I assume TikTok and similar apps are always doing this stuff. The thing I'm curious about is whether the GDPR / DSB complaints are likely to have any result. Is that likely to just result in some cost of business fines and TikTok goes on with life? Or could those complaints bring about substantial repercussions?
The expected result is that the complaints will rot in the queue for years and eventually either closed on a technicality or result in a token fine. That's the reality of GDPR "enforcement".
I hate to sound like a those pesky Kagi supporters, but that is built into Graphene OS.
It's not, though. If you deny location permissions the app will still know and pester you to enable. Same with other sensitive permissions with the exception of internet.
This has been a thing for rooted devices for a long time with faking senstive data on android
Although i wouldnt root any sensitive devices nowadays
It's because you are the exact target demographic consumer for that product, and it's visible in your behavior patterns when using your apps combined with what they know about you (age, sex, location, demographics, etc.)
Much more likely an explicit retargeting ad network that doesn't realise they already bought it. Retargeting has been a thing for like 15 plus years now. Visit website for knives, ad network tracking cookie notes that down, same ad network later serves you ads for the same knives. Or some convoluted data sharing network that has the same outcome these days.
It's not much more likely. People don't realize but demographic targeting works really well. When you are a certain age, certain gender, living in a certain area, with a few other inferred characteristics, you're very likely to be talking about, thinking about, and buying a small set of product types
How's the dating scene where you are? Whatever bubble I'm in, in the US, while I could not be on Instagram, that would be making things harder on myself.
No, that really wouldn't. Instagram is a tool to help women manage their fan club of orbiters and get validation from them on demand (which is what makes so addictive for women). It might look like "hey there's all these hot women here if i hang out here i will get dates with them" but that's the mirage.
Hmm in our community it's also a way to connect when you meet someone at parties, that doesn't expose too many details like your real name or phone number.
Earlier this year I downloaded TikTok once, I needed to access some very niche videos and couldn't watch them without getting an account. I never added anybody, and I never associated with any other socials, but somehow I started getting emails from TikTok that one of my NEIGHBORS were viewing my profile! Even used their full name. I deleted the account and uninstalled the app.
TikTok knows where you are and where they are. Easy connection to make.
Do you have to share your location with it? I don't use it but similar apps like Instagram don't have my location permission.
Earlier this year I downloaded TikTok once, I needed to access some very niche videos and couldn't watch them without getting an account. I never added anybody, and I never associated with any other socials, but somehow I started getting emails from TikTok that one of my NEIGHBORS were viewing my profile! Even used their full name. I deleted the account and uninstalled the app.
This is because when you click a shared TikTok link, your account and the sharer's accounts are associated in a social graph. The sharer will see your account as a suggested friend and vice versa.
No sharing link needed. Before I deleted my Facebook account more than a decade ago, it was already suggesting random people I met once IRL and are at least two hops away in terms of existing FB relationships. I had very few friends (~20 IIRC).
There are three possibilities though. One is Instagram copying TikTok, without their knowledge, the other is Instagram copying your TikTok feed with their knowledge but not their blessing, and finally Instagram copying your TikTok feed with TikTok's knowledge and their blessing. If we take a look at http://TikTok.com/robots.txt , it seems if you make your TikTok public, TikTok is happy to let Instagram take a look at…
The simplest explanation would be that Instagram crawled my TikTok's account's followers and is curating my Instagram reels based on that point in time. However that's not what happened, because my "following list" is restricted to be viewable by "only me", even though my account was public. "Public" just means that you can view my videos without me accepting a follower request. And I don't have any videos anyway. So…
In the book "careless people" it is highlighted that Facebook embedded spyware in their app which tracked other apps that were installed/used on the phone. This allowed them to figure out that so many of their users were installing WhatsApp, and enabled the legendary WhatsApp purchase. It is very much possible that Instagram is reading some sort of temporary files created by TikTok and extracts data using this method.
Facebook/Meta has a proven track record of fetching all data from your phone, even when abusing security vulnerabilities to do so. And the clowns at Apple can't even fix RCEs in their network-exposed applications, I'm not convinced the separation between apps is flawless.
I don't know, maybe they are colluding, but it is funny to default to that assumption over both platforms just delivering you the same content because you have the same behavior across both apps.
Pretty sure TikTok and Instagram are sharing data somehow as well. My feeds are near identical.
Why would two competing apps share data with each other?
Facebook has a track record of abusing security vulnerabilities to snoop up information about other apps installed on your phone. It might be as simple as Instagram reading leftover temp files created by the TikTok app.