Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#121

Post by h0nd » Sun, May 23, 2021, 12:50 PM UTC

i use jailbreak to control my location better - i can more easily de/activate it and spoof my location.

Now, I noticed a weird behaviour. I am not sure if its a 'bug' due to jailbreak, or if it shows how apps can access location.

The setup is as follows: location services are completely deactivated system-wide. a spoof location is set.

This means, I am not able in any way to access/share my location, neither the real nor the spoofed one.

However, when someone shares a location with me, upon displaying it on a map, instead of the location shared the spoofed one will be displayed along the correct address of the shared location.

ok, i dont know how iOS manages location services. still it is not nice at all to see that somehow an app can access a location, even if its spoofed and by error.

regarding the article: you can tell your phone not to give fb any location data. but why would you take a picture with location data and upload it to facebook? its so obvious and straight-forward that the user simply undermines his own privacy.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#122

Post by soziawa » Sun, May 23, 2021, 12:54 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #23

soziawa wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't provide end-to-end-encryption for WhatsApp so I'd actually call this worse than just using WhatsApp in the first place. Facebook gets all the data and your messages are stored somewhere (either at Beeper or on your own server) as plaintext.

You think Facebook does not have access to Whatsapp messages ? Would be very surprised if thats not the case.

Yes, they very publicly state that they do not have access and I have yet to see a reason to not believe them in that regard. All big Facebook data leaks and hacks have just exploited not very well known APIs or badly set privacy settings. But nothing that was secret.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#123

Post by bertil » Sun, May 23, 2021, 12:56 PM UTC

freebuju wrote: post #24

Yeah. This is not particularly a Facebook problem. And it certainly is not an iPhone exclusive one. I would be willing to bet my 2¢ that Apple photo backups store your photos with exif data. Should be trivially easy to strip this info and "track" you as well. Am not seeing anyone crying over this.

Apple explicitly uses the EXIF data in their Photos app by displaying and organising the photos by location. I do not believe that it’s used for more than user-facing features (and training said features).

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#124

Post by theduder99 » Sun, May 23, 2021, 1:06 PM UTC

jack_riminton wrote: post #116

nieve wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some set of developers wrote code to extract the location metadata and feed it to their tracking system for advertising purposes. How can that be just some emergent property? Actual human beings held meetings about it and worked long hours getting it done. It's hard to see your claim as not "shilling" for them.

Oh no a person on the internet thinks bad of me

well it was a nice try mr zuckerberg

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#125

Post by 369 » Sun, May 23, 2021, 1:12 PM UTC

h0nd wrote: post #121

i use jailbreak to control my location better - i can more easily de/activate it and spoof my location. Now, I noticed a weird behaviour. I am not sure if its a 'bug' due to jailbreak, or if it shows how apps can access location. The setup is as follows: location services are completely deactivated system-wide. a spoof location is set. This means, I am not able in any way to access/share my location, neither the real…

I just turned off location services. I turn them back on for the rare times I use gps.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#126

Post by 369 » Sun, May 23, 2021, 1:17 PM UTC

Ensorceled wrote: post #119

imgabe wrote: post #89

Why on Earth would you install the Facebook app on your phone?

My large, extended family and many of my friends are all on Facebook, keeping update to date during COVID. Sharing baby photos and other life events, starting businesses as they lose their jobs, sharing grief and support as my uncle nears his end. But sure, let's continue to victim shame and blame here.

You can do all of that on a computer.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#127

Post by jeromegv » Sun, May 23, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

h0nd wrote: post #121

i use jailbreak to control my location better - i can more easily de/activate it and spoof my location. Now, I noticed a weird behaviour. I am not sure if its a 'bug' due to jailbreak, or if it shows how apps can access location. The setup is as follows: location services are completely deactivated system-wide. a spoof location is set. This means, I am not able in any way to access/share my location, neither the real…

It's not obvious. You are uploading a photo to send to a friend, you don't know or expect that where this photo was taken is automatically used by Facebook to target you. Hell, most people wouldn't even know that the EXIF has the location.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#128

Post by collaborative » Sun, May 23, 2021, 1:19 PM UTC

randomhodler84 wrote: post #52

skinkestek wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes effort but I don't have to use WhatsApp anymore (last time was last year to speak to a Google employee I started talking with here on HN). I have contacts in UK, Scotland, Germany, Norway, Pakistan, India, South Africa and probably a few more. They all have installed Telegram by now. Of course I think we can do better than Telegram but at least I am not contributing to forcing everyone to give all their meta…

I wouldn’t be celebrating WA->Telegram as a great win, telegram is not encrypted end2end and stores the plaintext on their servers. So folks have switched from giving Zuck metadata, to giving Durov their messages.

There are many E2E IM apps now. Of course you still have to convince people to install them first

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#129

Post by sammorrowdrums » Sun, May 23, 2021, 1:25 PM UTC

wartijn_ wrote: post #118

Taek wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also a Facebook problem. A responsible company would have disclosed a vulnerability instead of exploited it

Well of course, but we all know Facebook isn't a responsible company and Apple shouldn't assume that every app in its store is made by a responsible company.

They're currently in court arguing about how they make users safer by curating the available software. Issues like this don't reflect well on that argument.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#130

Post by baq » Sun, May 23, 2021, 1:40 PM UTC

shawnz wrote: post #95

ekianjo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think Facebook does not have access to Whatsapp messages ? Would be very surprised if thats not the case.

Facebook doesn't have access to WhatsApp messages. WhatsApp uses the same end-to-end encryption protocol as Signal. We know this is true because the app has been extensively reverse engineered to create these third party clients among other reasons.

WhatsApp client is made by Facebook. It must see plaintext so it can put it on the screen. If it doesn’t send it anywhere yet, good - but it’s borrowed time.