In the modern world where technologies have reached a high level of development, the problem of global tracking becomes especially urgent. According to the results of the investigation by 404 Media, hundreds of thousands of popular applications participate in the global tracking network associated with the advertising industry. These applications use advertising to create user profiles and track private and personal information.
The key tool in the system is Patternz, a spy tool that turns user smartphones into tracking devices. With the help of Patternz, users can receive notifications about the user’s location or their interactions with other people. Patternz processes about 90 TB of data per day and creates profiles for over 5 billion users, obtaining data from various companies including Google and X*.
The investigation also revealed that approximately 600 thousand applications are involved in the tracking campaign. Furthermore, the CEO of Patternz developer, Rafi Tone, publicly disclosed its tracking capabilities in a remote video on YouTube, including the ability to track the exact GPS-coordinates of the user.
“The universal surveillance machine developed for digital advertising now directly enables government mass surveillance. Many companies, from application publishers to advertisers and large tech firms, are acting irresponsibly. This must come to an end,” said Volfi Kristle, Director of the Austrian Research Institute Cracked Labs and co-author of the article dedicated to the study of surveillance tools, as stated in the report by Cracked Labs.
Cracked Labs’ report also noted that Patternz is sold by the private company ISA. It provides the current location, movement history for several months, and details of frequent interactions of the target.
Patternz can also be used to distribute malicious software to unsuspecting victims. The tool utilizes the real-time bidding (RTB) mechanism for online advertisements, providing specific user data. The demonstration showcased that intelligence agencies can acquire all necessary information through online advertising. Since Patternz operates through the advertising system, it doesn’t require permission from Patternz developers for their covert operations.
Patternz collaborates with the Israeli advertising and tech company Nuviad, which is also headed by Rafi Tone. As a consequence of this partnership, Google suspended Nuviad’s account as an authorized buyer, and Microsoft revoked Nuviad’s access to its Xandr advertising platform