Something like a trackblocker could be the next step for privacy concerned companies. Or an opt-in variety.
Three quarters of Android apps track users with third party tools
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Re: Three quarters of Android apps track users with third party tools
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://exodus-privacy.eu.org/ https://github.com/exodus-privacy/exodus https://github.com/YalePrivacyLab/tracker-profiles
Does anyone know why Firefox uses DoubleClick? https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/reports/177/
My suspicion is that this is a false-positive.
If you go to about:config and search for doubleclick there is an entry called: browser.urlbar.doubleClickSelectsAll
Use is self-explanitory in the name.
This twitter thread indicates same:
https://twitter.com/rnewman/status/934861503630643204
Also, LeanPlum is explained here:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/send-usage-data-firefox...
Quote:
Firefox for Android, Firefox for iOS, Firefox Rocket and Firefox Focus collect data about installations and retention using a third-party tracking framework called Adjust and Leanplum. This helps Mozilla determine the origin of the installation by answering the question, "Did this user on this device install the application in response to a specific advertising campaign performed by Mozilla?"
Re: Three quarters of Android apps track users with third party tools
#33I wish I could edit the hosts file of Android devices without root. Barring that, I wish I could force a DNS server for both wi-fi and mobile data links, which I believe also requires root. Either one of these options would allow the use of DNS blackholing for adware/malware domains. Without it, protecting yourself on mobile is that much more difficult.
I wish root were easier to get on my own damn phone
Agreed. I don't mind the requirement of root, just as I'm glad my desktop has a root account that's not the default account. That said, the effort required to obtain root on my own device is silly. It should simply be a switch in the "Dev Tools" settings screen, which is already hidden from plain consumers.
Re: Three quarters of Android apps track users with third party tools
#34This is a bit alarmist. I develop a popular app that has no advertising but I still ship mixpanel and crashlytics. I do that because I need to know how people are using the app in order to make the app better. That's it. If the app crashes and I don't know about it then I can't fix it and my users would hate me. Without these tools the apps would be worse.
Yep, I agree completely. I work on a relatively well known app, and we use Crashlytics to monitor crashes (duh), and other tracking software to reduce friction in the app.
We don't care who tapped button A instead of button B, we just want to know how many people tapped button A instead of button B.
Re: Three quarters of Android apps track users with third party tools
#35Something like a trackblocker could be the next step for privacy concerned companies. Or an opt-in variety.
That is already a thing. There are lists you can subscribe your adblocker to. They also cover Malware, Badware, Resource Abuse (Bitcoin Miners), Anti Cookie, Anti Social, Anti Adblock and more.
Re: Three quarters of Android apps track users with third party tools
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure why you are being downvoted here. I learned a lot from your post! I set up my cookies to stop 3rd party and delete at the end of a session. I also learned about /etc/hosts and blocked a ton of bad stuff at the system level. You are awesome, thank you!
It will never be reasonable, feasible, or worth discussing that e.g. every day users run a linux only locked down desktop and never use their mobile phones. Every time a privacy topic comes up, there is always someone to come in and say "uninstall windows and OSX, delete all of your social media accounts and block the entire Internet, quit your job that requires you to use these devices and services, run your own mai…
Very true. I mean, I have an iPhone for work. And a dumb cellphone for personal stuff. I do use social media with family and close friends, but that's from notebook and desktop. I don't mix social and work on the same devices, and I'd be out of work if I did.
However, I strive on such insecure channels to be very uninteresting. I restrict everything that's potentially controversial to channels that are more private and anonymous, using VPNs and Tor. I share about that stuff with nobody who knows who I am in meatspace. And vice versa.
So it's not that I'm "cut[ting] [my]self off from all of society". But I am revealing different aspects of myself to society through channels that would take considerable effort to link. That is, I compartmentalize.
I realize that I've gone to extremes. But for me, it's mainly become a hobby. Or rather, LARP. Still, anyone can start compartmentalizing. Just get a used low-end gaming machine, install Linux and VirtualBox, and learn to use VMs. Run a VPN client in the host, and learn enough iptables to lock it down. Run Linux VMs with other VPN clients, to get nested VPN chains. Run Whonix VMs to connect via Tor.
Re: Three quarters of Android apps track users with third party tools
#37This is a bit alarmist. I develop a popular app that has no advertising but I still ship mixpanel and crashlytics. I do that because I need to know how people are using the app in order to make the app better. That's it. If the app crashes and I don't know about it then I can't fix it and my users would hate me. Without these tools the apps would be worse.
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Re: Three quarters of Android apps track users with third party tools
#38This is a bit alarmist. I develop a popular app that has no advertising but I still ship mixpanel and crashlytics. I do that because I need to know how people are using the app in order to make the app better. That's it. If the app crashes and I don't know about it then I can't fix it and my users would hate me. Without these tools the apps would be worse.
I believe the point of the article is that the data belongs in 3rd party hands. You might not be doing anything nefarious with the data, but that data does not belong to you and it is outside of your control to protect your users.
Given IP addresses, device identifiers, application identifiers, and timestamps - these 3rd party applications now have some pretty valuable signals that can be aggregated with other signals from other tracking methods to create a detailed profile linking users across devices, browsers, and geo locations.
Re: Three quarters of Android apps track users with third party tools
#39This is a bit alarmist. I develop a popular app that has no advertising but I still ship mixpanel and crashlytics. I do that because I need to know how people are using the app in order to make the app better. That's it. If the app crashes and I don't know about it then I can't fix it and my users would hate me. Without these tools the apps would be worse.
You might have a good excuse, but don't deny what is really going on here.
These "free" analytics services have a dark side. The price for using them is that they get to build profiles of your users, with varying degrees of invasiveness. And once you sign up with them, you are selling out your users.
Re: Three quarters of Android apps track users with third party tools
#40This is a bit alarmist. I develop a popular app that has no advertising but I still ship mixpanel and crashlytics. I do that because I need to know how people are using the app in order to make the app better. That's it. If the app crashes and I don't know about it then I can't fix it and my users would hate me. Without these tools the apps would be worse.
I wouldn't use Crashlytics. I use ACRA (https://github.com/ACRA/acra) for a project that has around 30k active installs.
I also wouldn't use Crashlytics due to a study that we've conducted in the last 3 months on 200 of the most used apps in Germany. We have collected real network traffic with a setup consisting of Wireshark and sslsplit (https://github.com/droe/sslsplit). We have discovered that Crashlytics will send GPS location data alongside bug reports. Probably it tries to collect as much data as possible.