The Christ in Prophecy Journal

Real-Time Bidding is Tracking You!

Subscribe to our Channel

How many apps do you have on your cell phone? How often do you use an app? Do you play games? Do you track flights when you are flying or when someone is coming to visit you? Do you have an app for daily devotions or prayers?

Candy Crush, Flight Tracker, and MyFitnessPal

Candy Crush is a popular mobile game with over 250 million users who play it more than once a month. The game’s primary target is women aged 25-45, with the core market being women aged 35 and over.

Candy Crush, Flight Tracker, and MyFitnessPal are all harmless and convenient tools, Correct? When you go to a webpage, have you ever noticed how ads pop up, usually on the right side of the page? Sometimes the ads are mixed into the article or the page itself. How do those ads get there?

404 Media

A recent article released by several websites shares information discovered by 404 Media. 404 Media is a digital media company exploring how technology shapes our world. They focused on hacking, cybersecurity, cybercrime, artificial intelligence, consumer rights, and privacy. Thanks to 404 Media, a massive data breach of a company called Gravy Analytics has exposed how popular apps for both Android and Apple are being exploited, often without the knowledge of its users or app developers. The breach revealed that thousands of the world’s most popular apps, ranging from games like Candy Crush and dating apps like Tinder to pregnancy tracking and religious prayer apps, are likely being exploited by the advertising industry to harvest sensitive location data. This data collection is happening without users’ or even app developers’ knowledge.

Gravy Analytics

The hacking of Gravy Analytics has opened the door for consumers to understand real-time bidding, also known as RTB. In online advertising, real-time bidding is a process where ads are bought and sold in real-time auctions, which happen in the time it takes for a webpage to load. Ad exchanges facilitate these auctions.

So how does it work? An ad loads information about the page in a user’s web browser and passes it to an ad exchange, which auctions it off to an advertiser willing to pay the highest price. The winning bidder’s ad is loaded onto the webpage almost instantly; the whole process takes just milliseconds.

Your Demographic Information and Your Browsing History

A typical transaction begins with a user visiting a website. This triggers data collection, including the user’s demographic information, browsing history, location, and the page being loaded. That information then triggers a bid request. The request goes from the publisher to an ad exchange, which submits the data to multiple advertisers who automatically submit bids in real time to place their ads. All of this happens in the blink of an eye. All of this information is gathered and shared without you even knowing it.

Silent Push

A senior threat analyst for a cybersecurity firm called Silent Push has said, “This is a nightmare scenario for privacy, because not only does this data breach contain data from the RTB systems, but there’s some company out there doing whatever it pleases with every piece of data that comes its way.”

Tens of millions of mobile phones inside the US, Russia, and Europe are included in the hacked Gravy data.

Christian Bible Apps and Word Game Apps

The list includes dating sites like Tinder, games such as Subway Surfers and Harry Potter, and health sites such as one called My Period Calendar which is an app with more than 10 million downloads. Fitness apps such as MyFitnessPal, social network sites such as Tumblr, work sites such as Microsoft’s 365 office app, and multiple religious-focused apps such as Muslim prayer and Christian Bible apps are also affected. Caller ID apps such as CallApp and Truecaller and word game apps such as sudoku and solitaire puzzle games would be included as well.

What is not known is when this hack took place. Although it is believed this all happened because of the hacking of Gravy Analytics, a specific time has not been discovered. However, one of the apps listed is Call of Duty: Season 5 iteration, which was launched in May 2024.

Gravy Analytics and Their Government Clients

404 Media reported that Gravy Analytics sells data to commercial companies and the government. Government clients include Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, the IRS, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. 404 Media showed last year how a company called Babel Street was used to monitor visitors to out-of-state abortion clinics. It’s important that the data appears to be sourced through real-time bidding because that dictates who is responsible: rogue members of the advertising industry and tech giants.

The Federal Trade Commission

In December, the Federal Trade Commission banned another location data company, Mobilewalla, from collecting consumer data “from online advertising auctions for purposes other than participating in those auctions.” In other words, the agency banned Mobilewalla from participating in the RTB process.

404 Media reported that apps such as Flightradar24 said in an email that they had never heard of Gravy Analytics but that they do display ads, which “help keep Flightradar24 free.” Muslim Pro, one of the Muslim prayer apps, also said it was not aware of Gravy Analytics, but they, too, said they do display ads through several ad networks to support the free version of the app. However, just like Flightracker, they said they do not authorize these networks to collect location data, which can include data such as a user’s IP address, of their users.

What does all of this prove? It reveals how much technology controls our lives.

Why does this matter? We need to acknowledge how close we are to the world’s ability to become a one-world government, a one-world financial system, and the implementation of a one-world religion.

What is one to do with this information? Acknowledge the importance of understanding Bible prophecy and the need to share this truth with those you know and love. Sharing this information is not about the reality that we lack personal space and privacy. It is designed to create an urgency to focus on what really matters—having a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ and having the assurance of one’s eternal destination.

Maranatha, Lord Jesus!

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

RELATED ARTICLES

ABOUT AUTHOR View all posts Author Website

Dr. David Bowen

Dr. David Bowen serves part-time at Lamb & Lion Ministries as the Teaching Evangelist. He pastors Standing Stones Community Church in Phoenix, Arizona.

LEAVE A REPLY

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *