Security researchers say apps including Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter, and countless others collect data in surprising ways.

iPhone Apps Secretly Harvest Data When They Send You Notifications, Researchers Find::Security researchers say apps including Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter, and countless others collect data in surprising ways.

  • A_A@lemmy.worldEnglish
    711·
    10 months ago

    When we don’t pay we are the product. Conversely, when we do pay we are still the f***ing product.

    • saltesc@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      10 months ago

      iPhone apps including Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and X/Twitter are skirting Apple’s privacy rules to collect user data through notifications

      Seems it’s the free shit doing what they do best and the thing you paid for needs to plug some loopholes. I can’t imagine Apple’s coordinating if there’s no profit for them…like when native Facebook and Twitter accounts appeared in the iOS settings, hmmmmmmm.

    • errer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      24·
      10 months ago

      As if the products you pay for don’t do the same fucking thing

  • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.worldEnglish
    191·
    10 months ago

    I wonder if this is big enough for Apple to snuff it out before WWDC. They have too much money invested into branding around privacy and security. I can’t imagine this type of fingerprinting will remain around for long.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    91·
    10 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    The data is unnecessary for processing notifications, the researchers said, and seems related to analytics, advertising, and tracking users across different apps and devices.

    It’s par for the course that apps would find opportunities to sneak in more data collection, but “we were surprised to learn that this practice is widely used,” said Tommy Mysk, who conducted the tests along with Talal Haj Bakry.

    For one, Apple gives app developers details about what’s going on with notifications directly, so there’s no need to collect additional information if you know what happened after you pinged your users.

    Furthermore, a lot of the data that apps are collecting seems unrelated to analyzing how well notifications are working, like your phone’s available disk space or the time since your last reboot, Mysk said.

    Mysk said if a company like Google can send you a notification without snooping on other details, that suggests there are ulterior motives for the data collection he spotted.

    Unfortunately, you might have heard that big companies sometimes tell lies, which would get in the way of that solution, and Apple doesn’t have a stellar track record of enforcing similar rules.

    The original article contains 1,384 words, the summary contains 191 words. Saved 86%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • TheFriar@lemm.eeEnglish
    7·
    10 months ago

    Well, shit I’m glad that I turned off all notifications after reading a similar article a couple months ago.