I still remember the LinkedIn app ripping all my contacts, so no apps for me. I just use the sites.
This theoretically can't happen anymore, right?
You have to give apps permission to get your contacts, right?
Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser
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Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser
#32Never go in app
Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser
#33i don't understand why apple allows in-app browsers.
Last I heard (years ago), iOS forced everyone to use Safari for webviews, which lots of people also complained about. Did that change? Or is the Safari webview the subject of this story?
Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser
#34I still remember the LinkedIn app ripping all my contacts, so no apps for me. I just use the sites.
> use the sites. Which are increasingly user hostile, if not down right impossible to view on mobile. Go try using Reddit or Twitter on your Mobile browser.
That makes it real easy, actually. No Reddit or Twitter
Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser
#35I also noticed TikTok does this as well; at the very least they are snooping inside their in-app browser to prevent you from visiting adult sites.
Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser
#36Isn't this the main reason why social media pushes their apps over their (once) perfectly functional websites? Better analytics = better product*. * for the true customers, i.e. marketing & communication firms, governments, etc.
Why do you say “true customers”? Is anyone under the impression that they are a customer of a service they don’t pay for? People would readily identify as a “Twitter user” instead of a “Twitter customer”
These days, you can expect companies to do the exact same thing even if you do pay for the service.
Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser
#37No wonder. I recently opened a link on Instagram and the website's responsive elements were completely broken. Then I opened the link in Safari and it worked fine. Does this script injection break Apple's ToS? I thought Apple required Safari/Webkit for all in-app browsers? Zuckerberg has no shame. PS. I hate in-app browsers. They don't sync with my main browser states such as authenticated sessions.
> They don't sync with my main browser states such as authenticated sessions.
And this is exactly why Apple gives them their own cookie jar. The alternative would be [more of] a security nightmare.
Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser
#38I can't imagine why anyone would expect otherwise. If you're still 'inside' an application, why wouldn't that app be able to track everything you do?
To completely hijack the discussion here, I believe that Apple is actually one of the strongest forces for anti-privacy in the world, because of their long-term, successful push for the convention of app > website (not fully supporting PWAs, disallowing web push, etc). A website may spy on you, but it can only do so in ways constrained by the browser, which has to serve many "masters". Mobile apps are completely unconstrained in their spying, and in-app browsers are just the logical extension of that pattern.
Thanks largely to Apple, we've conditioned ourselves to expecting that you can't have good mobile UX without a mobile-native application, and it's hard to imagine ever escaping back into the relatively open web now that we're this far down this path. Most people will never question the privacy implications of installing the Facebook app, and most of Apple's privacy-directed efforts on iOS are basically playing walled-garden whack-a-mole on problems that are better solved at a societal level with web browser standards.
Yes, it's quite likely that I'm scapegoating here, but it's the way I see it.
Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser
#39i don't understand why apple allows in-app browsers.
You mean custom ones, right? WebViews are incredibly useful, but it definitely seems like implementing your own browser gives people a false sense of security, like they've been sandboxed when they haven't. What would be nice here is a permission requirement if you're injecting code into a browser view.
webviews for clicking arbitrary links in apps like instagram or gmail are absurdly restrictive. i lose my context, cookies, and regular tools (bookmarks are gone, sharing often overridden, etc)
Re: Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser
#40I still remember the LinkedIn app ripping all my contacts, so no apps for me. I just use the sites.
> use the sites. Which are increasingly user hostile, if not down right impossible to view on mobile. Go try using Reddit or Twitter on your Mobile browser.
Actually twitter is fine on a mobile browser provided you use an account.
What I miss is the multi-container extension on fennec/firefox mobile. I keep using those sites in incognito mode but that mean I can only use one at a time.