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Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

forbes.com

61–70 of 266 posts

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#61

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…

> Apple is doing it to improve its apps for YOU

This seems subjective; other companies could claim the same. E.g.: FB says they're trying to show YOU more relevant ads.

> The data may be in Apples iCloud but is 'private'

This seems more objective to me and a better indicator of actual privacy. Still, we should keep in mind that Apple's goals may change in future and that they might change their approach.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#62
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PC is different. They deliberately removed messaging from the mobile web interface, see my reply to konspence.

Messaging was still available for a long time through mbasic.facebook.com up until very recently. They removed that feature at the time their last big messenger outage happened. messenger.com still works on Android Firefox as long as you switch to desktop mode. Not sure for how long though, as it looks as if they are constantly sabotaging their platform. ..and it shows: Facebook Messenger feels far less relevant than…

Still works for me, unless they’ve taken it down in the last couple of hours..:

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#63
post #38
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?

I don't know about Facebook but here in Sweden we have several systems where you need to use Google, and of course accept Google's terms in order to do that. One example is the health care centers and hospitals that uses Google Maps. Another example being the schools that forces the students to use Chromebooks (and apps like GMail, Google Classroom, Google Docs, etc), and Google forms for requesting information about the kids need for after school care.

I do not like that Google get to know when I need to visit the hospital, or collect information about my children's activities in school. But currently we do not have an option.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#64
post #42
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

that's exactly i was hoping for : no answer. we 'd be truly screwed if crappy WA would be adamand for such in any given country, even Putinocchio's, Xi's or KJU's. that country 'd be even more crappier than WA, and all FB-associated, which in turn would be quite an achievement on quite a, literally and metaphorically, negative scale in its own right

It occurred to me after posting that there are likely places where healthcare is mostly private companies / practicioners and most would have no enforced accessibility requirements.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#65
post #38
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?

In Brazil, everything uses WhatsApp. Doctors, banks, lawyers. It's almost the sole means of communication over there.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#66

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 the scepticism of facebook is a good thing, however I really wish it would be applied equally to every big company. Especially when they so clearly abuse privacy like Apple and Google.

The difference between Apple and Facebook is that Facebook's entire business model is built on abusing the privacy of it's users.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#67
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

TIL! Thank you.

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#68
Geez, even the author of this piece is "Founder/CEO of Digital Barriers, which develops advanced surveillance technologies for frontline security and defence agencies as well as commercial organizations in the US, Europe and Asia. The company is at the forefront of AI-based surveillance."

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#69

Geez, even the author of this piece is "Founder/CEO of Digital Barriers, which develops advanced surveillance technologies for frontline security and defence agencies as well as commercial organizations in the US, Europe and Asia. The company is at the forefront of AI-based surveillance."

How can this person even be trusted ? or what are you implying?

Re: Facebook still ‘secretly’ tracks your iPhone

#70
With all of the complexity of tracking technology, protocols and data laws I'm wondering whether these findings are also revelations to FB.

I'm not shilling for them but just wondering whether some of these results are a direct consequence of the nature of the systems rather than nefarious design

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