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

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191–200 of 376 posts

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

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't mind me. I'm just going to come into your house and record what commercials you are watching. I'm not spyware I'm just _merely_ wanting to know about my marketing budget. Analogy may not be perfect but it takes serious mental gymnastics to fail to see this as spyware, in my opinion.

It wouldn't be surprising if some Smart TVs are already doing this.

We are already living in the world of 1984.

"TV watches you", except this isn't Soviet Russia.

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

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really sure what the problem is here. You are perfectly free to not use Spotify, or any other app that chooses to utilize Facebook login or other components of the Facebook SDK. Spotify made their choice to use the SDK for whatever gains they get out of it, and as a customer you can choose to not use their service or app if you disagree with that. There's even comments in this HN thread that point you on how…

This is really just a variant of the "and yet you participate in society, hmmm" argument. At some point users are allowed to complain about shady behaviour done by huge corporations with resources they use to try to thrust their way into everyones lives.

And at some point, companies are allowed to make their own decisions about how they want to instrument and monetize their products. This general complaint about not liking a component of someone else's software doesn't resonate with me at all. Not that you're wrong, but we just have different values.

I sometimes will load a website that uses React when really it's just a static content site. It just gets tiring, and doesn't add to the conversation, when every discussion about an article that could be HTML devolves into that. I get that other people feel that way, and in many ways I share their values... But it becomes its own sideshow and hijacks the otherwise interesting conversations, without adding anything new.

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

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Devil's advocate: you could always not run those apps. Although for non-technical users it would be challenging to determine if the apps were transmitting that info, it's possible for technical users to detect it (assuming the info goes to an obviously-facebook url and isn't piped through e.g. spotify) But therein lies the rub: the overwhelming majority of users of software are not like you and me and have no idea w…

The resources are trivial. If you don't like it you don't have to use the app that you chose to install.

You've very quickly sidestepped the primary point of the parent - many users would not know if it was even being loaded.

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

#194
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult to argue about whether it's "surreptitious." It's certainly no secret. I think this is why you need organizations (perhaps government or otherwise) to establish standards for what is and isn't acceptable, so we don't have to quibble over words like "surreptitiously."

>It's difficult to argue about whether it's "surreptitious." It's certainly no secret. I think this is why you need organizations (perhaps government or otherwise) to establish standards for what is and isn't acceptable, so we don't have to quibble over words like "surreptitiously." It is a secret, though. Outside of you, me, and a few other folks like ourselves, users of this software have no idea what's going on be…

I cannot easily see what information goes through an ASP form submitted with a ViewState parameter (where the page state is encoded in a blob buried in a JS var or HTML comment). Is that also surreptitious?

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

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>Having a government full of technical lot illiterate politicians regulating digital advertisement - what could possibly go wrong. I'm not sure that argument works. If we expand a bit, It wouldn't be difficult to find that governments are mostly comprised of illiterate politicians. There is no need for a government to be comprised of digital advertisement industry specialists in order to pass meaningful industry regu…

Those who don’t learn from history....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...

And a few where we dodged a billet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Act

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

#196
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…

One important distinction that often gets lost in these conversations is the difference between "linking" and "de-anonymization". In general, the bigger players in the analytics space are extremely careful about avoiding any risk of de-anonymization both contractually and in process. Salted hashes and minimum base sizes to report out are the norm. Some funkier approaches seem to be in R&D. There are of course bad players in the fringes but the big players have largely cleaned up their act.

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

#197
post #187
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that sense, any sort of client-originated telemetry is spyware. And there’s an awful lot of that, starting with ICMP.

Don't be an apologist. Any technical person here could show you how to write polite and respectful software.

[deleted]

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

#199
post #75
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is that "spyware"? Yes, absolutely. It uses energy and bandwidth I paid for to surreptitiously transmit my information for use which will solely benefit Facebook and the software developer.

If the software developer didn't get anything off you they wouldn't make the software available to you in the first place.

If the software developer would charge a reasonable price directly to the user, they wouldn't have to use intrusive and unreliable libraries like Facebook SDK.

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

#200
We found a couple workarounds while Facebook was busy fixing this.

1. Airplane mode 2. Block facebook.com as adult content under Settings | Screen Time | Content Restrictions | Web Content | Limit Adult Websites | Add a site. 3. Block facebook.com at your router.

Option 2 could be helpful if you want to block it for privacy reasons.

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