back to article GPS spoofing can put Yik Yak in a flap

A little machine learning can de-anonymise Yik Yak users, according to researchers from American and Chinese universities. Yik Yak is an anonymous messaging app that raised US$70 million, acts like a location-aware Twitter and has become a preferred tool of trolls on US College campuses. The researchers didn't attack the Yik …

  1. frank ly

    An anonymous messaging app ....

    .... that knows its location and sends its location?? (Have I misunderstood this?)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: An anonymous messaging app ....

      I don't know anything about this app, but it seems like the messages are anonymous and don't send their location but the messages only get send to other devices in a nearby location.

      Setting up a number of smartphones with fake locations based in a certain area you can do a sort of triangulation of where the message came from and then algorithms work out the likely building.

      I might be wrong but this is how it read to me.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh

    Yik Yak is still a thing then?

    1. Steve the Cynic

      Re: Oh

      Well, I looked it up in the Unreliable Source, and I found this interesting paragraph:

      "An update in August of 2016 in which the app mandated the use of profiles and removed anonymity was not well received by the user base, and it now has a "1 star" rating on the iOS App store."

      So I'd suggest that it is, indeed, no longer a thing.

  3. hugo tyson
    Unhappy

    Hardly GPS spoofing

    Hardly GPS spoofing is it? Just setting your location somewhere else. Fake location, fair enough.

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