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

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

krausefx.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 469 posts

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

#351

Post by munk-a »

chinchilla2020 wrote: post #328
smoldesu wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe... just don't give your kids an iPhone? Seriously, using the internet/computers should be treated with the same level of caution as grown-up scissors or fillet knives; powerful tools, but they need training to avoid hurting yourself with them. If this is what you're worried about, why are you even giving them a small computer in the first place? Your kids will always be more cunning than your security policy…

You don't have kids. Your child would be the only one at school with no phone and probably be pretty embarrassed about it.

In school I was embarrassed about the clothes I wore... also the calculator I had and my shoes and my lunch and my trapper keeper and my pencils...

Kids being embarrassed at school is unavoidable, being embarrassed is practically the job description of a teenager and younger students often have their own insecurities. There's an interesting debate as to whether these embarrassments are good or bad for us in the long run but we can side step all of that... not having access to a smartphone is important - it's important enough to warrant the slight amount of embarrassment.

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

#353

Post by semiquaver »

d110af5ccf wrote: post #309
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…

You claim to be extremely liberal in your social views but then in the next breath make the assumptions that difficulty forming relationships today is significantly greater than in the past and further that this fact is due to effects that are caused (ultimately) by viewing porn. Those are both very socially conservative viewpoints and I have yet to find scientific data (or anything else I'd consider even remotely re…

No true Scotsman would claim to be liberal!

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

#354

Post by scrollaway »

Fogest wrote: post #336
RainaRelanah wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mind if I ask what game? Kiwi on Android is a Chromium fork that re-enables extensions on mobile. Works well for userscripts/extensions, though often times those UIs don't scale well to mobile.

Yeah, sure! The game is called Torn. It is a text-based MUD style game. People use lots of tools/scripts when playing it to improve things. Some mobile exclusive users do actually make use of apps like Kiwi on their Android phones in order to install userscripts and extensions. However some people have Apple devices (probably regretably) and as such are limited to less powerful solutions. Luckily someone made Torn PD…

Woah, Torn as in Torn City?

One of my first freelance jobs was for that game, fixing some bug or other in the website. This must have been 15 years ago ish?

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

#355

Post by rowanG077 »

CodeSgt wrote: post #338
d110af5ccf wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You claim to be extremely liberal in your social views but then in the next breath make the assumptions that difficulty forming relationships today is significantly greater than in the past and further that this fact is due to effects that are caused (ultimately) by viewing porn. Those are both very socially conservative viewpoints and I have yet to find scientific data (or anything else I'd consider even remotely re…

Where did I say that it's harder to form relationships today than it was in the past? I didn't. I said nothing of the sort nor did anything I say imply as much, if that was your takeaway then it exposes your implicit biases more than it does anything about myself.

You say this:

> I firmly believe that easy access porn is one of the worst things happening to the young men and women today. I (23) know many men around my age who suffer from chronic porn addictions to the point that it severely impacts their ability for form real relationships and median age of first exposure is getting lower and lower.

Porn(at least in it's current, easily accessible, form) didn't exist in the past. Since you claim that porn use severely impacts the ability to form real relationships it follows naturally that in the past it must have been easier. Since you don't mention any factors that impacted the ability to form real relationships in the past it follows quite directly that your claim is also that it was easier to form real relationships in the past.

In addition if it wasn't easier in the past how can you even know porn use is to blame? Essentially a variable is introduced which you claim has an extreme impact, yet you also don't claim there is change between pre- and post introduction. That makes no sense. Either it has an extreme impact which means it should be trivial to see a pre- and post introduction difference, unless there are other extreme factors that weigh in the other direction. Or there is no (extreme) impact.

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

#356

Post by [deleted] »

brianslp wrote: post #257
shawnz wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Android's "custom tabs" functionality is a great compromise. Apps can open a separate instance of the user's default browser which becomes part of the app's activity stack and doesn't share tabs with the main browser instance. However the UI and navigation are controlled by the browser, not the app. Cookies and local storage are also shared with the main browser instance, allowing seamless SSO without the app…

iOS has essentially the same: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/sfs...

[deleted]

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

#357

Post by sgc »

franga2000 wrote: post #288
bigfudge wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What do you think is more likely? That your child will stumble upon, correctly identify and successfully exploit an in-app webview, or that they will simply type "4chan" into Google on a school/library/friend's computer/phone? Unless they are under constant supervision, they will find a way to access what you're hiding from them. And if they are, well then you don't need technical blocks in the first place, do you?

If I can slow my kids down by a year or three, it's well worth it.

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

#358

Post by goda90 »

t8ty2evj wrote: post #307
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…

This seems like a non-issue. Where's the damage? I'm tired of people using children and a miniscule population of users w/ severe content sensitivities as excuses to justify features that are really just tools for asserting norms. The children are fine. We've been talking about how bad the internet is for children so long that those children grew up, led fufilling lives, had their own children, and now those children…

>What children need isn't more protection it's an escape hatch from all the forces trying to manipulate them during their most vulnerable years.

Isn't addicting content a force that's trying to manipulate them? Porn, certain kinds of games, online gambling, etc can all get their hooks in someone. Prevention is better than having to fight the addiction in the first place, is it not?

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

#359

Post by semiquaver »

manmal wrote: post #346
altairprime wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has deprecated but not yet removed the legacy web embeds that app developers use to spy on and track their users.

They haven’t deprecated web views at all: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/webkit/wkwebview WKWebView can indeed be used to spy on users - clicks can be intercepted, URLs sniffed, and custom JS injected (including a way to call back to the app’s runtime via a WebKit message passing mechanism). Considering all other iOS browsers (ok maybe some still run UIWebView) have been made using this component (because…

SFSafariViewController is available as a safer alternative. Presumably at some point apple will deprecate and remove WKWebView for precisely the reasons mentioned in this article.

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

#360

Post by lrvick »

freedomben wrote: post #317
d110af5ccf wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You claim to be extremely liberal in your social views but then in the next breath make the assumptions that difficulty forming relationships today is significantly greater than in the past and further that this fact is due to effects that are caused (ultimately) by viewing porn. Those are both very socially conservative viewpoints and I have yet to find scientific data (or anything else I'd consider even remotely re…

I'm not GP, but you first say: > Those are both very socially conservative viewpoints and I have yet to find scientific data (or anything else I'd consider even remotely reliable) that back either of them up, particularly the second one. but then go on to yourself list many probably reasons why that's the case: > how do you suppose to show that this change is due to porn instead of, say, the prevalence of dating apps…

> Also there's a lot of life experience out there of people who will tell you that they have a porn addiction that is causing them problems with relationships. One of my friends just got divorced from his wife of 20 years because he has developed a porn addiction and won't give it up or get any treatment (his wife is not ok with it).

I have the opposite life experience.

His wife not being okay with it is her right, but speaking personally I would never want to be in a relationship so fragile that one or both partners looking at legal pixels on a screen could compromise it.

I have been in relationships in a conservative universe where adult content was consumed in secret or restricted... and it is toxic. Not everyone is in the mood all the time and other outlets can be healthy when paired with honesty and moderation.

Way better for all to learn to be honest about their needs and curiosities without judgement. That is how stronger relationships are built. Happily married to my best friend for a decade.

Post reply on HN