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Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client

blog.zoom.us

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Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client

#91

Post by saagarjha »

designcode wrote: post #60
narendranag wrote: post #51

Considering how many apps are using Facebook's SDK, shouldn't this be something that FB should be addressing? After all, they are the ones making an SDK available to app developers to help with user-login. Shouldn't the presumption of trust rest on FB?

I can’t see the big deal. We use the Facebook SDK specifically for the free analytics. It’s just a default part of the SDK. It’s not sending anything any other analytics package wouldn’t

I do not like you using the Facebook SDK for the “free analytics” and consider this to be a big deal.

Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client

#92

Post by awinter-py »

covid will shift the overton window on privacy

centralized location tracking in an infectious crisis (either mandatory or mass voluntary) will normalize to 'good'

sleazy third-party phone home from apps considered key to surviving under lockdown, apparently not ok now! good

the bad news is we'll normalize some bad practices, but the good news is we'll make pragmatic compromises using actual information -- with covid taking up moral panic cycles, privacy is a place we can be rational

also no business feels totally secure RN and people will do anything to win & keep business -- even zoom

Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client

#93

Post by squaresmile »

proactivesvcs wrote: post #20

If Zoom "takes its users' privacy extremely seriously" and their "customers’ privacy is incredibly important" then why would they be releasing software without a strong knowledge of what third party code they're adding in, and what exfiltration might be happening as a result? They hold user privacy in such high regard and yet are releasing a program without even hooking it up to a network monitor for five minutes? So…

While I think one shouldn't read too much into PR statements like those, I don't think it's useless to call them out either, especially when they use very strong words like "extremely seriously" and "incredibly important".

If the defense is the practice being common then there isn't anything special about Zoom regarding user privacy, is it.

Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client

#94

Post by ryandrake »

kelnos wrote: post #77
dx87 wrote: post #27

It's good that they removed it, but it's also dissapointing that they had no idea that it was happening until someone made a blog post about it. Do their employees not vet any of the code they use, and just slap things together off the internet and hope it's not doing anything their users don't like?

> Do their employees not vet any of the code they use, and just slap things together off the internet That sounds like a pretty accurate description of how software is built. (No, I'm not being flippant.) > ... and hope it's not doing anything their users don't like? I expect most don't think too much about it, not out of malice, but because their product manager told them "I want FB login" and to do that, they eithe…

I've worked at places where "cowboy coding" was the norm and people would just look up how to do something on StackOverflow and copy/paste it. But to pull in a major 3rd party dependency like this and just "YOLO" ship it in your company's product? That's almost unbelievable. Didn't anyone have a look to see what the thing does? Assuming the SDK comes with source code, and if they integrated a 3rd party library that doesn't come with the source, even more shame. All it would have taken was a single engineer to notice unexplainable network traffic to a third party at runtime--at any time during development. So much WTF here.

Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client

#95

Post by dannyr »

mikenew wrote: post #59
intopieces wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Getting mad at Zoom for using the Facebook SDK is missing the point. It's really hard to believe this point given that... getting mad seems to have worked.

My point is that you've removed one instance of the Facebook SDK from your phone, but you still have 50 others. Plus probably hundreds of other analytics frameworks that you've never even heard of that are just as bad or worse.

So if you can't stop ALL of them, you stop NONE of them.

Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client

#96

Post by andreareina »

xiphias2 wrote: post #41
dx87 wrote: post #27

It's good that they removed it, but it's also dissapointing that they had no idea that it was happening until someone made a blog post about it. Do their employees not vet any of the code they use, and just slap things together off the internet and hope it's not doing anything their users don't like?

It’s the official SDK of one of the biggest companies. I can’t fault them on not catching this. What Facebook does is ugly.

And it's known that what Facebook does is ugly. So Hanlon's Razor and all that, but given recent events it strains credulity that the developers weren't at least suspicious.

Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client

#97

Post by anyfoo »

mikenew wrote: post #45

So it sounds like Zoom was using the Facebook SDK, and now they're not. I've been and iOS developer for a long time. I can tell you from experience that everyone does this. I have never worked for anyone who didn't ask for their app to include some combination of Facebook, Google, Flurry, AppCenter, Segment, Intercom, Parse, or whatever other random analytics framework the PM happens to be infatuated with. Getting ma…

Of course passing laws about that is a great solution. This is how society defines what is and what isn’t acceptable behavior for corporations. Are you also typing up rallying paragraphs against laws that dictate how companies have to adhere to food safety? Would your suggestion then be to “get mad at Burger King for not allowing you to perform chemical tests in the restaurant”? “Everyone does it”, like everyone used asbestos and lead pipes in the past?

Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client

#98

Post by angrygoat »

mikenew wrote: post #45

So it sounds like Zoom was using the Facebook SDK, and now they're not. I've been and iOS developer for a long time. I can tell you from experience that everyone does this. I have never worked for anyone who didn't ask for their app to include some combination of Facebook, Google, Flurry, AppCenter, Segment, Intercom, Parse, or whatever other random analytics framework the PM happens to be infatuated with. Getting ma…

You obviously need be a highly technical user, but it ought to be fairly easy for most people here to run a packet capture on their phone: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/network/recording_...

Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client

#99

Post by Causality1 »

mikenew wrote: post #45

So it sounds like Zoom was using the Facebook SDK, and now they're not. I've been and iOS developer for a long time. I can tell you from experience that everyone does this. I have never worked for anyone who didn't ask for their app to include some combination of Facebook, Google, Flurry, AppCenter, Segment, Intercom, Parse, or whatever other random analytics framework the PM happens to be infatuated with. Getting ma…

Constantly having to be in a war against my own phone's operating system is exhausting. These days I absolutely refuse to buy any brand that makes me jump through hoops just to get root on my own silicon.

Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client

#100

Post by frereubu »

marta_morena_23 wrote: post #69
mikenew wrote: post #45

So it sounds like Zoom was using the Facebook SDK, and now they're not. I've been and iOS developer for a long time. I can tell you from experience that everyone does this. I have never worked for anyone who didn't ask for their app to include some combination of Facebook, Google, Flurry, AppCenter, Segment, Intercom, Parse, or whatever other random analytics framework the PM happens to be infatuated with. Getting ma…

Baffling how this can be the top post... "Who audits that?" We just did. And if there was a law against that, Zoom would just have been exposed for breaking it. Any sane company will try their best to adhere to laws. Some big players like Google can afford to mess around pay a few billions in fines, but those are the exceptions, not the rule. Eventually, even they can't afford to pay the fines in the long run (Even G…

> Baffling how this can be the top post

Specifically on this point, I think the HN comment sorting algorithm may take account of how many votes child comments have too, so you may find that it’s the top child comment which has brought this to the top.

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