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Facebook secretly spied on Snapchat usage to confuse advertisers, court docs say

arstechnica.com

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Re: Facebook secretly spied on Snapchat usage to confuse advertisers, court docs say

#11

Post by SR2Z »

odyssey7 wrote: post #9

Imagine if the DOJ case against Apple prevails and rivals begin distributing their own iOS apps through alternate app stores and obtain unencumbered access to currently-private system APIs.

This is silly. Open platforms use TLS, too, and there's no epidemic of trivial failures of encryption; you can't just add root certs willy-nilly because crypto engineers knew that was the most obvious attack vector.

FB did this by paying folk to consensually MITM their own traffic, and frankly any system that wouldn't allow users to do that on their own devices is a bad one.

Re: Facebook secretly spied on Snapchat usage to confuse advertisers, court docs say

#12

Post by SR2Z »

derelicta wrote: post #5
cute_boi wrote: post #3

After all these bombshells, I think Facebook is more dangerous than Tiktok....

No you don't understand! When it's an American company doing it, its okay!

Definitely not as risky as handing a hostile government control over American media...

Re: Facebook secretly spied on Snapchat usage to confuse advertisers, court docs say

#13

Post by odyssey7 »

dogleash wrote: post #10
odyssey7 wrote: post #9

Imagine if the DOJ case against Apple prevails and rivals begin distributing their own iOS apps through alternate app stores and obtain unencumbered access to currently-private system APIs.

Interesting thought. Perhaps the cat-and-mouse game of megacorps defending/expanding their turf through software/hardware boundaries isn't the best mechanism to achieve consumer protection. If only there was something like consumer protection law. But you know, did consumer protection instead of waging proxy wars for megacorps to defend/expand their turf.

Sure, regulations and legal systems are important. However, they can fail to protect people in situations where technology would offer greater protection and vice-versa.

For example, Benjamin Franklin applied his technical skill as a publisher to engineer dollars that were more difficult to counterfeit. The illegality of counterfeiting on its own could not prevent counterfeiting, so technology was also availed.

It’s critical for us to recognize that technology is a critical component to our security, not merely an alternative to regulation.

Re: Facebook secretly spied on Snapchat usage to confuse advertisers, court docs say

#14

Post by derelicta »

SR2Z wrote: post #12
derelicta wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you don't understand! When it's an American company doing it, its okay!

Definitely not as risky as handing a hostile government control over American media...

Maybe Americans should tame their Elites into like not destroying Republic abroad and not fund genocidal maniacs. Heard it helps not having governments being hostile towards yours.

Re: Facebook secretly spied on Snapchat usage to confuse advertisers, court docs say

#15

Post by talldayo »

odyssey7 wrote: post #13
dogleash wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting thought. Perhaps the cat-and-mouse game of megacorps defending/expanding their turf through software/hardware boundaries isn't the best mechanism to achieve consumer protection. If only there was something like consumer protection law. But you know, did consumer protection instead of waging proxy wars for megacorps to defend/expand their turf.

Sure, regulations and legal systems are important. However, they can fail to protect people in situations where technology would offer greater protection and vice-versa. For example, Benjamin Franklin applied his technical skill as a publisher to engineer dollars that were more difficult to counterfeit. The illegality of counterfeiting on its own could not prevent counterfeiting, so technology was also availed. It’s…

Why can't/shouldn't we encourage Apple to invest in on-device runtime security instead of a fallible App Store review process that might not even be relevant anyways? If any software has uninhibited access to hardware APIs, that seems like a software security issue that needs to be solved, not an ironclad justification for the App Store.

Re: Facebook secretly spied on Snapchat usage to confuse advertisers, court docs say

#16

Post by landgenoot »

lesserknowndan wrote: post #6

How on earth does one App man in the middle another App’s traffic? This is a huge security vulnerability! If Facebook can install an App like this on iOS or Android, then other companies could do a similar thing. Has this been fixed since?

> How on earth does one App man in the middle another App’s traffic?

By providing a VPN

https://beyondmachines.net/event_details/facebook-spied-on-c...

Re: Facebook secretly spied on Snapchat usage to confuse advertisers, court docs say

#17

Post by odyssey7 »

talldayo wrote: post #15
odyssey7 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, regulations and legal systems are important. However, they can fail to protect people in situations where technology would offer greater protection and vice-versa. For example, Benjamin Franklin applied his technical skill as a publisher to engineer dollars that were more difficult to counterfeit. The illegality of counterfeiting on its own could not prevent counterfeiting, so technology was also availed. It’s…

Why can't/shouldn't we encourage Apple to invest in on-device runtime security instead of a fallible App Store review process that might not even be relevant anyways? If any software has uninhibited access to hardware APIs, that seems like a software security issue that needs to be solved, not an ironclad justification for the App Store.

The DOJ case is requesting the opposite of your proposal. Although the alternate app store angle is what has been featured in the headlines, the case also requests for Apple to make various private iOS APIs available to 3rd-party apps, so if the DOJ prevails then the judge’s ruling could make various forms of API access limits illegal for all impacted APIs.

Re: Facebook secretly spied on Snapchat usage to confuse advertisers, court docs say

#18

Post by germangardener »

SR2Z wrote: post #12
derelicta wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you don't understand! When it's an American company doing it, its okay!

Definitely not as risky as handing a hostile government control over American media...

For other countries, America is hostile.

From the outside America looks like Russia with more money.

On the scale of evil, Facebook and China are in the same category.

Re: Facebook secretly spied on Snapchat usage to confuse advertisers, court docs say

#19

Post by gmerc »

SR2Z wrote: post #12
derelicta wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you don't understand! When it's an American company doing it, its okay!

Definitely not as risky as handing a hostile government control over American media...

America may be a fascist white supremacist dictatorship for one day (lol) by November.

From the outside, when you’re in such a place, the calculus is different.

Re: Facebook secretly spied on Snapchat usage to confuse advertisers, court docs say

#20

Post by talldayo »

odyssey7 wrote: post #17
talldayo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't/shouldn't we encourage Apple to invest in on-device runtime security instead of a fallible App Store review process that might not even be relevant anyways? If any software has uninhibited access to hardware APIs, that seems like a software security issue that needs to be solved, not an ironclad justification for the App Store.

The DOJ case is requesting the opposite of your proposal. Although the alternate app store angle is what has been featured in the headlines, the case also requests for Apple to make various private iOS APIs available to 3rd-party apps, so if the DOJ prevails then the judge’s ruling could make various forms of API access limits illegal for all impacted APIs.

That part I agree with - If Apple is willing to create an API, they shouldn't be allowed to use it anticompetitively. Apple is just going to have to learn how to cope with third-parties having access to their APIs.

Nothing is stopping Apple from creating a more secure runtime for iOS apps. They are doing it right now with MacOS; I haven't heard a single legitimate excuse as to why iOS is different. Apple could be (and frankly SHOULD be) building a comprehensive user-controlled security menu that even lets them protect against Apple themselves.

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