My guess is that they have a preinstalled carrier app that does the spying for them. That would explain why it's not available on ios (because of app permission restrictions) and how it's able to collect "the Wi-Fi networks they join".
Interesting, My phone was purchased from Google without a carrier then brought on as a bring your own device to T-Mobile. There is no pre-installed app or os by T-Mobile. I downloaded the T-Mobile app which does not require any permissions. However, there was quite a bit of data according to magenta ad platform. I find that disturbing...
>SIM cards have their own cpu, memory, and OS running on them
That might be the case, but they still rely on the phone to feed it information. I doubt the sim card interface provides a way to send the currently connected wifi network or what apps are installed.
No but they can correlate things to a ridiculous amount of resolution. Sure, millions of people hit the Reddit API every day but I can guarantee no other person on earth hits it at exactly the same time as you do, repeatedly.
