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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

#271

Post by brk »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #254
sirsinsalot wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Novell Netware had a similar bug circa 1998 whereby pressing `F1` at the login screen of the terminal opened the help dialog, which opened links in IE ... from there the main Windows shell could be ran and bingo ... you're in.

I never saw IE or Windows running on Novell Netware. It was a server operating system. What you’re saying is akin to saying you can create a windows shell from inside linux.

The Netware backend server was it's own OS, IIRC. However on the client side, you had MS-DOS and Windows Netware clients to login to the Novell server and access the associated shared resources.

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

#272

Post by Zababa »

bigfudge wrote: post #237
polote wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A feature doesn't become a problem because 1% have an issue with it (people who use parental control). The internet is the internet if you want to restrict what people can see on the internet the only solution is to not have access to it at all

Do you have kids? It’s really not easy to withdraw all internet access without substantially disadvantaging them. But I don’t want them reading 4chan either. Anything which makes that less likely without fundamentally breaking things is welcome to me.

> But I don’t want them reading 4chan either.

I don't think access to 4chan is going to fundamentally change who your kids are.

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

#273

Post by yesbabyyes »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #254
sirsinsalot wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Novell Netware had a similar bug circa 1998 whereby pressing `F1` at the login screen of the terminal opened the help dialog, which opened links in IE ... from there the main Windows shell could be ran and bingo ... you're in.

I never saw IE or Windows running on Novell Netware. It was a server operating system. What you’re saying is akin to saying you can create a windows shell from inside linux.

I think what they mean is the Netware login dialogue, on Windows. My classmate hacked our high school's network, getting him thrown out of class. I'm pretty sure he used a different method, though. He got a job working for the school. This was in the mid 90s.

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

#274

Post by tjoff »

flanbiscuit wrote: post #101
tjoff wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On android I have firefox-focus as my default browser (and disable any in-app browsing) for that same purpose.

Also available in Firefox for Android (not just FF Focus) Settings > Advanced > "Open links in apps" https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/set-firefox-android-ope...

The point with firefox focus is that the whole browser is in private mode. And even another browser, so no shared sessions or anything with your normal browser or precious interactions/sessions.

Not sure if open-links-in-apps is comparable to that, never tried it (I rather prefer multitasking than doing it from within the app anyway).

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

#275

Post by CodeSgt »

Zababa wrote: post #266
CodeSgt wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad to see someone mention addicts. I feel as if internet addiction, and especially subsets of it such as porn addiction, aren't given enough weight by either the addiction treatment community or the technical community. Before someone accuses me of being a conservative religious zealot as tends to happen when anyone denounces porn, I'll say that I'm far from a puritan and am extremely liberal in my social views…

> It's an absolutely crucial issue that no one seems to be talking about or taking seriously. Most men communities talk about it in one form or the other. However, most men communities on the internet are usually close in one form or another to the right politically.

I suppose I should have said it's not being talked about by any mainstream authorities or outlets in the same way a lot of women's or equity issues are (not to say porn isn't also a women's issue, it very much is, but seems to disproportionately impact men).

It is a shame that any group which advocates men's issues tends to get labeled as right-wing or incelish, which then attracts those types and makes those labels a reality. And of course many were admitedly that way from the start.

Edit: And to add to this, being right or left leaning isn't inherently bad. And maybe this is my personal bias coming into play here, but I find that people are much quicker to associate right-leaning movements/communities as "bad" than they are left-leaning ones. Again I accept that could be personal bias and it isn't a hill I'd die on.

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

#276

Post by qwertox »

graham1776 wrote: post #152

I've meant to write a blog post about this, but here goes: In-app browsers allow users to view inappropriate content, often against the wishes of sensitive individuals. People especially at risk for this include addicts and children. Nearly every app, even "safe apps" including children-rated apps, allow access to an in app browser. Even when iOs has locked down all access to Safari, a parent has removed access to al…

I think on Android they could use Chrome Custom Tabs [0] instead of WebViews. IIRC this also protects the browser content from being accessed by the hosting app, but there is still a limited communication which is possible between the app and the tab.

[0] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/android/custom-tabs/

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

#277

Post by dzikimarian »

I'm surprised that so many people write "yeah, any in-app browser can do that - nothing to see here".

Anyone can potentially steal your wallet, so we shouldn't point out when someone actually does? Especially when there's hard evidence in article?

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

#278

Post by tolmasky »

mrtksn wrote: post #232
tolmasky wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right... by "none of these things" I meant... the stuff I listed, which for the record is not incompatible with isolating the browser from the initiating app. It would be totally viable to give SFSafariViewControllers "write only" access to your history (implemented as just an API call that SFSafariViewControllers makes to notify the OS of a page navigation, which it can then store the URL of in your history, so that…

I like the "adopt as tab" button idea a lot and generally agree but I also see the associated risks with other suggestions. For example, write only access to history will also mean SEO-consultant-type people paying app developers to write certain websites to the users history. When Safari does suggestions on the address bar, browsing history is a major source.

The only caller of said API would be the SFSafariViewController itself, the same way the Share Panel can see your Contacts despite you not having given the app that opened the Share Panel Contacts "access". This way, only organic page navigations get recorded (or at minimum is equally susceptible to any history pollution as a normal web page that you encounter). The idea was not to have SFSafariAddURLToHistory(), apologies if that's the way it came off.

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

#279

Post by andix »

avalys wrote: post #263
andix wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First Instagram is not a browser. And second the browser manufacturer (usually) doesn’t make any money by tracking their users. They provide them with a tool, a browser. There is the browser Brave, that replaces ads on websites (and makes some profit with that), and there are some serious legal issues coming with that.

Seems like Instagram _is_ a browser. The right you seem to be claiming is “you can’t render my website in your app if I don’t like your app”, and that’s not how it works.

So why are iframes then not allowed by some legislations? Because an iframe is also "just a browser".

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

#280

Post by franga2000 »

graham1776 wrote: post #152

I've meant to write a blog post about this, but here goes: In-app browsers allow users to view inappropriate content, often against the wishes of sensitive individuals. People especially at risk for this include addicts and children. Nearly every app, even "safe apps" including children-rated apps, allow access to an in app browser. Even when iOs has locked down all access to Safari, a parent has removed access to al…

If someone is knowledgeable and committed enough to dig through all their apps, find any in-app browsers and try to break out onto the web, they will also realize that simply using another device will bypass all your silly blocks.
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