231–240 of 375 posts
I want to see the App Store list what entities a given app might communicate with without explicit user request. If your SDK feeds FB, it needs to be on the label. If you talk to dodgy surveillance shops, ditto. Making this enforceable (plist authorizations, like microphone permissions) is a little tricky, but at the very least smoking out slimy crap like this would be much easier.
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Its incredible how blocking changing the default app on iOS isn't illegal. Its obviously insanely anti competitive.
It's like people forget "the bar" for anti-trust action used to be bundling the default app (web browser) with the OS (windows)
EVERY. SINGLE. APP. THAT. INCLUDES. THE. FACEBOOK. SDK. Even if you don't log in. The Facebook SDK sends data back. Hook your device up to an intercepting proxy and start up a few apps. 99% of them do this. I really wish Apple would put an end to this.
It looks promising, and has been posted to HN a few times, but nobody has commented on it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20519456
EVERY. SINGLE. APP. THAT. INCLUDES. THE. FACEBOOK. SDK. Even if you don't log in. The Facebook SDK sends data back. Hook your device up to an intercepting proxy and start up a few apps. 99% of them do this. I really wish Apple would put an end to this.
> I really wish Apple would put an end to this. This is what really gives lie to the whole walled garden thing. Its selling point is supposed to be in Apple preventing things like this, but here we are in reality and they don't. Meanwhile they do e.g. prevent Signal from replacing Apple's default app for SMS, which has no purpose other than to create barriers for cross-platform competitors to the default apps.
Difficult to figure out how to actually do this, especially so without a crazy UX.
They should figure out the default apps thing. Though I don't know what you'd need for SMS, there's not much system integration there besides Siri (which I think supports plugins) and maybe sms: links?
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Obviously someone at Zoom thinks they get value out if it. But that's quite different from "this is a revenue source", which would suggest Facebook paying money for it. Your typical company will happily put a tracking SDK in so some marketers get some more graphs to look at in Facebook Analytics.
How do you know if it isn’t a revenue stream? I guess I’m thinking that if this information that Zoom (a publicly traded company) was doing this, it would be bad for business, so doing it just optionally for fun, seems like all risk and that an appropriate reward would be a financial incentive.
As for it not appearing in their TOS, the "risk", it isn't unusual for the left hand to not know what the right is doing. Those drafting the legal text may not have known that this particular analytics system was being used.
There are many arguments for why this was overlooked, and why it exists, without it having to be direct revenue.
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> I really wish Apple would put an end to this. This is what really gives lie to the whole walled garden thing. Its selling point is supposed to be in Apple preventing things like this, but here we are in reality and they don't. Meanwhile they do e.g. prevent Signal from replacing Apple's default app for SMS, which has no purpose other than to create barriers for cross-platform competitors to the default apps.
Its incredible how blocking changing the default app on iOS isn't illegal. Its obviously insanely anti competitive.
> There is nothing in the privacy policy that addresses [that data is being sent to Facebook] > The Zoom app notifies Facebook when the user opens the app, details on the user's device such as the model, the time zone and city they are connecting from, which phone carrier they are using, and a unique advertiser identifier created by the user's device which companies can use to target a user with advertisements So Zoo…
It's past time for us to get serious and apply HIPAA-style protection to the storage and transmission of PII, without exemptions. Companies like Facebook will complain loudly that they won't be able to survive, but that is not our problem. If we pass legislation with teeth, they will need to change their business model. That would be the point.
Reminder: The NextDNS iOS app allows you to monitor and block these types of requests from all of your apps, via their DNS logging/filtering. (You can also configure the retention on the DNS logging, so as to not cause more toxic waste data.) I can't recommend it enough. Until/unless we get something like Little Snitch for the phone (are you listening, Apple?!), this is the next best thing.
THIS! , thank you! just installed and found tons of queries to Uber (never used uber in past many months) , uninstalled it finally!
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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.
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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.
Banning 90% of the apps on the store until they remove the Facebook login SDK would cause a backlash much bigger than from a group of small developers.
Moreover, prohibiting this wouldn't actually remove the apps for more than five minutes because what would immediately follow is a version of the SDK that doesn't send any data to Facebook when you're not actually using a Facebook account.