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

Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 266 posts

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#201

Post by ViViDboarder »

tjoff wrote: post #30
mrunseen wrote: post #9

A user can disable geo-tagging or the better(?) disable precise location in Settings.app > Privacy > Camera. Like mentioned in the article, there a lot of EXIF strips in Appstore too but I’m not sure if a regular user would take the road of take photo > go to exif stripper > delete exif on photo > save the photo > go to facebook > upload to facebook

That is a very useful feature to have though - for personal use. As a privacy nut I always make sure it is turned on. Then again, I don't use facebook and I do strip exif if I want to upload a photo somewhere I don't want to share my location. (and I can do this with termux and the same tool I'd use this on my PC, just run exiftool -all= foo.jpg) I get that it is not a sensible solution for the average user. But the…

iOS can do this out of the box when “sharing” a photo via the share sheet, but apps that you give photos access can bypass that sheet.

Apple should update the photo permissions to allow enabling or disabling access to metadata as well.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#202

Post by ysavir »

clankyclanker wrote: post #184
nr2x wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any sufficiently advanced form of advertising is indistinguishable from malware.

Or the corollary: any advertising distinguishable from malware is insufficient advanced.

What makes it insufficient?

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#203

Post by swiftcoder »

fulafel wrote: post #38
p49k wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some countries, you can't perform essential tasks such as booking a doctor's appointment without Whatsapp. It's not that simple.

Interesting, can you say what country you are thinking about?

It would be pretty infeasible to live in Spain without WhatsApp. Many phone plans here don't include unlimited free SMS and calls, so quite a few folks just don't receive them. Instead they send messages and short voice memos back and forth over WhatsApp.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#204

Post by ViViDboarder »

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.

Maybe I’m just not as social as others, but when I stopped using Facebook I never really missed those things. If some life change happens for someone I’m not talking to regularly via other means anyway, not learning about it on Facebook doesn’t really impact me. And, for people I do talk to regularly, I hear about it the next time we connect on a call, text, or in person. I actually end up with more to talk about because I haven’t passively consumed information about them.

When my grandmother passed due to COVID, my family called and texted each other and offered support in plenty of ways outside of Facebook, despite most of them being heavy users.

Everyone’s situation is going to be different, but it may be be as impactful as you think to drop Facebook. It’s addictive to read about people’s updates all day but it may not actually add much to your life and you may find the connections you have with people instead more meaningful as I have.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#205

Post by ViViDboarder »

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.

If you use iCloud photos, yes. Anyone with access to all your photos can track you.

That’s why I back up mine to a NAS in my house and have that send encrypted backups off-site.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#206

Post by dan-robertson »

jefftk wrote: post #104

This is an OS privacy bug, and isn't specific to Facebook. If an app does not have location permissions, it should not receive the geolocation portion of photos' EXIF metadata.

I don’t think that’s a sufficient fix though. E.g. many people may enable location sharing to messenger for legitimate uses like meeting up with friends in public places, and for a “15m of location shared to friend” feature they would need to turn location sharing up to at least the “allow while app is running” setting, but people doing that would surely not also intend for the app to also get the location of every photo they send to their friends (including photos that the OS(?) automatically tags with the current location when they are saved)

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#207

Post by spideymans »

>“Facebook marketing is generally dominated by iOS,” one ad industry article laments, “it’s pretty safe to assume Facebook has lost at least half their data, arguably the most valuable half.”

That's surprising. Facebook has a global reach and can run on damn near anything with a screen. I'm surprised iOS makes up such disproportionate part of its revenue.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#208

Post by woutr_be »

ViViDboarder wrote: post #194
woutr_be wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse me, but what? My friends text and call me through WhatsApp or Facebook. If anything, me ditching those two services would justify them not reaching out, because it implies I’m the difficult one. Me making it difficult to be reached does not mean they’re not my friends. EDIT: > And There’s FaceTime if your far from friend. Stop relying on Facebook to connect you… I'm not even sure to describe how ignorant this…

> If anything, me ditching those two services would justify them not reaching out, because it implies I’m the difficult one. Wow. You’re friends have so little respect for your privacy that they’d rather not talk to you than communicate via a different app?

You’re seriously twisting things to somehow make a point. I don’t understand why you have to respond with such a demeaning comment in the first place.

Over the last 5-10 years I’ve established quite a few chatrooms with multiple friends. Me somehow now demanding they switch over and respect my privacy is ridiculous.

And yes, I already use Signal and Telegram with people who use it. I just don’t go around demanding every single person I know switches over, just because I say so.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#209

Post by KaiserPro »

ricardo81 wrote: post #5
KaiserPro wrote: post #2

TL;DR: facebook stores exif data. however it strips it out for display to the public. This includes geodata. Its unclear what they do with it after, and how you have control over it. Interesting nugget: the author repeats the lies that apple doesn't collect/store/index your data. I think the scepticism of facebook is a good thing, however I really wish it would be applied equally to every big company. Especially when…

I think one of his main points is that he explicitly indicated not to collect that data, and the FB app itself indicates that the functionality is 'switched off'. Also: "I suggested to them that this data is used for advertising purposes, and that this is “regardless of the privacy settings selected by the user within the Facebook/Instagram app on their phones.” Facebook told me it was fine to proceed with those assu…

> FB stance seems to be that the user has the option to strip EXIF data before uploading to FB.

Which is pretty poor. I'd be interesting to see what twitter, tiktok and snap do with similar data.

Although people seem pretty chilled with other companies doing it. We already know google indexes by location. That's how they do the real time busyness graphs.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#210

Post by RyanHamilton »

motohagiography wrote: post #150

Beginning to think the reason security is so difficult is because ostensibly "good" companies do everything an attacker does and worse, but under the guise of EULAs. Here's a thought experiement: If Facebook were malware, could you get rid of it?

On my previous samsung phone I literally couldn't remove facebook. It claimed to be an OS level app and refused to uninstall.
Post reply on HN