How to Identify iPhone Apps That May Contain Location-Tracking Ads

Article Comments
41

No matches with my puny 86 mainstream apps. (Reducing gradually)

I used FileMaker to match the two lists after having cleaned them up in BBEdit with GREP:
space\(.*\n replace with \n to remove the app version numbers.

Apple Configurator is fun!

Thanks Adam!

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42

Of my 350 apps the following showed up:

2048
Calculator
Calculator₊
Snake VS Block
Solitaire
Wattpad (@ace I recall using this to read some serials many years ago)

Interestingly, the Calculator+ app from Impala Studios prompted me with the following when I went to delete it:

image
image506×628 34.8 KB

43

Update: I deleted it anyway :slight_smile:

After checking my purchase history I also found out that the original name for apps you download can change over time, I guess when you let them update? The other “Calculator” app that I removed was called “MyScript Calculator - Handwriting calculator” when I installed it back in 2013. I guess I learned something extra today!

44

Hi Adam, thanks for this very useful article. I tried to use the supplied Terminal command, but that didn’t work. I found another one - very short - that did:
fgrep -f A B

For me a long list turned up, among which many apps I use a lot. Many are very popular in the Netherlands.

Marktplaats (trading second hand stuff)
myTunerRadio
WeatherRadar
HelloWeather
NPORadio1
9292 (one of the oldest public transport app)
xCalendar
Solitaire+
NPORadio5
WeatherPro
AbbotHallArtGallery
Citymapper
NPORadio2
Chess
Wordfeud (very popular)
Radio
RadioFrance (very good music on their FIP-channel)
Radios
So that’s 18 apps from a total of 413 (I use a lot of apps).
One question: how do I distinguish iOS from android apps in the list of corrupted apps?

Best, Johan Olie

45

Alas, there’s no way to distinguish the iOS apps from Android apps in the big list. My assumption was that if you had a match, it was probably going to be real, since I saw no reason the Android version of an app would serve ads differently than the iOS version.

46

Thanks Adam!

Best regards,
Johan Olie

47

808 apps!

2048
Citymapper
Letterboxd
MyFitnessPal
Tumblr

The grep string I used in BBEdit to strip extraneous info:
Find: \s(([0-9_].*)\n
Replace: \n

48

255 Apps - one match: Chess

I also used Filemaker along with your GREP – space\(.*\n replace with \n – in BBEdit.

:slight_smile:

Thanks Adam and Dilettante.

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49

I managed this at last. I do little programming so I struggled with some of the steps. I deleted the extra columns in Numbers and the version numbers with regex in SubEthaEdit.

The comm command did not work in Terminal! I found a comment here that pointed to using bash which I found in iTerm.

No matches! I knew there should be because Citymapper was in both txt files. A comment here suggested line endings was the problem so I used TextSoap to fix. (what is td?)

i7:Downloads jovike$ comm -12 <(sort breach.txt | uniq ) <(sort iPhoneapps.txt | uniq)
Chess
Citymapper
Cut the Rope
Minesweeper
Scrabble
Teeny Tiny Town
UpNote

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