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Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

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Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#351

Post by dijit »

monkeynotes wrote: post #255
samstave wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I want to know; If you get a brand new device and it has FB app installed - but if you never open it or use FB, does that app still monitor things like browsing activity and report anything back to FB?

Aren't android and iOS apps mostly sandboxed? It would be news to me if AppX could access browsing information from Chrome, at least without asking you for permission. Apps can't access folder i/o without permission, surely they can't monitor browsing history without permission.

iOS apps are heavily sandboxed (and given next to no process time when backgrounded).

Android apps are a bit more free, that leads to a lot of apps being good at talking to each other. But the cost is that your sandbox is less sandboxy.

Permissions are a moot point when you're talking about bundled apps because they're already going to be approved for all permissions.

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#352

Post by isodude »

mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #142
isodude wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the reason I've stopped surfing the web and stay on news aggregate sites. It's madness how many dependencies sites have. Having Little Snitch on and not allowing general port 80/443 will make you perfectly aware.

I do all of my browsing through HN with reader view on by default. Have yet to see an ad, pop up or anything annoying. Gave up on desktop browsing entirely as some sites do not offer reader view.

I should really start using RSS again, but I do remember the amount of news that you had to sort through everyday. HN does that in a fairly good fashion. There's just to much info to handle. Reader view is a good option, for avoiding answering on GDPR questions as well :)

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#354

Post by dijit »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #336
chrismeller wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but let’s be honest, back in 2007 when the first iPhone came out it was a huge deal that Verizon, et al couldn’t install crap on it by default because it came straight from Apple. No “normal human” is ever going to install their own OS on anything. At least Apple enforces some standards...

> Sure, but let’s be honest, back in 2007 when the first iPhone came out it was a huge deal that Verizon, et al couldn’t install crap on it by default because it came straight from Apple. Good, nevertheless all my friends jailbroke their iPhones to install apps not available in the store. > No “normal human” is ever going to install their own OS on anything. Whoever cares about having at least minimal degree of priva…

Your friends are more technical than 99% of the population of earth.

I applaud you for having friends who are so technically literate.

I think you would do well to remember the rest of the human race though.

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#356

Post by EpicEng »

pbalau wrote: post #350
EpicEng wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but from what I've been reading/hearing, the primary concern is "can FB track me even if the app is disabled?" These are non-technical people who don't trust FB. It's a valid question.

FB can't track you because the app cannot be deleted, they can track you because other apps, not even other FB apps, voluntary send FB info about you. But this doesn't match the narrative that FB is bad, so the Murdoch empire will be quiet about it.

I think you're missing the point. I'm not saying FB can track you via their disabled app. I'm saying many don't trust Samsung or FB when they say they cannot. The majority of people don't even come close to understanding how data gets bought and sold or how impactful it can be in the long term.

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#357

Post by ryandrake »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #317
reaperducer wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phone Not much of a phone without a phone app. But Apple does sell an iPhone without a Phone app. It's called an iPod.

Does iOS not support 3rd party dialer and SMS apps?

It does not. Just things like Skype, WhatsApp, etc.

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#358

Post by vatueil »

judge2020 wrote: post #294
simulate wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is identical to how all other phone OS vendors work where the OS vendor pre-installs apps as part of their ecosystem. If you consider them crapware, then there are no major mobile OS vendors who don't install crapware. iPhone preinstalls 42 apps, not all of which can be easily deleted: App Store, Calculator, Calendar, Camera, Clock, Compass, Contacts, FaceTime, Files, Find My Friends, Find My iPhone, Game Center…

(as said in the other comment thread): you can delete many stock apps in iOS: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208094

If the default apps are restored after a factory reset then "deleting" a built-in app in iOS isn't really any different from disabling an Android system app.

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#359

Post by bogomipz »

partiallypro wrote: post #335
bogomipz wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a total strawman but the answer is yes. Even before the "Russia story" broke, the story of Brad Parscale the Digital Director of the Trump Campaign and how FB embedded employees with him was a national news story. It was covered on 60 Minutes: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-embeds-russia-and-the-... And even before that back in 2012 the Atlantic did a piece on the emerging role of FB in politics entitle…

And...the 2012 article doesn't actually put Facebook under a critical microscope like it is today. In fact, at the time it was viewed and covered as political genius. So, you sort of proved my point. Examples: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campai... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-campaign... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/14/obama-digital-...

>"And...the 2012 article doesn't actually put Facebook under a critical microscope like it is today."

Maybe reread your own comment above where you stated the concern of "increased scrutiny" and not criticality.

The link is evidence of of increased media scrutiny. From seven years ago no less. Specifically it discusses FB's emerging place as a political channel. Scrutiny and criticality are orthogonal concepts.

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#360

Post by ryandrake »

propogandist wrote: post #319
crashedsnow wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm often surprised by the number of totally valid reasons apps need to connect to the interwebs where you'd think they have no business. Clocks need to sync with time servers, dialers want to get updated lists of spam callers.. not sure what "finder" is but seems plausible that a search operation would need an index to search and even more reasonable that it be server-side. Not to mention reporting telemetry, analyt…

I would understand if the clock was connecting to a dedicated service to sync the time, but the clock app is just an interface where I can set alarms, use stopwatch etc. The system time is managed (and synced) at the Android OS level and so there is no need for apps to connect to the internet, nor for it to have updates. For the finder app, the index should be local. There is no way I want my apps, documents and file…

Your “time” example is unfortunately problematic. You need to sync time with something external to the device. If not over the Internet, you’d need to sync via the cell network or GPS or something similar. No getting around it. Component manufactuters have not solved clock drift yet.

The other examples are reasonable.

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