Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 376 posts

Re: Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

#111

Post by Nextgrid »

trevor-e wrote: post #84
_jal wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not interested in arguing definitions. I look at what apps on my phone do, and delete anything that wants to talk to the surveillance shops. It is that simple - I don't trust or use FB, and of course that includes third party FB feeders.

Genuinely curious here, which apps have you kept and use daily? The number of monetized apps that don't talk to Google/FB (or other install trackers) is likely in a very small minority.

I am in the same position though I am not justifying this spying by any means. I have probably a handful of third-party apps and rely on built-ins as much as possible (Apple Maps, calendar, mail, etc) and use most third-party services through the browser with AdGuard to block spyware.

Re: Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

#112

Post by Nextgrid »

tinus_hn wrote: post #25
surferbayarea wrote: post #11

Why is facebook spyware part of Spotify. I signed up to Spotify via email not facebook login.

Would you expect a separate app for people who login using Facebook and people who login without?

You can implement Facebook login server-side with basic oAuth. No requests to Facebook are necessary until the user actually wants to log in with Facebook.

Re: Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

#113

Post by monadic2 »

yllus wrote: post #36

For those wondering why the Facebook SDK is so widely used in popular mobile apps: Facebook Login is actually in the minority of reasons to add the Facebook SDK to your mobile app. The vast majority of apps will add the Facebook SDK because it contains Facebook App Ads; a library that "completes the circle" in terms of finding out how effectively the ads you ran on Facebook were at getting people to download, install…

> Is that "spyware"?

This seems like much less of a damning claim than openly supporting an ad network.

Re: Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

#114

Post by surferbayarea »

lucasar wrote: post #99
surferbayarea wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the reason FB/Foursquare/Google etc add these to 3rd party apps is so they can get data. Example if you visit a website which has a Facebook like button, your browser fetches the js files/which maybe even makes an API call to let FB know your IP (and hence location). All this data is fed to the giant system that feeds you ads. Adding their SDK to other apps/sites (even if there is no user facing need) is a commo…

You have no idea what you're talking about. Apps use the Facebook library because a good portion of end-users want to be able to login with a Facebook button --or Google, or whatever that doesn't require them to create a user/password account. It's just that simple.

I have been witness to such business partnerships to embed SDKs to siphon telemetry/other data. The world is not as simple as you think...

Re: Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

#115

Post by Nextgrid »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #67
user982 wrote: post #24

Zoom dodged this bullet.

And got so much flak for it. How much "zomg you're spying on me" press are the other 50% of the iOS ecosystem going to receive for doing the same thing Zoom did, going on a decade.

Just because others are doing it doesn't make it okay.

Re: Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

#116

Post by ethanbond »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #106
ethanbond wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuck, I've been paying for Spotify as an act of charity?

Spotify is actually using Facebook for login, though, so they don't necessarily use App Ads. The original commenter only said that it's the reason most (but not all) apps use the SDK.

Ah. I'm thankful for the opportunity, err... requirement to trade my privacy for others to have one fewer password to deal with. And of course for Facebook to have more personal data to munch on.

Re: Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

#117

Post by MCKapur »

surferbayarea wrote: post #114
lucasar wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Apps use the Facebook library because a good portion of end-users want to be able to login with a Facebook button --or Google, or whatever that doesn't require them to create a user/password account. It's just that simple.

I have been witness to such business partnerships to embed SDKs to siphon telemetry/other data. The world is not as simple as you think...

well, this would be extremely believable

Re: Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

#118

Post by mynameisvlad »

stefan_ wrote: post #59
SwiftyBug wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. OP makes it harder on everyone expecting engineers to be flawless just because they've gone through a very selective hiring process. Programming is hard.

Lets skip the hyperbole, appeals to authority and platitudes. This crash is from handwritten API response wrapping code that lacks checks. This is string-based programming. This is utter shit.

Ok, I'm sure you've written perfect code your entire career and have never made a single mistake, however simple, and however early in your career. Right?

If you want to criticize something, criticize the testing that let this change through, not the developer who made it. We were all young and inexperienced once, we've all had bad days, and we've all written crap code. This is only unique because it affected a lot of people.

Re: Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

#119

Post by RussianCow »

Nextgrid wrote: post #108
scarface74 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a government full of technical lot illiterate politicians regulating digital advertisement - what could possibly go wrong.

I am not sure whether there could be anything worse than the current situation of a free-for-all with customers' data.

There absolutely could, if the new legislation were easy enough to circumvent for large companies but expensive to implement for everyone else, giving big players an even bigger advantage as far as data goes.

Re: Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

#120

Post by Nextgrid »

yllus wrote: post #36

For those wondering why the Facebook SDK is so widely used in popular mobile apps: Facebook Login is actually in the minority of reasons to add the Facebook SDK to your mobile app. The vast majority of apps will add the Facebook SDK because it contains Facebook App Ads; a library that "completes the circle" in terms of finding out how effectively the ads you ran on Facebook were at getting people to download, install…

This is also not GDPR compliant, not that anyone actually bothers to enforce the law.

If we respect the GDPR then data sharing for Facebook Login should only happen once the user presses the Facebook login button (as at that point the data sharing becomes essential to provide the functionality).

As far as ad/marketing attribution it should be opt-in as that is not an essential requirement to provide the service (and even less so for paid apps).

In both cases the SDK breaches the GDPR as it calls out every time it's loaded and upon first launch it will "register" itself with Facebook by submitting device information (make/model, carrier name, locale, timezone, etc) and obtain a unique ID which is then used in subsequent requests, providing Facebook with a trail of your whereabouts and usage patterns based on IP addresses you connect from (which they can then correlate with any other information they have).

Post reply on HN