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Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

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Re: Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

#91

Post by golergka »

st3fan wrote: post #26

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.

As an app developer, I think that I've done "Facebook SDK integration" task over 10 times at the very least. I don't think I'm the only one. It's unrealistic to expect a mobile app not to offer a user the option to login through Facebook.

And yet, we don't need to integrate Facebook's binary blobs to use this SDK's main features. How about we implement the open version of Facebook SDK that uses their APIs but doesn't do anything that we don't want it to?

Re: Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

#92

Post by somethoughts »

skylarchunk wrote: post #79
somethoughts wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar to how we have organizations which can certify whether produce is organic or not, we need organizations which can certify whether apps and websites are certified ad tracking free.

This is an interesting point. Either the government would then need businesses to disclose their "rating" (similar to movies) or businesses could opt in to show a seal (like Fairtrade bananas). The problem is, if there aren't enough (popular) sites with the seal, then the value of this declaration is lost.

Interesting - the movie ratings is a good analogy - as far as I know the MPAA handles it[1].

Maybe an existing organization in this space such as the eff.org with name recognization could come up with a certification methodology and branding seal for websites and apps.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Association_of_...

Re: Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

#93

Post by AnthonyMouse »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #81
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance companies have incentives to get better data than their competitors, so they can offer less expensive coverage to lower risk people and leave the competing insurance companies with all the higher risk people. Until the competitors do the same thing. Then you're all just offering less expensive coverage to most of your customers and making less money. (That also tends to cause trouble for higher risk patient…

Wikipedia claims: It was created primarily to modernize the flow of healthcare information, stipulate how Personally Identifiable Information maintained by the healthcare and healthcare insurance industries should be protected from fraud and theft, and address limitations on healthcare insurance coverage. Is the protected from fraud and theft part somehow incorrect? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Insurance_Port…

You're now talking about a different section of the same act. There are some separate provisions in there to fight insurance fraud, but that doesn't really have a lot to do with privacy for medical records, except to the extent that having somebody else's medical records might make it easier to commit insurance fraud against their insurance policy.

Re: Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

#94

Post by 6nf »

godelski wrote: post #2

> 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…

> If you don't need it, don't gather it.

What if they need it... to make more money?

Re: Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

#95

Post by somethoughts »

dwighttk wrote: post #88
skylarchunk wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting point. Either the government would then need businesses to disclose their "rating" (similar to movies) or businesses could opt in to show a seal (like Fairtrade bananas). The problem is, if there aren't enough (popular) sites with the seal, then the value of this declaration is lost.

Yeah. For many people I interact with Facebook, and to a lesser extent Google, are the internet. So they’d never see the seal unless Google put the sites in their top three results and didn’t scrape the relevant info. Or someone posted a meme with the seal in it on Facebook.

For apps at least, you could add the branding seal to the Appstore metadata that you upload for your app to the Apple/Android App Store.

For websites, agreed google would have to display it or it'd have to be after the initial page load which means you'd be tracked the first time you visited the site and you'd know not to visit a second time.

Perhaps for websites, a browser add-on that checked a certified ad tracking free database registry could be used.

Re: Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

#96

Post by megablast »

st3fan wrote: post #26

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.

Can't apps start up the facebook SDK after someone has clicked the facebook login button? If someone has already logged in with facebook, set a flag in NSUserDefaults, and start the sdk then.

Re: Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

#97

Post by kube-system »

st3fan wrote: post #26

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.

Tons of websites do this as well

Re: Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

#98

Post by modzu »

modzu wrote: post #49
leggomylibro wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

note the reason hippa exists has nothing to do with protecting individuals; it was drafted to protect the insurance companies. it is absolutely not that health data is somehow "private" enough to warrant some special protection for the persons themselves

quick source for the uninitiated (quoting hippa journal):

"...objectives of the Act were to combat waste, fraud and abuse in health insurance..."

Re: Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account

#99

Post by dahfizz »

danudey wrote: post #86
gazzini wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with this — more regulation will make it harder to innovate. For example, I’ve met several founders who wanted to enable tele-medicine years ago but decided against it because “the lawyers cost more than the engineers”, and walking-on-eggshells destroys morale & iteration speed. I’m not arguing to de-regulate heath data — my point is that we should selectively apply regulation. It’s likely a great thing to…

If a company can't 'innovate' without sharing users' data with third parties or treating it recklessly through lax security (or uploading database dumps to publicly-accessible S3 buckets) then that company doesn't deserve to be in business. It doesn't take a suite of lawyers to enforce that, either. Health care is gigantic mess of bullshit in the US especially, because of the multiple different 'stakeholders' - custo…

I think you've missed your parents point.

The problem they point out is that well intentioned businesspeople who want to provide you a useful service and store your data correctly are priced out.

If you want to deal with medical data of any kind, you need a lawyer. Full stop. It doesn't matter how good your intentions are, or how many "best practice" blog posts you follow. You need to hire a lawyer, and lawyers are incredibly expensive.

> Be careful with it. Store it properly. Only collect what you need, and delete the rest.

This is great advice, but that's not how laws work. Congress won't pass a law that says "store it properly". They are going to pass a law that describes how you can and cannot store data in 600+ pages of legalese. And no matter how properly you think you're doing things, you have to have a lawyer to know you're actually doing it properly.

Said another way: regulation always adds cost and barriers to entry. These affect the "good" business just as much as the "bad" business.

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