And so zoom crumbled from the social pressure, while every other service and website is thinking "oof, they didn't realize that everybody does this to do advertising"
here, take my gold
Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client
101–110 of 272 posts
Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client
#102So 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…
Yes, we need laws against this and for the gatekeepers to be the enforcers. I used to think that individual choice would solve these problems, but it won’t. Zoom et al are growing like a weed and we can’t protect all our loved ones from this bullshit with individual action all of the time. There are some problems that require government action; I think the events of this year have demonstrated that clearly. Individually we are weak as water, but collectively we are embarrassingly powerful. Time to organise.
Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client
#103It’s not fair to be attacking zoom so much over this. They took prompt action as soon as they were aware.
Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client
#104What if mobile platforms (iOS, Android... ) changed the security/privacy policy so that apps had to request the “network access” permission, either whitelisting domains they want to talk to, or askingfor wildcard access?
Most apps shouldn’t need wildcard access, and the mobile device could include a warning when an app does this teaching users that they should be careful with the app.
This way at least when you installed Zoom for example, it would say something like:
“Zoom is requesting network access to:
- zoom.us - analytics.tracker.example.com - facebook.com “
And then at everyone would know. It still doesn’t solve the underlaying problem, but it would probably make companies more reluctant to add third party analytics and sdks.
Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't want to live in a world where my parents and grandparents are expected to pull up Wireshark to figure out if the app they're using will record their front camera without consent. Blaming Zoom and FB is entirely acceptable here, it is their responsibility to keep my data private. Blaming Apple? Why, when Zoom is on the Play Store as well? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=us.zoom.videom... >As long…
> Blaming Apple? Why, when Zoom is on the Play Store as well? Blame Apple because they constantly tout the iPhone as being "privacy respecting" and "what happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone"[0], while they A. Apple doesn't default to "limit tracking", or at least make "limit tracking" an option on setup/iOS upgrade B. Apple doesn't penalize developers for using Facebook's SDK with auto data collection (ie. pu…
> the Facebook SDK was collecting device information unnecessary for us to provide our services.
Sorry state of Apple App security and privacy - all your apps are swarms of data collection and privacy abuses.
Apple built this world - and Apple is to blame. Zoom is to blame too. And finally individual app developers should also alert everyone on what's truly happening in their apps.
Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't scale. We can't have 1,000,000 front page "App X uses Y SDK" posts. People will stop caring. Nobody's made a post of that flavor in awhile, and Zoom got caught in the crossfire. Honestly, if anything it shields other apps. People have a limited capacity for repeatedly addressing the same thing.
I think it doesn't always have to scale. Zoom is a huge player right now and in great usage across all industries, countries and users.
Really?!? If it wasn't for this post I wouldn't even know that they exist.
Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client
#107So 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…
> Who audits that?
I’d like to see Apple launch their own telemetry/events framework, that users can examine the data from, and then cut off everyone else
Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client
#108Just uses jitsi
Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
No, you attack the systematic problem and don't become happy by fixing one of them, since it is a hollow victory, and public outrage has limited capacity for repeated posts of "app x is sending to Facebook".
Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 d…
Conversely, I’ve never worked anywhere, in 10+ years, where “we shouldn’t be sending this data to X, it’s bad for our users”, would have got further than the developers. Marketing, Product and management rarely care: in many cases they want the data to go to as many analytics and targeting services as they can.