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Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

forbes.com

111–120 of 266 posts

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#111
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually these type of situation show who are your friends. Your friends will call you, text you and arrange meets. And There’s FaceTime if your far from friend. Stop relying on Facebook to connect you…

Excuse me, but what? My friends text and call me through WhatsApp or Facebook. If anything, me ditching those two services would justify them not reaching out, because it implies I’m the difficult one. Me making it difficult to be reached does not mean they’re not my friends. EDIT: > And There’s FaceTime if your far from friend. Stop relying on Facebook to connect you… I'm not even sure to describe how ignorant this…

>Me making it difficult to be reached does not mean they’re not my friends.

Is phone and SMS considered 'difficult' now? Everyone I know simply uses SMS and phone calls.

I suppose if you have globally distributed friends groups, this could be difficult, otherwise I don't see why. You give up a few features and it's not the most secure but it's a viable alternative almost everyone has access to.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not a single day goes by without the company taking a crap in some corner. my proposal is more radical. rally to ban FB in that country. incentivize local companies to come up with alternative solutions. zuck and his comrades have no business poking their noses into foreigners medical data anyway. it would also avoid less taxes being lost on facebooks Double Irish tax evasion. treat them like the cancer they are. don…

> incentivize local companies to come up with alternative solutions. Living in a country where local social networks are more popular with general population than foreign ones (Russia), I'd rather prefer FAANG. "Local companies" may sound good because the word "local" has some nice connotations, like your "local store" or "local coffee shop". But in reality, "local companies" do all the bad stuff that Facebook does,…

fair point i think

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse me, but what? My friends text and call me through WhatsApp or Facebook. If anything, me ditching those two services would justify them not reaching out, because it implies I’m the difficult one. Me making it difficult to be reached does not mean they’re not my friends. EDIT: > And There’s FaceTime if your far from friend. Stop relying on Facebook to connect you… I'm not even sure to describe how ignorant this…

>Me making it difficult to be reached does not mean they’re not my friends. Is phone and SMS considered 'difficult' now? Everyone I know simply uses SMS and phone calls. I suppose if you have globally distributed friends groups, this could be difficult, otherwise I don't see why. You give up a few features and it's not the most secure but it's a viable alternative almost everyone has access to.

Well, I live abroad, my family and friends have various group chats on WhatsApp and Messenger. I can’t blame them for not wanting to include me, since it would cost them quite a bit of money to text or call me.

Plus, phone calls are quite different from general text messages. Messages allows anyone to reply on a time they’re free for it.

So in general, yes, SMS is considered difficult, in my situation.

The main thing that WhatsApp and Messenger gave me was the ability to stay in touch with anyone I knew, wherever they lived. SMS just doesn’t cut it; huge fees and no groups. There’s really no alternative.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#114

Yeah. This is not particularly a Facebook problem. And it certainly is not an iPhone exclusive one. I would be willing to bet my 2¢ that Apple photo backups store your photos with exif data. Should be trivially easy to strip this info and "track" you as well. Am not seeing anyone crying over this.

In what way is having valuable exif data that I use for tracking hikes and vacations being stored safely in my online backups the same as Facebook scraping that exif data to invade my privacy?

The false equivalencies in this thread are almost overwhelming.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#115
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hate it when people say “just delete Facebook apps”. I would lose touch with almost everyone I know. They either use Facebook or WhatsApp, I can’t justify deleting either.

Actually these type of situation show who are your friends. Your friends will call you, text you and arrange meets. And There’s FaceTime if your far from friend. Stop relying on Facebook to connect you…

Hey, stop shitting on my friends.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#116
post #90

With all of the complexity of tracking technology, protocols and data laws I'm wondering whether these findings are also revelations to FB. I'm not shilling for them but just wondering whether some of these results are a direct consequence of the nature of the systems rather than nefarious design

Some set of developers wrote code to extract the location metadata and feed it to their tracking system for advertising purposes. How can that be just some emergent property? Actual human beings held meetings about it and worked long hours getting it done. It's hard to see your claim as not "shilling" for them.

Oh no a person on the internet thinks bad of me

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#118
post #108
post #104

This is an OS privacy bug, and isn't specific to Facebook. If an app does not have location permissions, it should not receive the geolocation portion of photos' EXIF metadata.

This is also a Facebook problem. A responsible company would have disclosed a vulnerability instead of exploited it

Well of course, but we all know Facebook isn't a responsible company and Apple shouldn't assume that every app in its store is made by a responsible company.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#119
post #89

Why on Earth would you install the Facebook app on your phone?

My large, extended family and many of my friends are all on Facebook, keeping update to date during COVID. Sharing baby photos and other life events, starting businesses as they lose their jobs, sharing grief and support as my uncle nears his end.

But sure, let's continue to victim shame and blame here.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#120

Yeah. This is not particularly a Facebook problem. And it certainly is not an iPhone exclusive one. I would be willing to bet my 2¢ that Apple photo backups store your photos with exif data. Should be trivially easy to strip this info and "track" you as well. Am not seeing anyone crying over this.

I love the location data. I couldn’t live without on my iPhone / iCloud. It’s great for pulling up pictures of which you remember the place but not the time for example.

Yeah I do just this all the time, so handy being able to search using natural language for the Exif data too.
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