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

Red flags in the Threads privacy policy

qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 263 posts

Re: Red flags in the Threads privacy policy

#31

Post by proxiful-wash »

e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #10
twobitshifter wrote: post #7

If your problem is with the ownership of Twitter, I don’t understand why you would run from the arms of one wannabe cage-fighter into another’s. If your problem is with ethics, FB isn’t a beacon of good behavior. If your problem is getting rate-limited or losing your blue checkmark, I guess go wild, but you probably already loved Twitter too much to leave.

It's not about any of those things, it's about just being a well-run internet service. Facebook is very good at running a big internet service that billions use, Twitter not so much under new management. A well-run internet service tries not to keep causing self-inflicted PR disasters. A well-run service is stable, consistently available, doesn't have a large amount of feature churn, and generally has stable leadersh…

[flagged]

Re: Red flags in the Threads privacy policy

#33

Post by dash2 »

tsuujin wrote: post #13
tedunangst wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it too much to ask how, exactly, other apps safeguard this info? Allegedly, according to the App Store privacy declaration, mastodon collects no user content. Now how does that work? How does one post on a network that doesn't collect user content?

Mastodon doesn’t actively poll the operating system for data about you. You can input data (via posts) and that may be scanned by some system but you actively control all data that you choose to or not to share. Threads polls just about every bit of data the operating system stores. E.g., on iOS threads reports that they collect data from the health app (“health and fitness”). If you are using the health app to store…

There's a thread above stating that this is not correct. I'm not saying they are right, wish someone would chime in with the authoritative details.

Re: Red flags in the Threads privacy policy

#34

Post by SanjayMehta »

brxck wrote: post #20
epistasis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which social media app has access to your phone's storage of health data? Certainly not the one that's the subject of this post. Strava, a social media app for exercise, has selective access to "health" data about exercise stored on the phone, but that's the closest I can think of.

The App Store page for Threads lists “Health & Fitness” under the Analytics and App Functionality sections of App Privacy. I am completely unfamiliar with what that implies or what access would actually be allowed, but I can see how that would raise concern.

Instagram is the same and probably has been that way since inception.

Re: Red flags in the Threads privacy policy

#35

Post by dylan604 »

serf wrote: post #23
brxck wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The App Store page for Threads lists “Health & Fitness” under the Analytics and App Functionality sections of App Privacy. I am completely unfamiliar with what that implies or what access would actually be allowed, but I can see how that would raise concern.

I sort of wonder about that, too -- it's not well reflected in their privacy policy.[0] An altruistic guess -- maybe another way for them to achieve geolocation if other methods are hindered? [0]: https://terms.threads.com/privacy-policy

That's a huge dose of benefit of the doubt you're giving to the Zuck. Do you for a second believe that granting the Zuck access to your Health & Fitness data that he will stop at just getting the information to geolocate you or would it be more like "let's just suck in all of the data we are given access to and then maybe at a later date we can use it beyond what we originally needed"?

Re: Red flags in the Threads privacy policy

#36

Post by dylan604 »

blairbeckwith wrote: post #28
epistasis wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stating that this somehow means it has access to your health information is just straight up misinformation. I don't even see an option to give it access to health information, which is tightly controlled on iOS.

Apple should really communicate more clearly what they mean in these privacy reports, because I don’t think it’s insane to interpret “The following data may be collected and linked to you: … Health & Fitness” in this way. An incorrect interpretation, sure, but not one you have to be dumb to make.

Until someone provides explanation for exactly what that does mean, how is anyone to know that it is an "incorrect" interpretation?

Re: Red flags in the Threads privacy policy

#37

Post by laserbeam »

jonny_eh wrote: post #29
Barrin92 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a determining factor in whether somebody will use a service Threads is currently not available in Europe because its privacy policy isn't compliant with EU law, that's literally what the article is about. We're not talking about individual choice here, or absolutists behind Tor. I don't understand what your post has to do with the topic. Clearly we have with privacy legislation at least accomplished that Meta must…

That doesn’t sound right. It surely can’t be any worse than Instagram which works fine in the EU. I believe it hasn’t launched there yet because the lawyers haven’t cleared it.

The main difference is Threads is a new product. Unlike Instagram which was released before GDPR was a thing. Sadly, it's way simpler for business to juat avoid the stringent regulated market at launch if you don't want to comply with regulations, then to actually comply.

I don't think the severity of tracking is important when comparing insta vs threads, just the inertia of an old vs new product.

Re: Red flags in the Threads privacy policy

#38

Post by tsuujin »

dash2 wrote: post #33
tsuujin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon doesn’t actively poll the operating system for data about you. You can input data (via posts) and that may be scanned by some system but you actively control all data that you choose to or not to share. Threads polls just about every bit of data the operating system stores. E.g., on iOS threads reports that they collect data from the health app (“health and fitness”). If you are using the health app to store…

There's a thread above stating that this is not correct. I'm not saying they are right, wish someone would chime in with the authoritative details.

For iOS the authoritative source is apple itself; you can read their post on this topic here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211970

The actual list of privacy descriptors and what they actually mean can be found here: https://apps.apple.com/story/id1539235847

For example, the description of “Health and fitness” is:

> Health and fitness

> Health

> Health and medical data, including but not limited to information from the Clinical Health Records API, HealthKit API, and Movement Disorder API, or from health-related human subject research or any other health or medical data that you provide.

> Fitness

> Fitness and exercise data.

Which indicates that the app can use HealthKit etc to gather information about your health and medical data and exercise data.

Re: Red flags in the Threads privacy policy

#40

Post by JimDabell »

blairbeckwith wrote: post #28
epistasis wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stating that this somehow means it has access to your health information is just straight up misinformation. I don't even see an option to give it access to health information, which is tightly controlled on iOS.

Apple should really communicate more clearly what they mean in these privacy reports, because I don’t think it’s insane to interpret “The following data may be collected and linked to you: … Health & Fitness” in this way. An incorrect interpretation, sure, but not one you have to be dumb to make.

> Apple should really communicate more clearly what they mean in these privacy reports

This information is provided by the app developer; in this case Meta are telling Apple they use your health data and Apple is merely showing that information in the App Store.

Post reply on HN