Live data from Hacker News

How Facebook tracks you on Android [video]

media.ccc.de

1–10 of 213 posts

Re: How Facebook tracks you on Android [video]

#2
I wonder how these researchers would have been able to find this out if the servers were not clearly identifiable as being Facebook's.

Also, what happens if Facebook starts to introduce strong(er) incentives for app developers to share user data?

Re: How Facebook tracks you on Android [video]

#7
Is there a blog post or outline that summarizes this talk? I care about privacy, but don't have an hour to watch the whole video.

The conference does provide a useful link to a privacy-centric page which catalogs some known facebook abuses:

https://privacyinternational.org/types-abuse/facebook

but there is no outline of this talk which summarizes the methods that facebook uses to spy on their users and the public.

Re: How Facebook tracks you on Android [video]

#8
We're spoiled in the desktop browser by being able to clear history, cookies, local storage etc, or use a private browser session. There's also the importance of the "same origin policy".

The Android platform API should simply never allow apps to obtain global system identifiers (serial numbers, "advertising IDs", MACs, Wifi network info, EMEIs etc) in the first place. Perhaps even going as far as not providing a shared filesystem.

Mobile apps, despite platform API permission, and having some ability to protect their own data, are a lot closer to desktop programs than web apps in many regards.

Post reply on HN