Stop Your Phone From Revealing Secret Personal Details

Do you know what a maid is?  No, I’m not talking about somebody who cleans your house or serves you dinner.  These days, a MAID refers to a unique “Mobile Advertising ID” identifier buried in your cell phone.  Pesky marketing hacks are always on the prowl for your personal data, and they don’t care at all about protecting your privacy.

Those details are gold for a ton of online businesses.  They don’t know who you are, but they don’t care, because all they’re interested in is tracking your behavior, and this MAID feature lets them.  It grabs data such as where you live, what your searches look like, and what you like to shop for.

For a long time, there was nothing to be done to block your MAID either in legitimate or nefarious advertising and marketing campaigns, but Apple has been somewhat successful by at least allowing iOS users to have input into who can gain access.  But if a crook can match the MAID to the actual person, it could be a real nightmare.

Generally speaking, companies or ad agencies shouldn’t be able to find out who the MAID is attached to, because there shouldn’t be any personally identifiable information (PII).  But Vice’s Motherboard discovered one company offers the linking of MAIDs to real people through PII.  Brad Mack, CEO of data broker BIGDBM told “Vice”, “We have one of the largest repositories of current, fresh MAIDS<>PII in the USA.

"We have one of the largest repositories of current, fresh MAIDS<>PII in the USA," Brad Mack, CEO of data broker BIGDBM told us when we asked about the capabilities of the product while posing as a customer. "All BIGDBM USA data assets are connected to each other," Mack added, explaining that MAIDs are linked to full name, physical address, and their phone, email address, and IP address if available. The dataset also includes other information, "too numerous to list here," Mack wrote.

Digital expert and radio host Kim Komando says this information can be linked to your MAID: your full name, physical address, phone number, email address and IP address.

To shut this transmission of data off, Komando offers this fix for Apple iOS:

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Apparently, a person can be bad at charging their phone because of their zodiac sign. Recently, an astrologer shared with Bustle that there are signs that always have their phone at 20 percent. Michelle Bell, the founder of the astrology app Cosmic Fusion, pointed out which zodiac signs are most likely to utter the words, "Can we use your phone? Mine is about to die," during a night out.

The zodiac is divided into twelve signs including Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. Your zodiac sign is based on your birthday. However, when it comes to astrology, there is more to your zodiac than just your birthday. For instance, there are element associations, as well as the moon or rising signs, and others.

The ancient Babylonians created the zodiac with each of its 12 sections named after the largest constellation it contained. They observed that the movement of planets, called transits, corresponded with both future events and misfortunes on Earth.

According to The Good Trade, astrology highlights your strengths and weaknesses and offers information about things like love, career, family life, and life purpose.

Some zodiac signs are either too busy or too preoccupied to plug in their phones at night. You could be one of the three signs who never charges their phone.

Get more in-depth information about those zodiac signs here.

An astrologer says that these zodiac signs never charge their phones.

Bell said that Aquarius is often forgetful and is likely to have high screen time. "They forget about the practical things in life, like charging their phone or bringing a portable charger around with them," says Bell.

According to astrologer Bell, Aries has the "impulsiveness and tendency to act before [you] think" which makes it easy for you to forget to charge your phone before leaving the house.

Sagittarius' "carefree and optimistic approach to life" can make it easy for the sign to forget to plug in their phone at the end of the day. "They’re too busy traversing the universe to think about charging their phone," says Bell.