Its more than coupons. These apps track your location, usage and so on then sell this data to a 3rd party. Coupons don’t do that. Do you read full useragreement you accept when installing apps? Most people wouldn’t understand the legalese in those.
A coupon could still be an image you find online that can be scanned and that’s it. Apps are totally not necessary unless they squeeze something out of the user.
So the McDonald's app knows I'm... at McDonald's when I use it? And that I'm using the app to order?
That doesn't seem like I'm giving up much information. Considering I'm placing the order at that McDonald's anyways, and they know the addresses of their franchisees.
Like I said, the same information is already revealed when I use a credit card.
I'm not granting it permission to track my location when I'm not using the app, obviously.
Ad SDKs exploit OS bugs to get location data. These specific ones have since been patched, but historicaly they read ARP tables, EXIF geo tags, and colluded with other apps that legimately had location permissions to get that info. It wouldn't surprise me if there are other live exploits quietly being used today. https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity19/presentat...
That's a very naive look on the situation. There are plenty of websites that can explain how this is just not accurate better than I could attempt to summarize it. If web searching is not your thing, I'd assume a GPT could point you in the right direction
The argument was that apps can surreptitiously gather information from you. The apps in question didn’t get your location data without you specifically allowing it.
Websites can also ask you for your location.
In the comment you replied to I asked
> from your GPS without you giving them permission?
A coupon could still be an image you find online that can be scanned and that’s it. Apps are totally not necessary unless they squeeze something out of the user.