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Facebook Still Tracks People on Yelp, Duolingo, Indeed
- hadrien01 8y agoChanged the title from 'Guess what? Facebook still tracks you on Android apps (even if you don't have a Facebook account)' (too long for HN and missing details)
- dwighttk 8y agomight be worth leaving Android in there though...
- IloveHN84 8y agoOn iOS as well
- badfrog 8y agoCould be, but this article is only about Android.
- richardhod 8y agoTL;DR - Full list from the article: 'seven apps, including Yelp, the language-learning app Duolingo and the job search app Indeed, as well as the King James Bible app and two Muslim prayer apps, Qibla Connect and Muslim Pro, still send your personal data to Facebook before you can decide whether you want to consent or not.'
- echevil 8y agoIsn't that similar to Google Analytics and Mixpanel, Segment.io and so many other tracking tools?
- criddell 8y agoDid you like the giant image at the top of the article?
- echevil 8y agoYeah, I don't think it's a problem and I'm not convinced by the article at all. Also, if an app/website don't track user behavior and improve themselves based on data, they are most likely going to be defeated by their competitors soon enough.
- criddell 8y agoThey aren't sending the data to Facebook to improve themselves.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- superkuh 8y agoPart of the problem here is the entire smartphone and app culture of walled gardens. No native desktop applications try to pull this shit excepting the webapp as 'native' electron-based fakes.
- scrollaway 8y agoYou are mistaken, native apps do pull and have been pulling this shit for a long time. It just so happens that this electron you hate so much has good debug tooling and more readable source code than your average native app, so it's more visible.
- superkuh 8y agoElectron 'apps' do not have readable source. More often than not they pull down their source dynamically at run time. So it can and often does, change every time you run the program.
- scrollaway 8y agoWhat of it? It's still very readable. Open an inspector once in a while. Even the most minified and obfuscated JavaScript pales in comparison to most non-C# native apps, and that's without accounting for the amount of debug tooling usually left over in there. It sounds to me, and other commenters, that you simply are misremembering the past and ignoring current trends that have nothing to do with electron.
- thosakwe 8y agoThat’s definitely something that happens in non-Electron apps, though. Not to mention the fact that Electron apps just bundle an archive containing the app sources (minified or not), whereas you’re not necessarily going to be able to read the source code of a C++ app running on your system.
- criddell 8y agoThe walled garden could also be part of the solution. Apple could change their policy and ban this behavior.
- dontbenebby 8y agoThis is one of the reasons I use a VPN - I can set it up to disallow contact with Facebook and other trackers at the DNS level, rather than fiddle with content blockers on all of my devices.
- SonicSoul 8y agointeresting, can you provide more info on your setup?
- dontbenebby 8y agoI self host on Digital Ocean with Algo: https://github.com/trailofbits/algo https://github.com/trailofbits/algo
- badfrog 8y agoDo those blacklists break any functionality on these apps?
- dontbenebby 8y agoI don't use Facebook so I wouldn't know. I haven't had any issues so far on the sites I visit.
- snr 8y agoBut then again, unless you're setting up your own VPN infra, I don't trust anyone with my data. If you've set up your own infra, deets please!
- dontbenebby 8y agoI self host on Digital Ocean with Algo: https://github.com/trailofbits/algo https://github.com/trailofbits/algo
- tombert 8y agoI hate this data tracking as much as everyone else here, but is this really a surprise to anyone? I used to put Google Analytics on my blog, and I thought most of the people here were pretty aware of how gigantic the Facebook advertising claws stretched. I feel like until we have an internet that isn't dependent on ad-networks, this is an inevitability. Targeted ads perform better, and you cannot expect these giant megacorporations to act ethically when it will cut into their profits and while they're technically not violating any laws.
- darkpuma 8y ago'Surprise' shouldn't be the standard required to bring it up, otherwise challenging and changing the status quo wouldn't be possible.
- tombert 8y agoI don't disagree, except the title of the blog post began with "Guess What?", kind of implying new information.
- darkpuma 8y agoIn American English, "guess what" is often used in a somewhat 'sarcastic' manner. Used before expressing annoyance with a continued state of affairs. Example: > "Guess what, Jimbo 'forgot' to pay his share of the rent again.
- peteey 8y agoThe ad-networks will always try to take extra value regardless of dependence. Ads exist on paid services. My Economist subscription requires me to swipe away Oracle ads. The last flight I was on tried to sign me up for a credit card. No matter what a customer pays, there will always be a temptation to make a bit more money by showing an ad. Ads will exist until people are empowered to block them.
- zwkrt 8y ago
- Mc_Big_G 8y agoMaybe we need a law that simply makes it illegal to track any user on any network for any reason. Is there any legitimate reason to track a users that is purely in their own interests? Also, how many of these articles does it take before people stop using Facebook?
- badfrog 8y ago> Also, how many of these articles does it take before people stop using Facebook? Infinite. The majority of people won't see these articles. And the majority of people who do see them won't care enough to change their behavior.
- tayo42 8y agoYeah? Why should I care about tracking? Why is what you click on so secret and guarded and why should I care. Sites have been tracking forever. I was 8 and putting counters on my geocities sites Is the problem just Facebook and Google? The retail clothes store I used to work for tracked everything. Where's the outrage?
- darkarmani 8y ago> I was 8 and putting counters on my geocities sites How is a hit counter at all related to tracking users?
- tayo42 8y agoWhy would you say it's not. It's the begging of tracking to get information about what's happening on your website
- Phenix88be 8y agoPeoples won't stop using Facebook for the same reason peoples are still smoking : they are addicted.
- 8y ago
- diminish 8y agoWhen shall we have a "distro" of fair, open source, free apps produced by the open source community guaranteed to run with minimal permissions without privacy abuse?
- r3bl 8y agoI believe you're describing F-Droid.
- Datenstrom 8y agoThat solves the "app store" problem, the OS is still hostile though, and even using Replicant the Baseband OS is still a threat. Not using F-Droid wouldn't be better, it is just that it really seams hopeless for a complete solution without a major movement like what spawned GNU-Linux. All these problems need way more devs involved.
- jhasse 8y agoWhy is the OS still hostile when using an AOSP based ROM?
- Datenstrom 8y agoFrom what I understand it isn't possible to run AOSP on the vast majority of hardware. You still need proprietary binary blobs for the drivers and the baseband OS.
- bittercynic 8y agoYou don't need it to run on the majority of hardware. Just need one device that runs AOSP and meets whatever other requirements you may have.
- Faark 8y agoI agree, but it's a pain. I tried to run AOSP on an Xperia XA2. You are missing so much. Sony doesn't offer much software for your hardware on AOSP. F-Droid has like three orders of magnitude less apps than the play store. Even the many apps that don't rely on google features, hell even competitors like Microsoft offer e.g. their Word for Android nowhere else. In the end, you probably will install google services non the less, but this time from less trustworthy sources since google doesn't officially want or will help you getting their stuff run on ASOP. The system was generally unstable. I finally gave up when I noticed video playback in landscape mode turns the screen green, but works fine in vertical (Different apps, even ASOP stock apps, even after fresh re-compile) I'm now going the other route... using a sony image and rip out everything unnecessary. Neither seems worth the time for average consumers. Learned a lot, though.
- gorkemcetin 8y agoReminds me of this presentation: https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9941-how_facebook_tracks_you_on_android/ https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9941-how_facebook_tracks_you_on_...
- richardhod 8y agoThat'll be mostly because they gave this talk and they link to it in the article!
- HenryBemis 8y agoOh the number of apps that EVERY TIME are ran try to talk to FB... Even my phone banking apps. I understand that from a game or a selfie app. They are 'silly' by nature. But why the F... would my bank want to notify FB that I am using their app? The same applies for EVERY airline app I have used over the last 5 years. NoRoot Firewall for Android, and put a global Deny rule for 31.13.x.x and problem is solved.
- magnetic 8y ago> Oh the number of apps that EVERY TIME are ran try to talk to FB... Even my phone banking apps. I understand that from a game or a selfie app. They are 'silly' by nature. But why the F... would my bank want to notify FB that I am using their app? Because by doing that they get access to a ton of analytic data?
- perfmode 8y agoHas DENY 31.13.x.x broken any important things for you? I'd be curious to try it on my home network.
- vectorEQ 8y agoyou can try blocking these on your homenetwork to specifically block facebook domains. then if they swap em around ips etc. you will still block them https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporations/facebook/all https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporatio... there's more of these kinds of lists out there for other intrusive ad companies.
- edraferi 8y agoFacebook made a play to be the social layer for the web. A single place where you explicitly create a social network, then you can use it from all kinds of places. Want to share something with your friends? Smack the share button, it’s right here in your app. Not a bad idea really. The problem is that it turned super predatory. Facebook just wants engagement at all costs. It’s not a tool for managing your life, it’s a tool for someone else to profit off it.
- enibundo 8y agoI'm sorry to be that guy, but if after all the shitty news about Facebook tracking and selling your information you are still using Facebook than you deserve to be tracked and sold.
- gph 8y agoRTFA... in fact just read the fucking subtitle. You don't need an account for Facebooks ad network to track you on all these apps.
- enibundo 8y agoFO
- mtmail 8y agoStop those insults to other users on HN.
- mtmail 8y agoBe civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- gph 8y agoOk, tho I wasn't trying to say that as mean-spirited as it looks, just repurposing the acronym.
- werbel 8y agoI'm sorry to be that guy, but if you properly read even just the submission title you'd know it's not about people that are still using Facebook but people that are using other apps like Yelp. That might include you.
- enibundo 8y ago
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- titanix2 8y agoAt least for Duolingo there is an easy fix: don’t use it. I’m currently reading a researcher paper written by an employee and while the paper is interested the app itself is abysmally bad. I just tried the app again today just to be sure my opinion wasn’t a mistake but it reinforced it instead. That app have no lesson, nothing is explained, there is just quizzes slapped on your face until you remember the good answer. The distractors are bad (you can find answer using capitalization in some case), sentences seems to have been generated automatically etc. I cannot fathom how one can learn anything with that nor why it is so popular.
- SaulOfTheJungle 8y agoI've been learning Japanese with it for the past 2 years. Although I haven't tried other apps (so I don't have a baseline for comparison), their methodology has proven quite effective for me.
- trophycase 8y agoJapanese conforms extremely poorly to the duolingo format. As someone who is also learning Japanese, I'm very surprised you've stuck with Duolingo this long. My experience was that it explained nothing. No explanation of particles, the different between hiragana and katakana, no other grammar explanations, etc.
- MegaLeon 8y agoBit off-topic, what what did you find is working well for you?
- barry-cotter 8y agoHow useful is explicitly learning about the difference in use of hiragana and katakana, really? As far as I’m aware the research on language learning is pretty clear on teaching grammar; teaching it explicitly is no more effective than teaching implicitly. This example is right, that one isn’t is how we learn to speak our native tongues and we faultlessly follow rules we can’t teach all the time, e.g. adjective order in English is opinion, size, physical quality, shape, age, colour, origin, material, type, purpose. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/about-adjectives-and-adverbs/adjectives-order https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/abo...
- h3ckr 8y agoAnd Google tracks people on ALL websites, without any consent. When are we talking about that?
- delecti 8y agoWhataboutism isn't helping anything. Google doing something doesn't make it okay that Facebook does it. And Google's tracking is being discussed in this very thread, so it's not even accurate whataboutism.
- 50656E6973 8y agoHushing people who are pointing out the larger context isn't helping anything. The root problem is not any one single company.
- delecti 8y agoThere's always a larger context though. Who cares about Facebook or Google when the NSA is tracking everything we do? Who cares about anyone being tracked when the global climate is on track to destabilize society? Who cares about society when we're not doing anything about the inevitable heat death of the universe? Pointing out the larger context isn't automatically helpful. I believe the GP's comment is an example of unhelpful whataboutism.
- 50656E6973 8y ago>Who cares about Facebook or Google when the NSA is tracking everything we do? Who cares about anyone being tracked when the global climate is on track to destabilize society? Who cares about society when we're not doing anything about the inevitable heat death of the universe? Your hyperbole isn't helping anything, and you still havent explained why delecti shouldnt point out the similar practices of other companies like GOOG. NSA tracking could be considered relevant, seeing as how they get much of their data from FB and GOOG tracking, but you're being silly and disengenuous by asking what about climate change and physics being relevant, that's an obvious strawman argument that isn't even close to what delecti or anyone here is talking about.
- morningmoon 8y agoHow many people here track their users? How many people here track where their users come from, what they click on, who they are, etc? The constant articles deriding Facebook ring hollow considering most of HN’s audience is engaged in similar behavior.
- GunlogAlm 8y ago> How many people here track their users? Right across the Internet? Very few, I imagine!
- badfrog 8y ago> Right across the Internet? Very few, I imagine! Mainly because they don't have the resources to do it.
- GunlogAlm 8y agoI'd like to think plenty of folk here would have ethical objections, too. Perhaps that's wishful thinking.
- badfrog 8y agoIt's easy to object to something you can't do. I'm sure there's a decent amount of people who would maintain their objections, but many others would "evolve their values" when such behavior became possible and beneficial to them.
- JohnFen 8y agoI wouldn't do it regardless of resources, because I'm not a sociopath.
- morningmoon 8y agoEveryone using Google Analytics is letting a third party track their users across the Internet for the DoubleClick ad network.
- 8y ago
- ddtaylor 8y agoA reminder to use Privacy Badger from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
- elagost 8y agoHacker News is a pretty small bubble, but news about Facebook being awful is pretty mainstream at this point. It surprises me that the majority of my family can still tolerate Facebook (and instagram/whatsapp etc.) despite what is known. I'm pretty vocal among my family about data security/privacy, as I'd like to keep information about me and my family safe from prying eyes, but it takes a lot of effort and know-how to put up walls against the sort of electronic creepiness that's default-on for most of us. It's been almost 3 years, and most of my friends/family still don't have content blockers installed for Safari on iOS. None of my family or friends have made any moves to ditch Facebook, instagram, whatsapp, etc. even though the barrier to entry for new services is so low. It's frustrating to know that despite how bad they are, despite every new discovery of terribleness, nothing's going to change, and they're just going to get bigger.
- paulddraper 8y ago> majority of my family can still tolerate Facebook despite what is known They've got a captive audience. Like it or not, the service that Facebook provides is unparalleled, and short of direct, tangible harm, it's not enough for most people to give that up.
- CharlesColeman 8y ago>> It's frustrating to know that despite how bad they are, despite every new discovery of terribleness, nothing's going to change, and they're just going to get bigger. > They've got a captive audience. Like it or not, the service that Facebook provides is unparalleled, and short of direct, tangible harm, it's not enough for most people to give that up. I think it's mainly unparalleled from the advertiser perspective, but not the user perspective. I think network effects aren't as compelling to users as is often assumed. I think Facebook's privacy terribleness will be part of its undoing, but only part. Other things, like fashion, user fatigue, and potentially new regulatory antitrust oversight (to block acquisitions) will be significant factors, and they'll all reenforce each other.
- paulddraper 8y ago
- spinach 8y agoI block Facebook's domain on my laptop, I wish it was as easy to do on mobile.
- confounded 8y agoOut of interest, why do developers use the SDK and send these events? Is it just for ‘sign in with Facebook’? I’m surprised at the specificity of the event-data; do they offer an analytics interface like for GA? Do they give you any cash or other benefits for all the data? I’m very surprised that companies like banks are including it, when I’d assume they have their own analytics and identity systems.
- AznHisoka 8y agoIf your users "sign in with FB", you know their user ID (or at least an identifier), that you can then use to retarget ads to those people.
- matwood 8y agoThey have analytics like GA. In particular, they track conversions, etc... So if a company runs an ad on FB, putting the FB analytics on their site and in their apps lets them tracking the effectiveness of the ad they ran. There is nothing nefarious from the company other than they are trying to figure out what their FB ad spend is worth. FB OTOH is probably using the data for tons of other reasons. Are those reasons dissimilar from GA/Google? I do not know.
- JohnFen 8y ago> There is nothing nefarious from the company other than they are trying to figure out what their FB ad spend is worth. I call exposing users to the likes of Facebook, Google, etc. "nefarious" all on its own. At the very least, it's treating users with a degree of contempt.
- dilyevsky 8y agoBigger question is - why would anyone use yelp?
- CharlesColeman 8y ago> Bigger question is - why would anyone use yelp? Because they're looking for a good place to eat, possibly in an unfamiliar area?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- miki123211 8y ago> Apps, especially those with millions of installs, need to take the privacy of their users seriously. This is wrong. So, so wrong. This leads to the "I'm a small dev so I don't have to care, I don't have millions of installs, right?" believ.
- cmsonger 8y agoFacebook still doing something ethically questionable. Must be a day ending in 'Y'.
- throwaway-1283 8y agoAnd if you use a cellphone you're tracked 24/7 by the gov't...
- balls187 8y agoIs there a tool that shows you if you are being tracked, and by whom? EU compatriots--looking at your general direction here.
- trumped 8y agoI wonder if Zuck is stupid enough to use Facebook? or does he have a special build just for himself?
- GuillaumeBrdet 8y agoIs this even a surprise though? Where don't they track you would be a more interesting headline.
- pweissbrod 8y agoIs anyone aware of a respectable security rating system for android apps we can look up before installing something from the play store?
- arlogilbert 8y agoWow, this is super ugly. Not to hijack the thread, but we just launched yesterday at https://www.privacymonitor.com https://www.privacymonitor.com - The stuff we find about what companies bury in their privacy policies is pretty frightening.
- Iknown0thing 8y agoLike with tobacco may be privacy invading permissions need to be regulated a bit. May be a clear warning on what happens with your data will make consumers think a little bit more about prompts to handover your data. Also, it might be interesting to see if certain permissions can have parental control. That is you need to be with your parent/guardian to allow certain data access. Might be great to make it slightly difficult to gain sensitive permissions for everyone. Requiring to input your password/pin at the permission box. We already has these on desktop computers where you need to be able to input your password for admin access to apps. This may not deter companies to ask for permissions, but my hypothesis is that it will show up in their conversion funnels and eventually they will stop asking for blanket permissions to all your data.
- justusthane 8y agoIs there an easy way on Android to, for example, block all traffic to Facebook? Sort of a Little Snitch for Facebook? I know this could be done via VPN, but I'm looking for an on-device solution.