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Apps Sharing Your Data With Facebook (Even if you Don't Have an Account)

posted by martyb on Tuesday January 01 2019, @02:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the sincere-apology-expected dept.

rigrig writes:

UK-based human rights charity Privacy International has released a report about Android apps sharing users' data with Facebook, even if they don't have an account.

Key findings

  • We found that at least 61 percent of apps we tested automatically transfer data to Facebook the moment a user opens the app. This happens whether people have a Facebook account or not, or whether they are logged into Facebook or not.
  • We also found that some apps routinely send Facebook data that is incredibly detailed and sometimes sensitive. Again, this concerns data of people who are either logged out of Facebook or who do not have a Facebook account.

Facebook spying on people is hardly news, but I figured Soylentils might be interested to hear about which companies decided to trust the Facebook SDK.
(They only tested Android apps, but it's likely that iOS versions of also use the Facebook SDK)

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 01 2019, @01:19PM (2 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday January 01 2019, @01:19PM (#780613) Homepage Journal

    There is, it's called iptables. Unless you're silly enough to own a phone you can't get root on. If that's the case, the fault is your own not Google's. It's not their business to protect you from your own bad decisions. And, frankly, with a mindset of blaming others for your screw-ups, you really don't need to be running as root anyway. With great power comes great responsibility.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 01 2019, @05:07PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 01 2019, @05:07PM (#780648)

    It's Google's fault if they don't mandate that. Most phone buyers aren't in a position to buy phones that they can root and doing so can result in problems. I had to switch from at&t in part because they forced updates that unrooted my device without my permission and acted like they owned the device I had bought.

    T-Mobile though doesn't seem to force updates though.