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Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser

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Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser

#41

Post by darknoon »

oconnor663 wrote: post #33
joshu wrote: post #19

i don't understand why apple allows in-app browsers.

Last I heard (years ago), iOS forced everyone to use Safari for webviews, which lots of people also complained about. Did that change? Or is the Safari webview the subject of this story?

Safari webview (WebKit) is what it's describing

Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser

#42

Post by macNchz »

PenguinCoder wrote: post #21
tiku wrote: post #10

I still remember the LinkedIn app ripping all my contacts, so no apps for me. I just use the sites.

> use the sites. Which are increasingly user hostile, if not down right impossible to view on mobile. Go try using Reddit or Twitter on your Mobile browser.

I actually find Twitter’s mobile web app experience to be pretty good–they don’t nag me to install the app every 5 seconds, it’s reasonably performant, the back button works properly and even mostly preserves scroll position. All of the core functionality is there, except new features like Fleets I don’t care about anyway. I use it regularly and have been pretty impressed.

Reddit on the other hand is absolutely hostile and basically none of what I said above is true of their mobile web UI. I refuse to install their app simply out of spite for how aggressively they nag for me to use it. I’ve said no like 500 times at this point, will I change my mind on the 501st prompt?

Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser

#43

Post by sitzkrieg »

oconnor663 wrote: post #33
joshu wrote: post #19

i don't understand why apple allows in-app browsers.

Last I heard (years ago), iOS forced everyone to use Safari for webviews, which lots of people also complained about. Did that change? Or is the Safari webview the subject of this story?

its the same. any browser (or app otherwise) on entire system has to use it for web rendering

Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser

#44

Post by ezfe »

ledauphin wrote: post #38

I can't imagine why anyone would expect otherwise. If you're still 'inside' an application, why wouldn't that app be able to track everything you do? To completely hijack the discussion here, I believe that Apple is actually one of the strongest forces for anti-privacy in the world, because of their long-term, successful push for the convention of app > website (not fully supporting PWAs, disallowing web push, etc).…

Apps that use Safari View Controller cannot view the page - of course Facebook doesn't use SVC for this reason.

While you're right that the Facebook/Instagram app can spy on links opened within the app, it can't plant cookies in your web browser - so those go both ways.

Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser

#45

Post by [deleted] »

ledauphin wrote: post #38

I can't imagine why anyone would expect otherwise. If you're still 'inside' an application, why wouldn't that app be able to track everything you do? To completely hijack the discussion here, I believe that Apple is actually one of the strongest forces for anti-privacy in the world, because of their long-term, successful push for the convention of app > website (not fully supporting PWAs, disallowing web push, etc).…

[deleted]

Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser

#46

Post by BudaDude »

PenguinCoder wrote: post #21
tiku wrote: post #10

I still remember the LinkedIn app ripping all my contacts, so no apps for me. I just use the sites.

> use the sites. Which are increasingly user hostile, if not down right impossible to view on mobile. Go try using Reddit or Twitter on your Mobile browser.

I just saw this in another article: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/banish-for-safari/id1632848430

I wonder if it can solve this problem since reddit/twitter/tiktok won't stop.

Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser

#47

Post by dilDDoS »

I generally don't see any appeal to in-app browsers in the first place. They often have extremely broken navigation controls (i.e. attempting to swipe back to a previous page usually just returns back to the app), block the ability to navigate to a specific URL, content blockers don't work, don't allow opening "smart links" that would typically open in another app if opened from a normal browser, etc. From what I'm gathering from this article, it sounds like in-app browsing allows apps to give you all of the "benefits" of being tracked (for their benefit only), with none of the (actual) benefits of using a real browser.

Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser

#48

Post by stephenson »

croes wrote: post #17
cloudking wrote: post #11

They can also track anything you do outside their browser, on a website with their tracking pixel.

You can install blockers in your browser but not in in-app browsers

This is why I have pi-hole on my network (https://github.com/pi-hole)

Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser

#49

Post by smitty1110 »

zahma wrote: post #7

Any reason why Google Maps wouldn’t* use the same in-app tracking? Edit: meant why Google wouldn’t do this. I guess what I really mean, is what are the chances they don’t do this?

Yeah, tracking your behavior. If you searched for a bar, did you look at other bars? Parking? What other things did you look at? All of this could potentially be used for segmentation.
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