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Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

forbes.com

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Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#51

Post by thih9 »

thom wrote: post #15

I wouldn’t know, still busy trying to fill out your cookie consent form.

I'd love to see a detailed analysis / reverse engineering that targets how 'legitimate interest' settings really works in these forms. This form in particular pre-selects all 'legitimate interest' switches and requires me to click them all, one by one. Does it really change anything? What does it change? What if I left them selected?

A quick look at their privacy policy [1] brings up:

> Forbes may also process certain user information on the basis of the following legitimate interests, provided that such interests are not overridden by your privacy rights and interests: delivering and continuing to develop and improve the Site, learning from your behavior on the Site (e.g., analyzing traffic) to better serve you and other Site users, helping us modify or enhance the Site and its content, receiving insight as to what users do (and don’t) like about our Site or aspects thereof, and providing a stable, consistent, and secure user experience in connection with the Site.

I understood this as 'unless your privacy rights and interests prohibit us, we'll process your data' (TINLA). Still, would be nice to know how do they check for an individual's privacy rights.

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/privacy/english/#d91194a30610

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#52

Post by randomhodler84 »

skinkestek wrote: post #40
gigatexal wrote: post #31

Forbes’s cookie pop up is ridiculous. They list all the ads trackers and it requires seemingly infinite scrolling. I am fortunate to have been able to delete Facebook and Instagram from my phone but being in Europe I have to use WhatsApp.

It takes effort but I don't have to use WhatsApp anymore (last time was last year to speak to a Google employee I started talking with here on HN). I have contacts in UK, Scotland, Germany, Norway, Pakistan, India, South Africa and probably a few more. They all have installed Telegram by now. Of course I think we can do better than Telegram but at least I am not contributing to forcing everyone to give all their meta…

I wouldn’t be celebrating WA->Telegram as a great win, telegram is not encrypted end2end and stores the plaintext on their servers. So folks have switched from giving Zuck metadata, to giving Durov their messages.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#53

Post by freebuju »

korla wrote: post #41
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.

I'm guessing here, but perhaps that is since apple revenue isn't ad-driven in the same sense Facebook is?

None can be trusted. Doesn't matter what either party claims to sell/not sell. Google started off with "Do no evil" as a motto at some point in its history.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#54

Post by diebeforei485 »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #44
diebeforei485 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You lose useful features like finding photos based on location if you don't remember the date it was taken. I think the better option is: (1) Make it obvious when location data is being included with a photograph, and exclude it by default - especially if the app doesn't already have Precise Location access. (2) Apps that manage your entire photo library and all its EXIF data (think Amazon Photos / Google Photos, or…

Yes, the iOS photo library API should really strip out the EXIF data before passing to apps unless the user has let them have access to it - I bet this will be added at some point. Facebook would like to access your photos: Select Photos All Photos Strip location and other metadata

The issue with tying metadata access to the Location permission is genuine Photo Library apps (eg. from Amazon / Google) typically are not given Precise Location access. There are some edge cases that need to be considered carefully, but there has been a lot of inaction from Apple on this issue - for years!

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#55

Post by shoto_io »

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.

I love the location data. I couldn’t live without on my iPhone / iCloud. It’s great for pulling up pictures of which you remember the place but not the time for example.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#56

Post by pjerem »

appplemac wrote: post #33
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

More specifically: Settings.app —> Privacy —> Location services —> Camera and turning off the “precise location” option for the Camera app that way. It would be ideal if there were an “EXIF data” toggle in the Camera section that could allow sharing pictures with apps but with all metadata removed.

It exists : when the sharing panel appears, there is little blue « Options » (or maybe Settings in English) link on the top of the screen. There you can choose to share the picture without location.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#58

Post by woutr_be »

speedgoose wrote: post #10
saos wrote: post #3

Or just delete Facebook apps.

Unfortunately it's not that simple for everyone. I personally would lose contact with a lot of people if I delete Messenger or Whatsapp. On all my contacts, I have two on Signal, zero on Matrix.

I really hate it when people say “just delete Facebook apps”. I would lose touch with almost everyone I know. They either use Facebook or WhatsApp, I can’t justify deleting either.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#59

Post by KaiserPro »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #43
KaiserPro wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apps/OS have been found to leak/send some 'personal' data to Apple servers, This isn't about leaks, its about actual design. The itracker system scans your local area for tags, and reports back their IDs and your location. This was rolled out without consent. By default apple collects "significant locations", which is then accessible to the itracker system ostensibly to warn you about tracking devices. We accept th…

> By default all your photos are sent to icloud Go into settings and turn off iCloud for photos, keychain and any other app you don't want it to work with. The difference of all of these things is that Apple is doing it to improve its apps for YOU, uploading photos from your phone to iCloud so you can see on other devices, or face recognition to group your photos, keychain copying is used across devices that you've e…

> Go into settings and turn off iCloud for photos

if facebook did that, we'd all be up in arms, and if that was their answer to one's privacy concerns we wouldn't buy it (see tracking opt in).

I get what your saying, but the difference is trust. We trust apple to be private. We don't trust facebook. People are ambivalent to google.

> Apple is doing it to improve its apps for YOU

I mean yeah, you could argue that Facebook are doing the same thing. After all, if engagement decreases, so does advertising revenue. Much as my opinion is unpopular, I doubt facial recognition of photos has much advertising benefit, especially when the social graph is already mapped out for you.

All I'm asking is that we apply the _same_ level of scrutiny of features from apple as we do to facebook. Don't buy the narrative about Apple being friendly, they are a corporation that will deploy the lawyers at any opportunity.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#60

Post by taneq »

l1ghthouse wrote: post #17
speedgoose wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately it's not that simple for everyone. I personally would lose contact with a lot of people if I delete Messenger or Whatsapp. On all my contacts, I have two on Signal, zero on Matrix.

Is Facebook messenger not available in the browser?

mbasic.faceook.com

It’s basic (like it says on the tin) but it works. I use it to avoid having to install the app, for all of them reasons discussed.

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