Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. Is there a legitimate use case for injecting arbitrary Javascript by the native app? (Honest question)
Apps that use html for their UI and JS hooks to trigger touch ID, access the keychain etc.
Thanks!
Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser
411–420 of 469 posts
Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser
#412I was super confused by this since to the best of my knowledge SFSafariViewController blocks anything like this, you, as a developer, cannot inject anything or peak into the view it creates. Then I got to the bottom and realized I was correct, but FB/Meta/IG/etc aren't using SFSafariViewController and instead using the older ways to embed a web view. Honestly I thought all other methods had been deprecated and had no…
I have started moving from an SFSafariViewController to a WKWebView in my app. In my case, we have a discussion forum that I wanted to display in a sidebar alongside the app, so people could get help while they work. I also wanted to intercept clicks on certain files to open them directly in the app — making it easier for users to check out other work on the forums. However after reading this article what I will be d…
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Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don’t think they’ll ever remove that, because a decent portion of apps serve HTML from the app bundle (many hybrid apps do nothing else infact) and SFSafariController can’t hide its chrome. Many hybrid apps do need the delegation methods WKWebView offers, which are already way more limited than UIWebView was.
Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser
#414Separate yourself from big tech as much as possible and switching to only FOSS Software/Apps can be a great start for many who want more privacy.
Can go way more into other ways but too tired, also most who are surprised by this just need a starting point.
Btw, Apple and Mozilla are no privacy guardians out to protect you. These days they do just as bad.
Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
Brilliant insight. Could you please convince my children's school that they do not need a smartphone? Because they f'ing mandate it and I have not found a way around this yet.
Flip phones still exist and allow access to call in emergencies as well as text with friends.
Yes, but they specifically mandate a smartphone.
Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
Brilliant insight. Could you please convince my children's school that they do not need a smartphone? Because they f'ing mandate it and I have not found a way around this yet.
What happens if you refuse?
Good question, haven't researched that yet, thanks for the idea.
Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well I like when browsing reddit that when I open links they are sandboxed. The in-app browser in that case has an easy button to open to get to my normal safari if I want to.
I’d much rather seen a system-wide “container” implementation a-la-Firefox instead. Safari is pretty good at this but not as good as Firefox. I really want my real-life accounts be segregated from the rest of the internet. Reddit should never be able to know what other sites I use.
Under the implementation in the Reddit app I use (BaconReader), links open in a webview that is an isolated instance of WebKit or whatever the safari engine is called. So already Reddit does not know what other sites I use. Reddit does not have access to the content of my normal safari instance.
Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser
#418I was super confused by this since to the best of my knowledge SFSafariViewController blocks anything like this, you, as a developer, cannot inject anything or peak into the view it creates. Then I got to the bottom and realized I was correct, but FB/Meta/IG/etc aren't using SFSafariViewController and instead using the older ways to embed a web view. Honestly I thought all other methods had been deprecated and had no…
I have started moving from an SFSafariViewController to a WKWebView in my app. In my case, we have a discussion forum that I wanted to display in a sidebar alongside the app, so people could get help while they work. I also wanted to intercept clicks on certain files to open them directly in the app — making it easier for users to check out other work on the forums. However after reading this article what I will be d…
As a user I’d like to discourage this. If you use SFSafariViewController, the user’s extensions and content blockers load automatically. If you use WKWebView they don’t load at all. I’m one of those users who depends on these and every time a developer uses WKWebView instead it drives me up a wall. Plus, the UI is shared between Safari and it’s easy to jump out.
Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Right, but those clients weren’t “Novell netware”.
The windows client login and resource control was branded as such tho
Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser
#420> How can I protect myself? For full details scroll down to the end of the article. Summary: Whenever you open a link from Instagram (or Facebook or Messenger), make sure to click the dots in the corner to open the page in Safari instead.
“How do I protect myself?” should be point number one.
Does apple require that developers allow users to open these links in safari—- w/o tracking? Or do developers feel this is the only moral way they can agree to this user-hostile behavior?