The link you provide is about android, right? (Still concerning , however)

Seems you have too many HN tabs open at the same time.. But the article I have linked shows the study done on how apps read this information. Goes both ways for Android and Apple at the time, not sure if much has changed

Yeah sorry :)

Probably should be removed but I have seen it used legitimately sometimes. Some apps for things like contact syncing will tell you there are other apps for caldav and stuff and check if you already have them installed to not show the message.

Nextcloud and DAVx5 by chance?

If they saw this app installed, what might they actually do about me or my contact list?

I guess they may decide to not sell your data. Which is actually a good thing.

They could just flag you as someone who poisoned the well and ignore you I suppose. Remember: bad actors go after low hanging fruit and tend to ignore privacy-aware folk and those doing anti-surveillance.

Remove all contacts that first name and last name start with Z.

Docs say that they prefix every first & last name with Z so that would be a start.

Also: check for contacts with weird country-code prefixes that don't match the country the user is based in

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