Anomaly 6: Private spying firm targets global population with illegal spyware

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/12/06/files-anomaly-6-firm-spyware/

by efface • 4 years ago

92 37 4 years ago

thegrayzone.com

efface• 4 years ago

I also found https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3vjxj/anomaly-6-six-special... (March 2021).

photochemsyn• 4 years ago

The wikipedia article seems to spell it all out concisely:

"The company purchases cell phone location data from advertisers who in turn get the information from embedded software development kits (SDK) in commonly used phone applications. The publishers of apps frequently allow third parties to insert SDKs into their apps for a fee. Some of the apps have Anomaly Six’s own SDK embedded in them. This system often relies on disclosures in the complex terms of service that must be agreed to in order to use an application. Most apps' privacy policies do not disclose whether or not SDKs are embedded in their product."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomaly_Six

Okay, now we need a lawyer to find the explicit legal language in the terms of service agreements that give the necessary legal cover to the app manufacturer and distributor to install SDKs...

matheusmoreira• 4 years ago

Ah yes, the "it's not malware because technically you agreed to it" defense. "Legitimate companies" with their "legitimate interests".

newsclues• 4 years ago

Or is it intelligence agencies pretending to be legitimate companies.

kornhole3• 4 years ago

The problem is finding which apps have the SDK embedded in an SDK when the apps are proprietary.

The very few proprietary apps I have are installed on a separate profile of my Graphene phone, and they are given very few permissions. I sometimes use rotating burner SIM's to thwart the telcos and never make calls with the SIM. I am pretty sure I am in the >1% of people taking these precautions, which is why Anomaly 6 has the location of almost everybody else.

yamtaddle• 4 years ago

Google?

Clicks link

Oh, Anomaly 6 is the name of the company, not the sixth of some number of anomalies indicating possible spying.

titzer• 4 years ago

I love how understated (or frankly clueless) these articles are. You should just assume that every mobile phone is reporting high accuracy (< 10m) location information at all times of the day, from tens to thousands of times a day, to a variety of aggregators. Essentially they are little snitches and we are all rats in a maze to their panopticon.

akira2501• 4 years ago

There's a significant difference from an advertiser learning a little too much about me to the government tracking my every move. Of course, there are risks, but it is beyond the pale for our own governments to be utilizing these tools in this way and this article puts the focus squarely on this part of the problem.

In any case.. I wonder if the solution to all of this is just noise. Our devices should be generating 10x the fake data as it does real data, then we can just salt the information landscape for good and make it useless to try to capture value here.

kneebonian• 4 years ago

I used to think privacy was the way, but it's proving more and more impossible to do. I know think that this is the way, begin to generate fake data tons of it all the time, the best defense is a good offense, if we can decrease the signal to noise ratio sufficiently then they can no longer use it, and no I don't have any moral qualms with it because they started the war.

They are the ones who have caused only 1 in 30 emails I receive to be actually something I wanted or find use in. They are the ones who made it so I can no longer use a phone as a communication device within anyone I don't already know. They are the ones sending me random texts and losing my data all over the place, the only way to solve this is to burn back, the politicians won't help they're in bed with all these actors.

If you want a good place to start this add on https://adnauseam.io/ Ad Nasueam is a good place to start, it functions as an add blocker but it also launches a click on every single add that pops up anywhere. If anyone has any other false data generating sources it would be much appreciated.

We need to fight back.

EDIT: Forgot another one http://trackmenot.io/ Track Me Not, it issues random queries to search engines to obsfucate data, when you combine it with adnaseum it is a pretty little counterintel tool.

janalsncm• 4 years ago

Unfortunately due to the 3rd party doctrine most of it is a distinction without a difference. Do I feel the same way about an advertiser knowing my whereabouts all the time as I do the FBI or even local PD? No. But because the latter can legally purchase the information from the former my intuition is potentially wrong.

uoaei3• 4 years ago

There's a significant difference from an advertiser learning a little too much about me to the government tracking my every move

No, there isn't, because the government buys that data.

41tor• 4 years ago

Or I could assume a corporation that wants my business won't purposefully violate my boundaries and prove themselves untrustworthy.

nonrandomstring• 4 years ago

Something about this story (or rather; disconnected collection of claims) doesn't read well. Can't put my finger on it though. Maybe it's just not great writing.

InTheArena5• 4 years ago

Please bear in mind that the site this is on appears to be a Russian propaganda machine. This story may have some validity to it - I haven't investigated yet - but a quick browse of the front page consists primarily of anti-ukraine conspiracy pages.

WarOnPrivacy2• 4 years ago

Not sure why you were downvoted. From what I can tell, you aren't wrong. The site has a history of alignment with Kremlin and Beijing interests. (ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grayzone)

This particular story doesn't seem egregious however. Thinking the worst, I can speculate how it might support a western surveillance state narrative. A too often accurate narrative, unfortunately.

addendum: The columnist seems kind of colorful. ref: https://twitter.com/KitKlarenberg

My vibe is he pubs where he can and isn't uncomfortable with authoritarian groups. ref: https://muckrack.com/kit-klarenberg

arminiusreturns• 4 years ago

This is such a bullshit take on the GrayZone, which does great work (that yes, goes often against the mainstream views as force-shoved down peoples mind-throats). The fact that you then link Muckrack tells me you are not an honest actor, or interested in the truth.

kornhole3• 4 years ago

The Grayzone is a fully independent reader funded site publishing articles that often challenge US and British government media stories. They have no affiliation or loyalty to China or Russia.

solarkraft• 4 years ago

Max Blumenthal (...) who is the editor of The Grayzone website (...) is a regular contributor to Russian state-owned Sputnik and RT

Oh well.

uoaei3• 4 years ago

The site has a history of alignment with Kremlin and Beijing interests.

Critiques of US policy do not imply support for Russian or Chinese policy. Explanations of Russian or Chinese rationale in responses to US actions are not the same as condoning those responses.

Sun Tzu says, know your enemy; how can you know your enemy if you don't even know how they think? This kind of analysis is important for understanding how geopolitics proceeds, and quickly illuminates the ways that state actors act to prolong profitable conflicts, since the responses to certain actions are obvious and inevitable in the grand scheme.

Discomfort in the face of critique is not proof that those critiques are invalid...

I, for one, as a US citizen, would rather the US address its own issues so that others don't have standing to criticize its policies and actions. Obviating propaganda is way more effective than censoring it, and for these kinds of critiques almost surely improves quality of life and GDP for its own citizens.

miguelazo6• 4 years ago

"I haven't investigated yet". Clearly. As your attack on the site's credibility appears to be based on nothing more than their dogged questioning of the dominant US narrative about the US proxy war against Russia.

InTheArena5• 4 years ago

Hello Margarita Simonyan.

greenyoda• 4 years ago

As an alternate source, here's a story that the WSJ did on Anomaly Six in 2020: https://archive.ph/lcuvc

miguelazo6• 4 years ago

Another case of US veterans (both military and "intelligence" agency) helping push the envelope on surveillance tech. Becoming a very disturbing trend.

grundoon• 4 years ago

thegrayzone.com seems like it could be a front for Russian agitprop

kingsfoil• 4 years ago

## Better Sources About Anomaly Six

- Official site: https://www.anomalysix.com/ (practically nothing here)

- (The Intercept) https://theintercept.com/2022/04/22/anomaly-six-phone-tracki...

- (Court Case Filed against Anomaly Six by Babel Street) https://techinquiry.org/docs/A6-Babel-MoFo.pdf

- (WSJ) https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-government-contractor-embed... (article hidden behind paywall, explainer video at top of page is not)

- (Vice) https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3vjxj/anomaly-6-six-special... (credit to OP for posting this in a comment)

Vice:

Anomaly Six software lets its customers browse all of this data in a convenient and intuitive Google Maps-style satellite view of Earth. Users need only find a location of interest and draw a box around it, and A6 fills that boundary with dots denoting smartphones that passed through that area. Clicking a dot will provide you with lines representing the device’s — and its owner’s — movements around a neighborhood, city, or indeed the entire world.

WSJ:

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. 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.

## Why The Grayzone may not be the best source:

- (Axios) https://www.axios.com/2020/08/11/grayzone-max-blumenthal-chi...

- (.coda) https://www.codastory.com/disinformation/grayzone-xinjiang-d...

- (The Grayzone top 12 stories in 2020) https://web.archive.org/web/20210129111336/https:/thegrayzon...

- (Australian Strategic Policy Institute) https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/ad-aspi/2021-03/Stra...

Quotes from above article by ASPI (page 8):

The Grayzone is one fringe news source, and its reach has been amplified by Chinese and Russian state-affiliated entities. Between December 2019 and February 2021, The Grayzone was cited in English at least 252 times in Chinese state-owned news outlets (the Global Times, CGTN and Xinhua) and a further 61 times in People’s Daily Online articles. Before December 2019, we could find no mentions of The Grayzone by Chinese media outlets in either English or Chinese. Peak total shares of The Grayzone articles on Twitter and Facebook also coincided with their amplification by Chinese state media outlets (Figure 6).
The Grayzone’s top 12 stories of 2020 include accusations that Xinjiang forced labour stories are falsified by the US Government and the military–intelligence complex to drive a new Cold War (note: this included criticism of ASPI and the Center for Strategic and International Studies). The founders of The Grayzone have been interviewed by Chinese state media outlets, including the Global Times and CGTN, and have been featured on Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik Radio.

Anomaly 6: Private spying firm targets global population with illegal spyware

Related Stories