Is my mobile app really free when it is serving ads?

Programming by Sverrir Sigmundarson

I use this rather handy app, BaconReader from http://onelouder.com/ to browse Reddit.com.

I connected my tablet to my computer and turned on LogCat as I was about to start debugging my own little app. Instead two little log lines caught my eye:

D/baconreader(25507): Message Service Started D/baconreader(25507): Checking for messages

That was something I thought shouldn't be running at all, I launched the BaconReader app to double-check that all settings related to notification and background activity for that app were indeed turned off  or set to manual (I do this in effort to conserve battery power). They were all off but still the app was periodically starting up a service to check for messages (thanks for that).

While doing this I glimpsed how much excess network activity the application was performing while I was under the impression that it was "idle" (i.e. I wasn't interacting with it).

Usage and User Profiling

The application is using what seems two different platforms to track users and usage patterns Flurry and Google Analytics. Fair enough, nothing too fishy about that I guess. Both services seemed to communicate very sparingly with the server with only an initial message sent when the application started up and then stayed silent while I let the app sit "idle".

Advertisements

I have no problems with apps that serve ads in exchange for me being able to use them for free. What I found curious was that this app seems to be contacting three different ad services with varying levels of details about both me and my device.

Millennial Media This component, initiated a HTTP request twice every second, each time with a very verbose URL. Below is an example of the query parameters for one request:

accelerometer:true adtype:MMBannerAdTop ar:manual bl:46 cachedvideo:false conn:wifi country:GB density:2.0 dm:Nexus 10 dv:Android4.2.2 hdid:mmh_94888091071502DC8F18CE0A08CBFA79_6AC9AD8BDA218890306A1DAF963D603E089F82C9 height:53 hpx:2464 hsht:53 hswd:320 language:en loc:false mmdid:mmh_94888091071502DC8F18CE0A08CBFA79_6AC9AD8BDA218890306A1DAF963D603E089F82C9 mmisdk:4.6.0-12.07.16.a pkid:com.onelouder.baconreader pknm:BaconReader plugged:true reqtype:getad sdkapid:62626 space:16810389504 ua:Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.2.2; en-gb; Nexus 10 Build/JDQ39) AppleWebKit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/534.30Nexus 10 video:true width:320 wpx:1

I'd love to know the reason why they need to know why my device is plugged in or not, how much space is free on it and what connection method I'm using to connect to the internet. Seems a little much but still nothing surprising and unexpected from ad requests. The standard tracking-cookie for my device is even included in the hdid variable (I assume) but no GPS information was transmitted (even though GPS was enabled for apps on my tablet).

Google AdMob

Pretty standard AdMob (old doubleclick.net) requests really. Nothing unexpected here, they even try to minimise the amount of characters traveling over the network. How nice of them! Still they sent two requests every second. Below is an example of their querystring:

preqs:0 session_id:6944941379333807684 u_sd:2 seq_num:1 u_w:800 msid:com.onelouder.baconreader js:afma-sdk-a-v6.2.1 mv:8016014.com.android.vending isu:94888091071502DC8F18CE0A08CBFA79 cipa:1 bas_off:0 format:320x50_mb oar:0 net:wi app_name:38.android.com.onelouder.baconreader hl:en gnt:0 u_h:1232 carrier: bas_on:0 ptime:0 u_audio:1 u_so:p output:html region:mobile_app u_tz:60 client_sdk:1 ex:1 slotname:a14eb80d44ba957 caps:inlineVideo_interactiveVideo_mraid1_th_autoplay_mediation_sdkAdmobApiForAds_di jsv:46
Ad Marvel
This by far was the worst offender. AdMarvel was a small mobile ad startup that was recently (in 2010) bought by Opera Software. The device performed 4 requests every second (where two requests were identical except for one querystring variable had changed, that is retrynum had been incremented from 0 to 1). Below is an example of one of their query string:

site_id:23206 partner_id:7b862efbe6c75952 timeout:5000 version:1.5 language:java format:android sdk_version:2.3.7.1 sdk_version_date:2013-02-04 sdk_supported:admob_millennial_amazon device_model:Nexus 10 device_name:JDQ39 device_systemversion:4.2.2 retrynum:0 excluded_banners: device_orientation:portrait device_connectivity:wifi resolution_width:1600 max_image_width:1600 resolution_height:2464 max_image_height:2464 device_density:2.0 device_os:Android adtype:banner device_details:brand:google,model:Nexus 10,width:1600,height:2464,os:4.2.2,ua:Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.2.2; en-gb; Nexus 10 Build/JDQ39) AppleWebKit/525.10+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0.4 Mobile Safari/523.12.2 hardware_accelerated:true target_params:UNIQUE_ID=>f780070d9537897a||GEOLOCATION=>59.4954954894955%2C-0.99682319125740403||bucket=>4||subreditname=>Front+Page||RTBID=>FBATTRID%3Ae939e527-35db-4e98-8d73-e05fead999b1||APPVERSION=>2.8.1||RESPONSE_TYPE=>xml_with_xhtml||BNG=>0
What I find worrying here is (besides the size of the request) their final target_params variable which not only includes the ID for my device and exactly what part of the application I am viewing but also a pretty accurate GPS location (disabling GPS access for all apps got rid of that) and what looks to be Facebook related FBATTRID tag to serve ads from Facebook's MoPub Marketplace.

Talk about being tracked between devices.

Conclusion

All of this activity was happening multiple times a second for all three advertising services on my device. So six times a second my device was communicating tracking information and requesting advertisements back.

One of the most battery draining activities is transmitting data through the air on a mobile device. Based on these three services it seems like the industry standard is to query twice every second which to me feels overly aggressive and costly on my battery charge.

So what are we really getting for free? How much money are we spending on electricity to power our devices that is then used directly to serve us advertisements?

Perhaps I should just buy the thing, probably cheaper in the long run!

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