How much of this, if any, applies when using the Facebook or IG mobile websites or PWAs? IG's PWA seems to be the same as the mobile website, except that it launches in fullscreen, with no browser address bar. When using those on Chrome, I have not received one of those dialog popups saying "m.facebook.com wants to know your location".
Privacy: Is That iPhone?
161–170 of 188 posts
Re: Privacy: Is That iPhone?
#162Somewhat related: when i re-install Youtube or Google Home i am automatically logged in to both apps. Even if i delete the apps and wait weeks/months and then reinstall, i'm logged in again when i first open them. I have enabled "Settings > Privacy > Advertising > Limit Ad Tracking" and also cleared all Safari history. How is this possible?
I believe they store some data in your iCloud account. Uber used to do this too. The only way to get rid of it is to sign out and then again explicitly ask to delete account data on this device, then uninstall and reinstall to use the service without signing in.
What Google does is store account data that is shared with all Google apps under "Google LLC".
Go to "Settings > General > iPhone Storage" and you will find "Google LLC" where it explains the data stored is shared with all Google apps.
Microsoft does the same thing to enable you to quickly sign-in to their different apps under the name "Microsoft Corporation".
Re: Privacy: Is That iPhone?
#163Somewhat related: when i re-install Youtube or Google Home i am automatically logged in to both apps. Even if i delete the apps and wait weeks/months and then reinstall, i'm logged in again when i first open them. I have enabled "Settings > Privacy > Advertising > Limit Ad Tracking" and also cleared all Safari history. How is this possible?
The use IDFV(id for vendor) for this. It's an identifier that is shared between all apps of the same vendor.
[deleted]
Re: Privacy: Is That iPhone?
#164Somewhat related: when i re-install Youtube or Google Home i am automatically logged in to both apps. Even if i delete the apps and wait weeks/months and then reinstall, i'm logged in again when i first open them. I have enabled "Settings > Privacy > Advertising > Limit Ad Tracking" and also cleared all Safari history. How is this possible?
Go to "Settings > General > iPhone Storage". On the list of apps you will see "Google LLC". This is where Google stores account data and this is shared with all Google apps. Under Google LLC it says "Data shared by X apps".
Nope, unfortunately there's not a single item in there containing/related to Google :'(
Re: Privacy: Is That iPhone?
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Go to "Settings > General > iPhone Storage". On the list of apps you will see "Google LLC". This is where Google stores account data and this is shared with all Google apps. Under Google LLC it says "Data shared by X apps".
Nope, unfortunately there's not a single item in there containing/related to Google :'(
You need to have at least 2 apps installed from Google for it to show up.
Re: Privacy: Is That iPhone?
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately the majority of more or less useful or popular apps are also linked against various analytics/attribution platforms, often many of them at once. Mixpanel, Amplitude, AppsFlyer, Branch to name a few, plus Facebook and/or Google. In fact having any of the Google's or Facebook's SDKs means tracking, e.g. Maps, Login etc. Somehow these platforms have no problem with identifying users across their client app…
Mobile is all about surveillance as near as I can see. The whole purpose of it is to track users.
I think the push to apps was to get persistent tracking while offering the user the olive branch of new apis/better battery life/etc. The browser is a prophylactic against apps and their uncontrolled behaviors.
Re: Privacy: Is That iPhone?
#167Mozilla suggests resetting the IDFA once per month...but that seems pretty trivial to workaround? If an app you used previously starts up and sees that your IDFA changed, it's easy for that app to know that the old IDFA and the new IDFA refer to the same user! This tracking is all possible because iOS gives every app on the device the same IDFA (advertising identifier [1]). They can then correlate all your activity a…
You don't need an IDFA to track someone in the same app. You can generate your own UUID to use. The value of the IDFA comes from coordinating user behavior across apps. Targeting ads is one use case, but it is also used in conversion tracking, which is very valuable to advertisers. They can know if ads in one app resulted in people buying things in another app. Edit: fixed typo
Generating your own UUID is forbidden I thought?
What if apple sandboxed it to each app to make it safer/easier?
Re: Privacy: Is That iPhone?
#168There a bunch more things Apple could do to improve privacy they haven't done (yet?) They could require for example that unless you're specifically making a browser (Firefox, Chrome, Brave) that your in app webview have a whitelist of domains it's allowed to contact. That would force apps to launch Safari (or better the user's choice of browser) for external links. As it is nearly every app that supports external lin…
I agree with this, but we already have this problem for full-fledged browers: each page can usually make requests to any/all 3rd party domains (for any reason). Often I see even javascript from raw cloudfront domains, how the hell should I trust this? (visible via umatrix plugin)
I think default behavior has to be block all 3rd party domains from all sites, but it's a ways away.
Re: Privacy: Is That iPhone?
#169A Linux phone is what we need. FirefoxOS was a great initiative from Mozilla, but now it is in the hands of a company I do not trust.
UBPorts/Ubuntu Touch is trying!: https://ubports.com/
Re: Privacy: Is That iPhone?
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get the filters, but why the second screenshot? Aren't you just adding more hypothetical tracking pixels with that step?
So that the final screenshot is from outside the app being screenshotted, and as a bonus you get another round of JPEG obfuscation.
Write a tool that replaces the least significant bit of each pixel with a random value. Compress the result with 80% quality. Compress the result with 79% quality. Make sure to strip exif info, and all other metadata. Enjoy the result.