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Personal Data: Instagram Is a Real Tattletale

82 points by URfejk 6y ago

mdpopescu 6y ago
All your data is intercepted by the US government and shared with everyone they choose to. There, now you can relax.
- consumer451 6y ago
  You should check out threat modeling.
  - mdpopescu 6y ago
    I have. The number of people killed by the US government in the last 50 years dwarfs that of people killed by Facebook by many orders of magnitude.
- rhacker 6y ago
  As of right now yes, the US government is making records public such as who you marry, where you live, in some cases your salary. It's pretty bad we don't condemn that first. All of this info is generally public because of our legal system requiring we be able to find people we need to sue. It's all old and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Then again, when the millennials do that (you know when they are 60 years old), they will inevitably build in a way to be sue proof.
  - varispeed 6y ago
    Many governments do censuses from time to time where they ask invasive private questions and people can't even object to that. So this is kind of a step forward to make it real-time rather having a snapshot of population. Plus not many people will actually file one, even if there is a fine for not doing so, simply because they don't exist in the system, but they may exist on Facebook.
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    US government is making records public such as who you marry, where you live, in some cases your salary. It's pretty bad we don't condemn that first. Why? That's public information that's been collected for hundreds of years. It's used for all kinds of legitimate basic things such as genealogy and public health.
    - rhacker 6y ago
      The change is that in the last 10 years all of that information has gone online. The creeps love all of that information. It has also lead to people trying to escape things be haunted by it. I know a guy that moved from CA to ID to escape someone trying to murder him. He said he's seen the guy's car drive by his new place... A drunk driver hit my car a few months ago. He got out of his car and denied the whole thing. Tons of witnesses backing me up. He was fucking scary. I'm just some dude that pulled waaaay off the road to avoid getting hit and now I have to be scared of him coming after me because my insurance is going after him. I'm sorry you still live in the bubble but revenge murders happen all the time. And 1/3 of all murders are totally unsolved. There are other records that are abused too. Manta - my favorite company to hate. This place had the habit years ago to purposefully mess up your "public" business listing. Wrong address, misspelled addresses, wrong phone number. It was on purpose because I was able to look at (at the time) all of the unverified businesses and compare it to Google's data. Every single Manta listing that wasn't claimed had a small mistake. Their goal was to take public info and mess it up a bit so that business owners would be frustrated enough to claim it and fix it. I really think we made a huge mistake making public records easily re-publishable online. I just think that each record needs to have a transaction associated with it.
- kube-system 6y ago
  The US has laws regarding the collection, use, and sharing of that data. Commercial data brokers have almost zero restrictions. Anyone can buy basically whatever data they want if they have money: real-time location data, transaction data, browsing history, etc. You're missing the forest for the trees.
yalogin 6y ago
Its not clear what this is. May be I am overthinking this but it could be one of two -- 1. Is Instagram collecting a lot of data and sharing 79% of that with third parties on their end? 2. Is Instagram collecting 79% of the user data available to third party apps on iOS? If it's 1, as I suspect it is, then is it through their ads sdk? If so, how does an external entity get this estimate of 79%? So many other questions come up too. Why is it listed separately from FB app? Do they have a separate ad sdk for Instagram and FB? I thought the number just means that Instagram is more valuable to services and so buy more there.
mobileexpert 6y ago
This is a bizarrely misleading take from iOS 14 privacy labels. Use for ads optimization/measurement/targeting does not mean sharing with third parties for FB/IG or anyone who runs their own ads stack.
- CharlesW 6y ago
  Privacy labels also tell you if your data is being shared with third parties.
elvis70 6y ago
And statista.com contribute to it as they share cookies with Facebook after their cookie manager. Unless you click on the small text "Confirm my choices" instead of the big blue button.
Lev1a 6y ago
When the first thing I see after opening a website is some sort of "Give us your email just for some useless newsletter honest" popup I just close the site as fast as I can. How ITF can such a disgustingly annoying UX element still be so prevalent on certain genres of websites?
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  I suppose there's no reputational cost if it has become the norm. The same thing has happened with We care about your privacy dark-patterns. Otherwise reputable sites like Tom's Hardware pay little reputation cost for trying to trick the user into granting full cookie permissions.
- site-packages1 6y ago
  I have thought about this a bit. My take is that almost all of these blog posts are from one-off contributors and not one you'll see over and over. I kind of see it as them taking their shot as making you a recurring visitor or recurring reader of their content. I've personally never heard of Statista and don't think I ever will again, if past experience is an indicator. I don't fault them for that, although it is slightly annoying. Though if it were me, I'd personally wait until someone was partway through the article at least before presenting a newsletter sign up. There's no way I'd sign up for a newsletter before I saw the site's content.
- kevincox 6y ago
  I do exactly the same. If I see a popup covering a significant portion of the popup I just close the tab. It is rare that I am interested enough to actually click though, when the title is "Facebook tracks you" it definitely isn't worth it to me. But I guess it is clear that we are the oddballs. If everyone was like is these behaviours would disappear.
Urgo 6y ago
The data is sourced from pCloud[1]. Highly recommend checking their site out if you want to know more then the linked story's summary. They show what each of the referenced categories are and also compare it to a whole slew of other apps. [1] https://blog.pcloud.com/invasive-apps/ https://blog.pcloud.com/invasive-apps/

82 points by URfejk 6y ago

mdpopescu 6y ago

All your data is intercepted by the US government and shared with everyone they choose to. There, now you can relax.

consumer451 6y ago
You should check out threat modeling.
- mdpopescu 6y ago
  I have. The number of people killed by the US government in the last 50 years dwarfs that of people killed by Facebook by many orders of magnitude.
rhacker 6y ago
As of right now yes, the US government is making records public such as who you marry, where you live, in some cases your salary. It's pretty bad we don't condemn that first. All of this info is generally public because of our legal system requiring we be able to find people we need to sue. It's all old and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Then again, when the millennials do that (you know when they are 60 years old), they will inevitably build in a way to be sue proof.
- varispeed 6y ago
  Many governments do censuses from time to time where they ask invasive private questions and people can't even object to that. So this is kind of a step forward to make it real-time rather having a snapshot of population. Plus not many people will actually file one, even if there is a fine for not doing so, simply because they don't exist in the system, but they may exist on Facebook.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  US government is making records public such as who you marry, where you live, in some cases your salary. It's pretty bad we don't condemn that first. Why? That's public information that's been collected for hundreds of years. It's used for all kinds of legitimate basic things such as genealogy and public health.
  - rhacker 6y ago
    The change is that in the last 10 years all of that information has gone online. The creeps love all of that information. It has also lead to people trying to escape things be haunted by it. I know a guy that moved from CA to ID to escape someone trying to murder him. He said he's seen the guy's car drive by his new place... A drunk driver hit my car a few months ago. He got out of his car and denied the whole thing. Tons of witnesses backing me up. He was fucking scary. I'm just some dude that pulled waaaay off the road to avoid getting hit and now I have to be scared of him coming after me because my insurance is going after him. I'm sorry you still live in the bubble but revenge murders happen all the time. And 1/3 of all murders are totally unsolved. There are other records that are abused too. Manta - my favorite company to hate. This place had the habit years ago to purposefully mess up your "public" business listing. Wrong address, misspelled addresses, wrong phone number. It was on purpose because I was able to look at (at the time) all of the unverified businesses and compare it to Google's data. Every single Manta listing that wasn't claimed had a small mistake. Their goal was to take public info and mess it up a bit so that business owners would be frustrated enough to claim it and fix it. I really think we made a huge mistake making public records easily re-publishable online. I just think that each record needs to have a transaction associated with it.
kube-system 6y ago
The US has laws regarding the collection, use, and sharing of that data. Commercial data brokers have almost zero restrictions. Anyone can buy basically whatever data they want if they have money: real-time location data, transaction data, browsing history, etc. You're missing the forest for the trees.

yalogin 6y ago

Its not clear what this is. May be I am overthinking this but it could be one of two -- 1. Is Instagram collecting a lot of data and sharing 79% of that with third parties on their end? 2. Is Instagram collecting 79% of the user data available to third party apps on iOS? If it's 1, as I suspect it is, then is it through their ads sdk? If so, how does an external entity get this estimate of 79%? So many other questions come up too. Why is it listed separately from FB app? Do they have a separate ad sdk for Instagram and FB? I thought the number just means that Instagram is more valuable to services and so buy more there.

mobileexpert 6y ago

This is a bizarrely misleading take from iOS 14 privacy labels. Use for ads optimization/measurement/targeting does not mean sharing with third parties for FB/IG or anyone who runs their own ads stack.

CharlesW 6y ago
Privacy labels also tell you if your data is being shared with third parties.

elvis70 6y ago

And statista.com contribute to it as they share cookies with Facebook after their cookie manager. Unless you click on the small text "Confirm my choices" instead of the big blue button.

Lev1a 6y ago

When the first thing I see after opening a website is some sort of "Give us your email just for some useless newsletter honest" popup I just close the site as fast as I can. How ITF can such a disgustingly annoying UX element still be so prevalent on certain genres of websites?

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
I suppose there's no reputational cost if it has become the norm. The same thing has happened with We care about your privacy dark-patterns. Otherwise reputable sites like Tom's Hardware pay little reputation cost for trying to trick the user into granting full cookie permissions.
site-packages1 6y ago
I have thought about this a bit. My take is that almost all of these blog posts are from one-off contributors and not one you'll see over and over. I kind of see it as them taking their shot as making you a recurring visitor or recurring reader of their content. I've personally never heard of Statista and don't think I ever will again, if past experience is an indicator. I don't fault them for that, although it is slightly annoying. Though if it were me, I'd personally wait until someone was partway through the article at least before presenting a newsletter sign up. There's no way I'd sign up for a newsletter before I saw the site's content.
kevincox 6y ago
I do exactly the same. If I see a popup covering a significant portion of the popup I just close the tab. It is rare that I am interested enough to actually click though, when the title is "Facebook tracks you" it definitely isn't worth it to me. But I guess it is clear that we are the oddballs. If everyone was like is these behaviours would disappear.

Urgo 6y ago

The data is sourced from pCloud[1]. Highly recommend checking their site out if you want to know more then the linked story's summary. They show what each of the referenced categories are and also compare it to a whole slew of other apps. [1] https://blog.pcloud.com/invasive-apps/ https://blog.pcloud.com/invasive-apps/