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Some users have noticed settings that let Meta analyze and retain phone photos
- polytely 1y agoFacebook seems like an exceptionally morally rotten company, which I guess just stems from Zuck being in control.
- cj 1y agoThis should be a non-issue if you use Apple’s privacy settings to limit Facebook to only have access to the photos you want to use. I’d highly recommend never granting any app full access to your photos.
- loumf 1y agoYou should do this for apps even if you trust them. One issue with permissions is that they apply to the entire app, including any third-party dependencies. Lots of apps use libraries given to them by advertising services -- they notoriously exploit permissions given to the app.
- lloydatkinson 1y agoWhatsApp used to (still might) default to saving all photos from any chat to your phone. This led to some very surprising and unwanted photos being saved to my iPhone gallery. What a stupid idea.
- kergonath 1y agoI think it’s off by default and you can activate it separately for each discussion.
- abcd_f 1y agoThat's on newer iOS versions and, by extension, on newer Apple devices only though.
- rimunroe 1y agoPhoto library permissions have been around since iOS 14. As long as you have an iPhone made in the last ten years you should be able to use it.
- bigDinosaur 1y agoApparently this functionality was released in iOS 14, which was supported by the iPhone 6S, released in 2015, so any phone in the past 10 years should have support for it. That seems reasonable enough.
- gessha 1y agoApple should improve the UI of this photo selection because it’s very cumbersome to scroll and select the same photos twice.
- Clent 1y agoAgreed. The feature set is in desperate need of the search option both on approved photos and when attempting to approve additional photos. Very often I have to go into the photos app, find the photo, make a mental record of approximately where it is in history and scroll scroll scroll. Obnoxious and cumbersome.
- jkubicek 1y agoWhat I really want is to create a special photo album for (Facebook/Instagram/Slack/etc.) and have it automatically gain access to whatever photos I put in there.
- subarctic 1y agoI think they have because with chatgpt you click the photo icon and it uses the system photo picker to pick a photo. I guess Meta deliberately isn't implementing that
- afarah1 1y agoAndroid also has limited photos access nowadays.
- jcomis 1y agomaybe they changed it, but last time I checked I could not upload on instagram on Android with limited access. It required full access, plus camera/microphone in order to post.
- const_cast 1y agoThe problem is people have to actually do this, and it's cumbersome. The solution is just straight up banning apps from the app store which request full photos permissions but only need a picker. Whatsapp only needs a picker, it's not Google photos. Just make that part of the developer terms and start banning low hanging fruit and the apps will confirm in no time.
- brk 1y agoI've removed all Meta apps other than Whatsapp (and I don't love that). I haven't had the Facebook app on my phone in well over a decade. Had Instagram for a while, I was casually active on it, but Meta just keeps convincing me not to be trusted. Facebook mobile is a suboptimal experience, which is fine, it just reminds me to use it less.
- biinjo 1y agoI was going to proudly boast that I don’t have any Meta apps on my phone. Got rid of FB a long time ago, never jumped on the Instagram train. Then I your post and now I realize I’m still in the Meta world. Forgot about whatsapp for a second.
- lazide 1y agoThere is a reason they paid so much for it. In a lot of the world, they’re essentially required.
- Contortion 1y agoAnd next to impossible to get rid of. I would much rather use Signal but convincing even privacy-conscious people to switch is an uphill battle.
- mrbombastic 1y agoSignal is quite good these days for what it is worth. My whole family switched and hasn’t missed whatsapp. That said I am still stuck on whatsapp, it is basically the only messaging app people use in a lot of the world and used by a ton of businesses.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- reorder9695 1y agoI find a lot of people (including myself) had a pretty bad experience with Signal years ago, and it has put them off using it today.
- everdrive 1y agoI finally got around to rebuilding my pihole. My wife's phone as absolutely rife with requests for various Real-Time Bidding (RTB) domains. It was a flood of them like I really haven't seen before. I didn't do much troubleshoot, but when we looked at her phone, the Facebook app seemed like the likeliest culprit. (Facebook, after all would be the best-placed to have the user data required to actually participate in RTB.) Once we deleted the app, the RTB requests went away for good. I've had pihole previously, and she's had the Facebook app previously, and we never seemed to have this issue. Perhaps Facebook is drudging up whatever profits it can since it's mostly cornered the population, and is potentially in decline.
- pixxel 1y ago[dead]
- nomilk 1y agoIMO Apple should provide the user with audit logs of which photos/videos were accessed by each app. It might be a long list but it alleviates doubt and would put huge pressure on reputable developers to ensure they don’t get caught doing things the user wouldn’t have expected (even if the user technically allowed it).
- wslh 1y agoIn the iPhone you can select which photos are accessible by apps.
- merelysounds 1y agoEven better, the app can use the OS image picker and don’t have any other access to photos. It won’t work for all use cases, but when it works it’s very practical. I’d love to see apps use that as the default - and request additional access only when the user’s current action actually requires it.
- Ntrails 1y agoI locked whatsapp out of my photos and contacts years ago. If I need a pic I copy paste it in. Yes it is friction but I simply do not trust the Zuck
- noname120 1y agoIt’s a big pain because then you have a double-picker: first pick the pictures in the native dialog asking you to decide which pictures the app should have access to, and then select again the pictures you want but this time in the WhatsApp picker. It’s very awkward.
- mtmail 1y agoMight be related "Facebook patent uses image recognition to scan your personal photos for brands" https://www.fastcompany.com/90333067/creepy-facebook-patent-uses-image-recognition-to-scan-your-personal-photos-for-brands https://www.fastcompany.com/90333067/creepy-facebook-patent-... "faulty pixels, lens scratches, other ‘camera artifacts’ and metadata within the image would be used to associate Facebook users with particular images. " https://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2015/09/18/facebook-wants-to-be-able-to-fingerprint-a-single-im https://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2015/09/18/facebook-wa...
- hinkley 1y agoZuckerberg is now the bad guy from Ready Player One in all but name.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y agoWell, the good news is: I think this finally gave me a good reason ( one she would accept that is ) to convince wife to drop FB from phone.. yay...
- kjok 1y agoThe kind of shady practices we have seen from this company, any self-respecting individual will be ashamed except Zuck. He has done more to rot the collective brain of a generation than any single figure in tech history. The truth is, Meta isn’t building community, it’s building a surveillance hellscape where every click, glance, and pause is commodified. If you work there and still believe you're doing something good for the world, you're either delusional or willfully blind.
- ath3nd 1y agoNot sure how nobody is talking about this which just happened a month ago. https://localmess.github.io/ https://localmess.github.io/ They have been running a sniffer agent on localhost so they can track you over VPN and incognito. Why are people still using Meta crap? They are a surveillance/spyware company.
- Havoc 1y agoBetter yet - use the phones built in app restrictions to block or selectively allow photo access. When a corporate does shady shit the last thing you'd do is trust the tools they provide to limit that. That's just insane. >"People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks." -Mark Zuckerberg
- terminalshort 1y agoYou trust the tools because one of the few things the company can actually get in trouble for is outright lying.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoThey might actually get fined a small amount!
- mattbrewsbytes 1y agoMeta can't scan my phone if I don't install Meta's apps on my phone. A web browser on the phone removes the need for a lot of "apps".
- randycupertino 1y agoI need whatsapp to communicate with global KOLs for work.
- belinder 1y agoShouldn't they be required to offer a work phone if they require you to install an app on a phone? It may depend on where you live
- randycupertino 1y agoMy company provides us with a $100 a month cell phone stipend instead of giving us phones.
- const_cast 1y agoIf you're running android I believe you can set up a work profile with its own apps. On graphene you definitely can, with its own filesystem and everything. I wouldn't install work programs directly on my devices without some kind of sandboxing because of cases like this.
- arnejenssen 1y agoSome years ago I stopped used Snapchat, because Snapchat would occasional notify me a "highlight" with a picture from my camera roll. To do that it meant that Snapchat need to have all my pictures on their server, I figured. Not what I signed up for.
- user94wjwuid 1y agothis benefits few and violates the privacy of millions… can we get a some fckin privacy laws yet
- greggman65 1y agoIf you gave them permisison isn't that on you? iOS you can (1) Choose no permission - Then, if you want you can go to your photos in the iOS Photos app, select a few, pick "Send to App -> Facebook" when you want to give Facebook a few photos (2) Copy and Paste photos (3) Choose "only selected photos" - In this case, in the Facebook app, you choose to add photos, the photos you previously gave the app permission to view appear and there's a button "Select more Photos". You can pick that and select more. I use this option peronsally (4) Choose "all photos" - I give this permission to Google Photos since I use Google Photos to make all my photos visible across all devices. If you choose 4, that just seems on you. You told them they could access all the photos.
- klabb3 1y agoWhy do apps request persistent access to camera roll at all? I don't want to manage a custom set of pictures. I want to send a picture now by selecting it. Apps like Messenger, Telegram and WhatsApp refuse to show me the regular old photo picker. I have to enable "limited access" and select the same photos twice (first add to the set, then select for sharing). It's infuriating. PS: The exception is media management apps, but those are extremely rare and irrelevant in the context of social media and communications apps.
- greggman65 1y ago> Why do apps request persistent access to camera roll at all? Some apps are specifically for backing up all your photos. > I want to send a picture now by selecting it. Go to your photos, select a picture, pick send to app, pick the app
- petralithic 1y agoSome of these comments are interesting to read. Haven't we learned from Cambridge Analytica in 2018? Or the various other scandals over the past 20 years? I can understand normal people not caring but how people on HN still use Meta apps is beyond me.
- awesan 1y agoBy definition they are social apps, so it's not usually up to just individuals whether to use them. For example if I stopped using what's app I'd cut myself off from the majority of my friends and family.
- dfxm12 1y agoThis is probably not true. If it is, if your ties are so weak that they rely on an app, maybe it is ok to let them go and seek stronger social ties elsewhere.
- frasermarlow 1y agoIf you're not paying for it, you are the product.
- dfxm12 1y agoEven if you are paying for it, you are still the product (I guess "a" product). Meta (or whoever) is not going to give up revenue streams just because you're giving them money too. Realistically, for consumer products like this, preventing user tracking and data collection would have to be legislated and enforced.
- SirMaster 1y agoHow is the app accessing my photos on iOS when I have not given the app permission to access photos? Did they really find some exploit around this? Or is this photos permission really not the only way?
- flanbiscuit 1y agoSame question for Android. My guess is that this only affects people who have granted FB the permission already.
- dns_snek 1y agoIt doesn't sound like they're accessing your photos without the app being granted permission to do so in iOS. It sounds like they're abusing that permission (if granted) for nefarious purposes that users didn't agree to. So you granted Facebook permission to access your files in order to share a photo in some group 3 months ago, but now they secretly abuse that permission to scan your entire library for AI training.
- SirMaster 1y agoI guess if I grant an app access to all my photos, then I assume they can access them all whenever, unless I revoke that access after.
- varelse 1y ago[dead]
- hypersoar 1y agoYears ago, I installed the Facebook app on my phone. I immediately uninstalled it when I saw, horrified, that it had hoovered up all my photos and uploaded them to Facebook (there was no fine-grained storage permission at the time) "for my convenience". I never ran their app on my phone, again.
- baconbrand 1y agowhat if my library was trillions of photos of poop shaped like a face
- prism56 1y agoI want that model...
- markus_zhang 1y agoOne way to deal with the current mess is to use a dumb enough phone only for banking/insurance/chat, a dumb phone for calling and texting, and a camera for photos. It’s less convenient but it’s better for privacy.
- inetknght 1y ago> and a camera for photos. It’s less convenient but it’s better for privacy. Hope you don't use Microsoft or Apple products to manage the photos on your Camera.
- markus_zhang 1y agoYou have a point. I'll probably just dump them into a HD using a simple script.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- gmd63 1y agoZuckerberg: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuckerberg: Just ask Zuckerberg: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuckerberg: People just submitted it. Zuckerberg: I don't know why. Zuckerberg: They "trust me" Zuckerberg: Dumb fucks Instant messages sent by Zuckerberg during Facebook's early days, reported by Business Insider (May 13, 2010)
- whalesalad 1y agoIs it 2012? We've known this forever.
- Workaccount2 1y agoMeta is by far the most shamelessly insensitive tech giant. They must actively seek out the most morally depraved devs, I can only imagine the people in those meetings when discussing some of these implementations must have been laughing at how devious they are.
- seanw444 1y agoThe devs get paid a fine salary, and can't afford it lose it, or they'll probably miss payments on their expensive vehicles and houses. So they do as they're told and don't complain.
- kridsdale1 1y agoSpeaking as someone who joined them before they were like this, and left when they became this, Meta attracts talent by paying 50% more than anyone else. It’s very hard to leave when you get used to it.
- PhantomHour 1y ago"Before they were like this" I would like to remind you that Facebook got it's start as a sex pest website.
- touristtam 1y agoThe banality of evil, was the central them of Hannah Arendt thesis while working on the coverage of Eichmann trial by the Hebrew state of Israel. I doubt people attempt to join Facebook to apply their devious nature, more like that FB is paying handsomely to not think too hard about the goal of the organisation and the means to reach those goals.
- jkubicek 1y agoFacebook has been doing this for well over a decade. I once got a notification from the Facebook app, "Do you want to share this photo with Kim?" because Kim was just randomly in the distant background of a photo I had taken of my daughter at kindergarten drop-off. I deleted the Facebook app that day and I make a point to never give any social media app access to my photo library.
- shortrounddev2 1y agoThere are hundreds of ways to secure a laptop and ensure your privacy. Why are there almost no good ways to use a smartphone in a secure and private way?
- fsflover 1y agoThere's only one way to secure a laptop: use Qubes OS. It requires a lot of resources for the virtualization, and on the phone, it's not profitable for Apple and Google.
- prmoustache 1y agoYou can if you don't use a google certified rom, use primilarily a browser instead of apps and do not install the google play stuff.
- jpl56 1y ago1 : open the Facebook app. Nope... I'm using a link to my Facebook homepage saved on the home screen.
- toss1 1y agoThe big tech companies are now becoming archetypal evil — directly analogous with the ancient stories of 'deals with the devil'. The devil cannot take your soul, but if he can get you to agree to a deal... well... good luck with that. Here, the devil gets you to agree to some nice beneficial feature like "camera sharing suggestions ... for personalized creative ideas, like travel highlights and collages" or "cloud processing" for whatever benefit. AAaand you do, and there goes all your private photos. And the devil can rightly claim "but this is a mere contract dispute and the user agreed to all of this". The ancient tales were supposed to be warnings, not How-To guides. And of course now, these modern devils are just flipping the "Agree" button under the software all without your actual consent. I do not let ANY Meta property or software run on any of my devices. If only everyone did the same.
- TheRoque 1y agoMmmh well a few months ago there was a news that Facebook will prompt you to ask you if you are ok with your personal pictures being used for training, so it's not really surprising ? Besides, it's meta, what do people expect seriously ?
- emchammer 1y agoThey’re not, and they can’t, because I don’t use Meta.
- imhoguy 1y agoThey can much more than you can imagine. I bet you have installed at least one 3-rd party app with Facebook SDK bundled in and profiling you. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44763949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44763949
- reactordev 1y agoMeta isn’t just crawling your photos. If you gave it permission not just “While using the app” to anything, it’s gathering up metadata about you and sending it home. Contacts, emails, location, imei, photos, video exif, browser history if you happen to open a mini-safari view from an ad, app usage statistics, your IP address, your device information, anything they can gather - they are. I uninstalled Facebook, Meta, MetaQuest, Instagram and deleted my accounts. I’ll never put one of their apps on my phone again.
- inetknght 1y ago> Facebook, Meta, MetaQuest, Instagram and deleted my accounts. I’ll never put one of their apps on my phone again. Hope you also removed WhatsApp, a very popular chat app especially outside the USA.
- reactordev 1y agoYup, anything Meta backed, not on my phone.
- baggachipz 1y agoI specifically refuse to have any Google or Meta apps on my phone. Yes, my phone is an iPhone made by Apple, but I figure I'll put all my eggs in one violator's basket. At least this violator has a financial incentive not to siphon and sell all my information.
- reactordev 1y agoOh but they do, however, what’s the alternative? PinePhone? LibreRola? At least I know Apple cares about encryption and keeps the keys to the kingdom behind paywalled doors. The amount of malware installed on Android just from visiting a website is crazy.
- dietr1ch 1y ago
- matsemann 1y agoA few years ago I scrolled Facebook on my phone and suddenly saw a post with a picture from my phone and my heart skipped a beat. It was not a real public post, but a suggestion from fb ala "share this pic with your followers? This is how it will look like". Immediately removed all permissions, insane to take a photo from my camera roll and do that. Imagine if it was some nsfw picture suddenly being integrated into my feed while scrolling in public or so..
- mikewarot 1y agoA gentle reminder to the readers here at HN that it doesn't have to be this way. Computer Security is a solved problem[1], and has been so since the 1980s[2]. It's my strong opinion that the only methods you've seen to this point[3-7] were deliberately chosen to be ones that don't work, and make things worse in the long run. It's my hope that things will change for the better, but when I think about what group could lead that change, there's No Such Agency. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability-based_security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability-based_security [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability-based_operating_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability-based_operating_sys... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Account_Control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Account_Control [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppArmor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppArmor [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-Enhanced_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-Enhanced_Linux [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_permissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_permissions [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module
- 7373737373 1y agoTHIS, a billion times, for every insecure device, every popular operating system running today, and every popular programming language. NONE of these systems were conceived or built with capability security in mind, none of them are even appreciably moving in this direction. None of them provide their developers or users user friendly interfaces for fine grained control and oversight of file system, networking, computing and memory resource usage. They don't allow developers to hollow out the attack surface of their programs by compartmentalization and reifying rights as objects as CapSec prescribes; they cannot, due to their fundamentally broken architectures, provide powerful guarantees such as: "this part of the code cannot access any other resources and is restricted to pure computation, its only effect will be the result it returns". That no one is seeing this, listening and learning, is a disgrace, a collective, civilization-scale failure to apply this knowledge. The exploits will continue until we learn. And until user agents and their creators are forced, by choice and by law, to truly act to the best of their ability in the best interest of their user. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_privilege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_privilege
- seanw444 1y agoGrapheneOS is too precious. Being able to pretend like the app has full access to my gallery, while only specifically allowing certain directories or photos, is awesome. I've actually discovered that selecting a photo in the gallery and "sharing" it to a Messenger chat skips the need for it to be in the allowed directory, so I've been doing that too. Anyone know if that's working as intended, or if it's a potential security hole? And yes, putting Messenger on my GrapheneOS phone is dumb, but my normal people friends all use Messenger, so that's where our group chats are. Best I can do is fail to convince them to install an XMPP client and join my self-hosted server, or minimize the impact of Messenger.
- knallfrosch 1y ago> putting Messenger on my GrapheneOS phone is dumb Depends on your intentions. Privacy, security?
- seanw444 1y agoBoth. Without completely cutting myself off from friends.
- hinkley 1y agoI don’t know if it’s discord or apple but there is something akin to this on iOS now. You can cherry pick which images are accessible. Kind of a pain actually when trying to tell a joke, but understandable why it exists.
- minitech 1y agoFor sharing to be a mechanism to transfer data between apps without needing excess permissions is intended, yes.
- Gud 1y agoThe people working at Meta are generally pretty tech savvy, while the general public isn't. Meta is an extremely rich company, and their employees are well compensated. My question then is, when does this exploitative behaviour become criminal. And if it isn't criminal, how do we make it so. If you are working for Meta and you consider yourself a moral person, you should quit your job. There are more important things in this world than making money. Help build a better world. You can live a comfortable life without helping Mark Zuckerberg ruin the planet. You can even make a lot of money, if that is what you dream of.
- superblas 1y agoI was just at one of their offices in San Francisco. They have free breakfast, lunch, and dinner with choices from well over 10 whole restaurants exclusively on their campus. They have (paid) laundry service where they can just drop off their clothes and get them back later. No more Facebook barbers, however. There were people of all different backgrounds: black, white, Hispanic, Indian, etc. They have all these amenities on top of their huge paychecks (high cost of living in San Francisco notwithstanding). Do you really think they’d give all that up in service of helping their lessers? Maybe some would, but how much of this extravagant lifestyle would they give up? Even those who identify as liberal, how much would they give up?
- Jigsy 1y agoEven if you make it criminal, the law doesn't (and shouldn't) operate retroactively. Just saying.
- olelele 1y agoMy last impression of Facebook was that configuring the account settings had become more like setting up a fresh raspbian install or configuring a phone. Too many privacy intruding settings to count. I get the feeling that most people don't care enough and just leave everything on default, which is on. I think Facebook is deeply scammy now. I deleted my accounts a few years ago and never looked back.
- Nevermark 1y agoThe setting was turned on for me. And there is no way I explicitly granted access. I don't understand why Mark Zuckerberg isn't in jail, or via a "no admission of guilt" agreement, prohibited from being a corporate executive, at this point. My ungranted personal information should be mine, with force of law, just as much as Meta's trade secrets are theirs.
- jjtheblunt 1y ago> I don't understand why Mark Zuckerberg isn't in jail that made me think, how is it there are groups of political extreme protestors both anti-Trumpers and MAGA-ers, but no group protesting Zuckerberg's shenanigans in such media-covered fashion? How is money flowing to make this our reality? i don't pretend to know
- mobiledev2014 1y agoCEO-hate is bipartisan and antithetical to the mission of our media (propaganda). Getting the working class to argue over wedge issues keeps them from seeking meaningful change.
- hinkley 1y agoHave you read Careless People? Get ready to hate him much more, even if you only believe half of what she wrote. Also his second in command practically has class action status for sexual harassment at this point.
- de6u99er 1y agoI remember when Facebook hired George Hotz. The idea was to circumvent phone security and privacy settings.
- rootnod3 1y agoMeta abuses permissions when given? Shocked, I am SHOCKED I tell you. Next up: Google scans your emails, news at 11.
- KaiserPro 1y agoFor what it's worth, I don't think facebook are scanning your photos. the biggest reason is that probably enough of a ToS violation to get them yeeted from the app store. It looks like its using metadata to work out when to nagg you.
- ath3nd 1y agoAnd some people like you also thought facebook are respecting incognito mode and not starting a spyware agent server int the background of your device, but they were wrong. https://localmess.github.io/ https://localmess.github.io/
- KaiserPro 1y agoThanks for the insinuation there, it means a lot. The reason why I said this is because its not part of the advertising team. The advertising team can do all sorts of shit because it makes them money. The rest of the company have more constraints. The ads pricks are not the ones that have to ask the app store to let them back on, when one of the builds gets tagged as non-compliant. Now, its not impossible, but unlikely. if it was something to with Ads, I'd be less sure.
- ath3nd 1y ago> The rest of the company have more constraints. Is it in the realm of science fiction to suggest that they are snooping on your pics in order to have a better understanding of their victims so they can target them with more personalised ads?
- KaiserPro 1y ago> to suggest that they are snooping on your pics in order to have a better understanding of their victims no, but its expensive to do for little gain. Look at all the stupid snooping shit facebook, its all about getting a concrete link between persona and buying an object. scanning photos is a detectable gamble, and the signal you'll get for that is pretty questionable. You're also assuming that they can over come conways law to actually pull it off. The risk of doing that vs the reward of signal is not worth it. It also will get them fined like a motherfucker by the FCC, as they still nominally have oversight over "privacy". I mean that now questionable, given the state of the executive branch. Its far easier to just work out if a 14 year old girl has just deleted a photo and target them with body image products. Much safer from the FCC too.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoIt sounds like this may not be happening on iOS. I have not found a way to access the Photos library, without the user being asked for explicit permission to do so. But I also haven't really tried. I use Photos and the Camera in some of the apps I've written, and fully expect users to be asked. I ask for minimal permissions, as well. If Meta is bypassing user permission, then that's a truly dire security breach, and Apple needs to bring down the banhammer fast.
- snickerbockers 1y ago>might I appreciate your objectiviy but they definitely are.
- sub7 1y agoXiaomi's HyperOS has many flaws but one great thing it does is have an app behaviour settings page that shows what app used what permission and when. It allows you to toggle permissions on a per app per permission basis but sadly this toggle doesn't always work. Still useful knowing how much you get spied on.
- jimt1234 1y ago> ... it's not available in Illinois or Texas due to those states' privacy laws. This stuck out to me. How are laws like this typically applied? My guess is it's geo-based only, right? That is, take an Illinois resident who spends 99% of her time in her home state - if she travels to California for a weekend, can Facebook (legally) grab her camera roll data during that time? And vice-versa, myself, as a CA resident who spends 99% of his time at home - if I go to Texas for the weekend, Facebook is gonna have to wait until I return home to (legally) access my camera roll?
- baby_souffle 1y agoThat might be how they implement it technically, but I think the rules allow for some wiggle room. If I move to a new state, I typically have a grace period to change the state of registration on my vehicle. I'm not immediately penalized for having out of state plates the very next day but if I get pulled over 3 months after I've moved, I might have a tougher time.
- janandonly 1y agoWhy on earth would you install any Meta spy app on your phone at all? And why would you give that app full photo access?
- hinkley 1y agoMeta might be secretly scanning your mom’s phone’s camera roll. Seriously how many of us are still on FB? How many of us have friends and family who still are?
- hilbert42 1y ago"Seriously how many of us are still on FB?" Billions unfortunately! Almost everyone I deal with is. I reckon I'm about the only person I know who is not on one form of social media or another and or deeply involved with Google apps/using its Cloud. I've banned relatives taking my photo because I know it'll end up on Facebook, Google or others despite my wishes to the contrary. No matter what I say I know they can't help themselves (so does Big Tech—that's its modus operandi). I've come to the conclusion there's no point trying to convince others about privacy, data mining by Meta et al. All I can do is to try to minimize others spilling my personal data onto Big Tech's data collection highways.
- prism56 1y agoYeah pretty annoying this. I send my parents photos of my daughter and they probably just end up being scanned by their meta/google apps and trained. Where as I try take precautions. You literally can't opt out of face scanning if somebody else has taken or has access to a photo of you. I should be able to delete my facedata or when it detects its me it doesn't train.
- ks2048 1y agoCould a proxy service (like Charles) see if photos are leaving your device? It seems "scanning your photos" could mean doing something on device or sending your data elsewhere. The former seems like it would be a much bigger scandal.
- dmayle 1y agoI used to work at Meta (back when it was just Facebook), and I pioneered a similar effort back in 2016-2017-ish. Now, I don't know anything about the current version (which seems to offer cloud processing as well), but when I was there, the effort was entirely local to the phone. We had caffe2 running a small model on the phone to try and select and propose photos for the user to share. We were trying to offer an alternative sharing model that both made sharing easier, while offering the user the controls that made them feel comfortable with photo suggestions. (for those who never noticed, we launched Moments, which was an app that allowed automatic private sharing of your camera roll with a close selection of friends and family, but the experience wasn't great because it was centered around group events and sharing photos with the people who were there, not connecting with the ones who weren't) Ultimately, it was scrapped, because we were paranoid that we hadn't come up with a user experience that made it clear that this was happening only on the phone (I think we even tried a notification model), or that we'd accidentally surface someone's boudoir photos, and we were too worried about the kind of knee-jerk reactions that you're seeing in this thread. I'm guessing that someone at Meta either had a more successful go at the UX, or they feel that the opinions about AI have shifted enough that there will be less fear. Upon reading the article, it looks like there are two options, one which is local-only, and similar to what we built, and a second one which tries to make better suggestions using online, and that is only enabled after asking the user. I would suspect that the cloud processing version also runs a local model to attempt to filter out racy photos before sending them to the cloud, but I don't know for sure. I think the article is a bit disingenuous in it's presentation, but it's possible that I'm biased because I know how a similar thing was built, but it definitely sounds like fear-mongering.
- tomrod 1y agoIt better not be. I have no app and no account on their service. They bring no value to the world.
- deepsun 1y agoIt's not hard to live without any Meta apps in US. Some other countries require WhatsApp though.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 1y agoHN changed the title Original title chosen by the author: Meta might be secretly scanning your phone's camera roll - how to check and turn it off
- ath3nd 1y agoWe are talking about Meta, the company that: -was rhe main party in the Cambridge analytica saya misuse scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana... - Was responsible for the genocide in Myanmar https://time.com/6217730/myanmar-meta-rohingya-facebook/ https://time.com/6217730/myanmar-meta-rohingya-facebook/ - Actually pirated books to train their trash llama AI and lied about it https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/meta-torrented-over-81-7tb-of-pirated-books-to-train-ai-authors-say/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/meta-torrented-o... - Had a sniffer backdoor on Android to track you even through VPN and incognitomodes, an approach shared with Yandex https://localmess.github.io/ https://localmess.github.io/ - The CEO repeatedly lied to congress https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/facebook-whistleblower-testify-meta-zuckerberg-b2730365.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic... - They spent billions on the metaverse which shows how stipid and out of touch they are And now we are surprised that they are sniffing your photos. Please, I won't be surprised if they sniff your photos even if you don't consent. At this moment it's absolutely clear that they are an adversarial actor which can't be trusted with absolutely anything.
- greatgib 1y agoOpened the article and was immediately turned on by their cookie popup: We Care About Your Privacy We and our 924 partners store and access personal data, like browsing data or unique identifiers, on your device. No, you don't...
- techtivist 1y agoHonestly, along with this recent news - Meta seems to be its most brazen phase since going public in 2012 https://www.adweek.com/media/whistleblower-alleges-meta-artificially-boosted-shops-ads-performance/ https://www.adweek.com/media/whistleblower-alleges-meta-arti... (See the section Recovery from Apple’s privacy changes) Cambridge Analytica was perhaps more about incompetence than complicity. But the patterns now seem intentional, and reminiscent of its early days documented well in Steven Levy's book.