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No, you intentionally give fb a photo or a piece of text to share. They hoover up everything else. For example, they will record your physical location when yo
by ohazi 8y ago
No, you intentionally give fb a photo or a piece of text to share. They hoover up everything else.
For example, they will record your physical location when you send a message or share a post, as well as randomly several times per day. They will also record which photos, posts, and ads you linger on as you aimlessly browse.
This is information that most people are not sharing intentionally, and it's not optional. Fb uses this information to build a profile on you that's separate from anything you share intentionally.
It's being referred to as spyware because most users aren't aware that Facebook does this, and wouldn't have agreed to it had they been offered a choice.
- raspasov 8y agoIf I say "no" on iOS when the FB app asks for location how are they exactly recoding my location? P.S. No idea about Android.
- eightysixfour 8y agoHonest question, I don’t know the iOS APIs very well, can they (if you have given the app permission before) check geotags on your photos without you explicitly uploading that photo?
- raspasov 8y agoI believe if you give access to "Photos" on the device, they can. Otherwise by giving GPS/Location permission - no. They are two separate things.
- dleslie 8y agoGeo IP is a reasonable last resort; it'll usually show at least what city you're in. The images you upload may have location data on them. If you're using a wireless hotspot then your location is correlated to anyone who also used it while sharing GPS data. And so on.
- raspasov 8y ago"If you're using a wireless hotspot then your location is correlated to anyone who also used it while sharing GPS data." That's a clever one I hadn't thought about. I guess for a service like Facebook/Instagram/Google it can work decently well given the scale/adoption.
- chrischen 8y agoThat's in fact how your GPS works most of the time. They triangulate it based on a scan of SSIDs assuming access points are usually fixed. Both Apple and Google use this method.
- ACow_Adonis 8y agoTheoretically (i don't work at facebook) there's a number of ways you could go about it. - Geocode down to the lowest applicable level of IP address - grab it from the photo metadata - Piggyback off of similarities to other people obtaining similar photos or activity - grab it from other database sources that do have your location - correlate it to your interactions with other hardware/infrastructure with known locations - transitively deduce it from your friends and acquaintances who share their location and tag themselves and reply to your stories/photos Theoretically you could try to train some neural nets on images themselves. Geoguessr.com is a fun game website where you can try to do so as a human, and you can usually get pretty damn close. Images themselves leak a tonne of information on time/place: clothing styles, fonts and languages on signs, shadows, light colour, fauna/flora, asphault + stone types, arichtecture and design quirks. In many ways the neural net might even have some advantages over humans, because not many humans memorise the thousands of minutae: eastern USSR uses this particular kind of road barrier and reflector type and this kind of font on its road signs. But aside from a research activity, i imagine facebook already has the data it needs most of the time...
- mixmastamyk 8y agoI once posted a shot including a friends daughter. FB tagged her mother before I shared the post. We were all creeped out.
- alanlamm 8y agofun fact - I changed my hometown to Timbuktu on facebook. yet when I click on Why Am i seeing This Ad, I am told it is because the advertiser wants to reach people who live in (not are in or have been in) my actual home town. huh.
- godelski 8y agoNot to mention that you share the photos you don't post.
- Mirioron 8y agoYou're still giving all of that information out. Or your device is, but that's still under your control and thus you're the one giving it out. >It's being referred to as spyware because most users aren't aware that Facebook does this, and wouldn't have agreed to it had they been offered a choice. Then they need to control their data better. Facebook is an easy target because they do all of this in the open. There are probably untold number of bots online that vacuum up this information and you'll never ever know about it and legislation will never stop it because it's running on some server in China or something.
- ikfmpwdsoz 8y agoMost people are entirely unaware of how much data Facebook is collecting about them. Raising awareness about that is a noble goal, but it's not mutually exclusive with stopping Facebook from exploiting their naivety.
- Mirioron 8y agoBut it's a temporary measure that only works against Facebook and maybe other companies that do it above the board. In other words, you're kicking the companies that are honest about it in the teeth. Meanwhile the really shady companies will continue doing it, because they are outside of the jurisdiction. This is like trying to provide security through obscurity. Yes, it works on a large scale, but it's not really security.
- CaptainZapp 8y agoIn other words, you're kicking the companies that are honest about it in the teeth. Where exactly was Facebook's ever honest about what data they hover up? Want just but two examples from dozens? That cutesy rabbit and the super shady patterns used for permission to suck up all your communication on Android would be exhibit #1 I would add the fact that they abused the phone number provided for two factor authentication to spam you with adverts. A clear abuse of its intentions and a kick in the teeth of security in general. There are dozen more examples. If in doubt search for "The apologies of Mark Zuckerberg" on DuckDuckGo.
- bobdole12345 8y agoYou can disable FBs access to location services. And photos. And contacts. It was offered as a choice, because when you install the app, it asks for permissions to access those things.