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"Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

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Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#101

Post by comrh »

udev4096 wrote: post #100
janalsncm wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they fully deserve to be tracked Absolutely not. The law is still the law. The fact that Meta is able to break the law via technical means doesn’t mean victims deserve to be victimized. Just because someone is able to pick your lock at night doesn’t mean you deserve to be burglarized.

Get a better lock. If you don't care enough to not get lock picked, whose fault is it? The bar to avoid this form of tracking is not high at all. It's trivial for anyone who is willing to put some serious efforts in defending their privacy

You live in a tech bubble if you think it's trivial when most people don't even know what localhost is.

Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#102

Post by finnh »

udev4096 wrote: post #100
janalsncm wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they fully deserve to be tracked Absolutely not. The law is still the law. The fact that Meta is able to break the law via technical means doesn’t mean victims deserve to be victimized. Just because someone is able to pick your lock at night doesn’t mean you deserve to be burglarized.

Get a better lock. If you don't care enough to not get lock picked, whose fault is it? The bar to avoid this form of tracking is not high at all. It's trivial for anyone who is willing to put some serious efforts in defending their privacy

"trivial ... serious efforts"

which is it? you contradict yourself in a single sentence.

Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#103

Post by Miraste »

LoganDark wrote: post #96
MrDarcy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The window of opportunity already closed for AR/VR. AI dealt the death blow.

What do you mean? AI will enable better AR/VR experiences, or AI will obsolete them?

Simpler than that: AI co-opted the hype machine and the buzzword gurus, and therefore the investor money.

Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#104

Post by Ray20 »

drweevil wrote: post #60
DrScientist wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Companies have no soul. They are, by design, just chasing revenue. Everything else is just a risk to be factored. I disagree - companies are set up/run by people, and those people define company culture/ company culture reflects those people. Not all companies, even big ones, are the same. To make that concrete - if Mark Zuckerberg found out about the above activity and was appalled and sacked everyone involved tha…

No, companies indeed have no soul. This is all about perverse incentives. While companies are setup/run by people, the (publicly owned) company as a whole only has one incentive: profit. If any person on the inside stands against that, they won't stand long. Investors, executives whose pay depend on it, etc. will make sure of that. So the problem here is to transform a moral incentive into a financial one. A strong o…

>This is why regulations and regulators with teeth are vital in a capitalist system.

Why do you separate regulators from describing incentive system? The incentive system is also woven into them, and if anything, the incentives for regulators go in a much more sinister direction than for any capitalist company.

Profit-seeking companies are forced to satisfy customers that have their economic freedom. But what about regulators? Their primary incentive is to remain in a position of power, their primary tool for achieving their goals is forcing.

The economic freedom of all agents is a powerful disincentive. And even with it, we see abuses by capitalist companies. But what about regulators, whose disincentives are much weaker, and whose main tool, moreover, allows them to destroy even this weak disincentives? Fixing capitalism's incentives with regulators is like curing a cold with cancer.

Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#106

Post by oceansky »

udev4096 wrote: post #100
janalsncm wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they fully deserve to be tracked Absolutely not. The law is still the law. The fact that Meta is able to break the law via technical means doesn’t mean victims deserve to be victimized. Just because someone is able to pick your lock at night doesn’t mean you deserve to be burglarized.

Get a better lock. If you don't care enough to not get lock picked, whose fault is it? The bar to avoid this form of tracking is not high at all. It's trivial for anyone who is willing to put some serious efforts in defending their privacy

Absolutely no lock will prevent a sufficiently motivated thief.

And the bar is high for the average person, who isn't much tech savvy at all.

Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#107

Post by naikrovek »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #58
joshstrange wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Back in the early 2010s, they found a way to spy on HTTPS traffic on the iOS App Store to monitor which apps were getting popular. They had people install a VPN app using enterprise certificate so it was never in the App Store and they monitored all the traffic that the VPN sent. Unlike this case, it required users to jump through a number of hoops/scary iOS warnings. Many still did, for a gift card or less.

> Back in the early 2010s, they found a way to spy on HTTPS traffic on the iOS App Store to monitor which apps were getting popular. That's what allowed them to know WhatsApp and Instagram were good acquisition targets. Incorrect. An Israeli startup (Onavo) had pivoted into selling data acquired from their VPN got acquired by Facebook. Importantly, they used statistics to estimate population prevalence which is how F…

> Honestly, I generally defend Meta/targeted advertising in these threads

These kinds of things now point me in a direction where I consider advertising alone to be immoral and want it banned. I should have to request information when I want it, rather than being exposed to it at all times on every available surface.

There are only three ways this can go: 1) more frequent and more spookily relevant ads, increasing the number of people who feel that ads should be illegal because of the law breaking required to make it happen. 2) ads don’t change and everyone quickly learns to ignore them. 3) ads go away, replaced by an easy to use marketing information delivery system where only adults can request information unsupervised.

Meta do #1 because #2 and #3 mean the capitalist line doesn’t go up and the end of Meta, respectively. Meta view both of those as the same thing: the end of Meta.

“What about all the businesses which need advertising to survive?”

If they need advertising to survive they’ve been on borrowed time long enough already.

Advertisements encourage the shit Meta is doing. What kinds of similar things are they doing that we haven’t discovered, yet?

Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#109

Post by alchemist1e9 »

throwawayffffas wrote: post #76
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd split that first list into two: 1a. Arbitrary apps can listen on ports without permissions. 1b. Arbitrary apps can access local ports without permissions. I've recently been experimenting with running the browser (on my desktop) in a network namespace precisely because of these reasons. Random websites shouldn't be able to access services running on localhost.

> I've recently been experimenting with running the browser (on my desktop) in a network namespace precisely because of these reasons. Let me introduce you to https://www.qubes-os.org/ .

For the ultra paranoid is there anything that can do this on a smartphone?

Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#110

Post by Ray20 »

DrScientist wrote: post #62
genocidicbunny wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't fully agree because the way I see it, that is in a way scapegoating the company executives. Are they responsible? Probably, yes, they set the direction of the company and give the orders at the highest level. But we the engineers and designers are the ones actually implementing what is probably a fairly nebulous order at the highest levels into something concrete. They deign that there should be evil created,…

I'd agree at a personal/moral level there is equal responsibility. However that doesn't recognise both the power and risk/reward imbalance here. If you, as an employee did this - maybe you'd add a few dollars to your stock options over time. If your Zuck - that's potentially billions. And in terms of downside - if you are Zuck and stop it in the company - there is no comeback - if you are an engineer blowing the whis…

Sounds like a typical blurring of responsibility through bureaucracy. "If Zak is a billionaire, then he is responsible, but since he essentially did nothing wrong, then no one will be held accountable." Total nonsense.

There are specific crimes, and there are specific people who planned this crimes, specific peoples who ordered them to be carried out, and who carried them out. And these people should be held accountable for these crimes. Even if they work 60 hours a week for minimum wage and would have been fired if they hadn't committed them. They should have quit in such cases, not committed crimes.

And on the other hand, if your employees, without your knowledge, somehow decided that the only way they could reach their targets was to commit a crime, why should you be held responsible for that? Even if you have 20 megayachts and your employees work 60 hours a week for minimum wage.

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