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

Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 375 posts

Re: Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

#191

Post by dahfizz »

godelski wrote: post #189
dahfizz wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've missed your parents point. The problem they point out is that well intentioned businesspeople who want to provide you a useful service and store your data correctly are priced out. If you want to deal with medical data of any kind, you need a lawyer. Full stop. It doesn't matter how good your intentions are, or how many "best practice" blog posts you follow. You need to hire a lawyer, and lawyers are i…

> The problem they point out is that well intentioned businesspeople who want to provide you a useful service and store your data correctly are priced out. Then the way to do this is to simplify laws and their understanding. A company shouldn't need a large legal team just to figure out if they are doing something legal or not. It kinda sounds ridiculous when you think about it. That you have to hire a bunch of lawye…

I completely agree with you. The legal system is entirely out of reach for the average citizen, and this is something we should fix.

However, us wanting things to be a certain way doesn't change how things are. If Congress passed a "Data Protection Act" it would be indecipherable, full of technical illiteracy, and heavily influenced by the richest lobbyists (Facebook and Amazon, anyone?).

This is my objection. I would love for a real data protection act to be legislated. But Congress has its own agenda and ineptitudes. Do you really trust the people who wrote the Patriot act to protect your sensitive information?

Re: Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

#192

Post by kasey_junk »

tzs wrote: post #178
kasey_junk wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can’t be sued. They can be reported to a proper privacy authority who can chose to do something about it or not.

GDPR Article 79 [1]: > 1. Without prejudice to any available administrative or non-judicial remedy, including the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority pursuant to Article 77, each data subject shall have the right to an effective judicial remedy where he or she considers that his or her rights under this Regulation have been infringed as a result of the processing of his or her personal data in non…

See article 78. There is an escalation path.

Re: Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

#193

Post by Legogris »

dahfizz wrote: post #187
Legogris wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't store any data you won't need any lawyers. You don't need to store a single byte of data on your users or customers to provide a service or software using that data.

> If you don't store any data you won't need any lawyers. Wrong. HIPAA applies to any business that transmits and/or has access to PHI. You don't need to be storing data on your own hard drives to be subject to these laws. This is exactly my point. You are thinking like an engineer, and Congress is not. You cannot assume anything . You need to hire a lawyer, or you are opening yourself up to serious liability.

I worded that poorly. How about this: If you don't own, manage, solicit or control any servers having access to PHI or PII you don't have any risk of being liable.

Put all of that on the client, do your best to protect it but ultimately make it the clients responsibility.

I still haven't seen any lawsuits or regulation targeting software in that sense, apart from DRM.

Re: Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

#194

Post by dahfizz »

dx87 wrote: post #148
dahfizz wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've missed your parents point. The problem they point out is that well intentioned businesspeople who want to provide you a useful service and store your data correctly are priced out. If you want to deal with medical data of any kind, you need a lawyer. Full stop. It doesn't matter how good your intentions are, or how many "best practice" blog posts you follow. You need to hire a lawyer, and lawyers are i…

Not every business has to be viable for a startup. I'd rather a company that can't afford a single lawyer not have access to my personal information. If that means pricing them out of it through regulation, then so be it.

That's a perfectly reasonable position. If you have considered the pros and cons and decided one outweighs out the other, that's fine.

My parent was not doing that, and instead flippantly remarked that you should just store data correctly and everything is fine.

My point is that it is important to consider the implications of government action, because they are always numerous.

Re: Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

#195

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #113
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they did, it would raise a ruckus. There's a lot of developers that rely on these dependencies, and just blocking them would cause a major backlash.

I'm wondering why this post was so unpopular. It wasn't meant to be offensive or judgmental, in any way at all.

It's because Apple is one of the largest companies in the world and can survive a "backlash" much to the chagrin of small developers already subject to their mercurial policies. So the idea that that's what's stopping them doesn't really mesh with the reality that if it was, it would be stopping them from doing half the things they already do.

Re: Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

#196

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #195
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering why this post was so unpopular. It wasn't meant to be offensive or judgmental, in any way at all.

It's because Apple is one of the largest companies in the world and can survive a "backlash" much to the chagrin of small developers already subject to their mercurial policies. So the idea that that's what's stopping them doesn't really mesh with the reality that if it was, it would be stopping them from doing half the things they already do.

This is a good point. I have been an Apple developer for 34 years.

If you know what that means, it means that I am a scarred, grizzled vet, with an eyepatch and a trick knee.

Re: Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

#197

Post by samstave »

So facebook sent me a cease and desist threat for revealing that they were tracking all vehicles driving by their campus and then telling the city of menlo park of this.

So facebook, i want you to cease and desist in tracking anything and everything about me or anyone who wants nothing to do with your leviathan of bullshit tracking or pay out the ass and prove all my data has been deleted, and provide me a manner with which i can audit you for having no data on me.

If not, lets reveal all the other things you track on people who want nothing to do with you.

Re: Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

#198

Post by ratww »

julianozen wrote: post #20

To clarify, having just worked with the Facebook SDK library for my company's codebase, I dont think it is possible to setup the SDK without this happening. Disclaimer: I do not know what the FacebookSDK does after you call it's launch methods but I am pretty certain that they are required for a least some versions of the SDK. If you are a Zoom user who is not using a Facebook account, I believe the only info Faceboo…

FWIW, it's possible to use OAuth login without importing the SDK.

I did it on my last company's apps and webapps when we had to optimise for performance, and removed some dependencies.

Of course, now that I'm gone the SDK is back because one of the developers was bullish on using the SDKs at all costs (the webapp, for example, now loads FB, Google and Linkedin SDKs on launch).

This is a problem that we developers are creating.

Re: Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

#199

Post by untog »

xmprt wrote: post #66
julianozen wrote: post #20

To clarify, having just worked with the Facebook SDK library for my company's codebase, I dont think it is possible to setup the SDK without this happening. Disclaimer: I do not know what the FacebookSDK does after you call it's launch methods but I am pretty certain that they are required for a least some versions of the SDK. If you are a Zoom user who is not using a Facebook account, I believe the only info Faceboo…

Can't they fingerprint the device? The fact that Zoom was launched on a specific device is still a lot more information than I would be comfortable giving up if I don't use Facebook at all.

IIRC Apple made all device identifiers different between apps so it isn’t possible to do that.

Re: Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

#200

Post by rococode »

If you have a Facebook account and are curious what other apps and websites are sending data about you to Facebook, check out this link:

https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/activity_list

(click the area with the various app & website icons to expand into a more detailed view)

I was pretty surprised the first time I came across that list, there are a lot of apps on there that I never did a Facebook login with. For example right now I see that a map app I downloaded when I was travelling last year but only opened once or twice has sent 395 "interactions", the latest of which was 3 days ago. Actually, I should probably delete that now haha. Also, I'm using Firefox with the Facebook container, Privacy Badger, and uBlock Origin, and there are still many websites listed.

Post reply on HN