Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta's Apps (and Yandex) (msn.com) 70
Meta's Facebook and Instagram apps "were siphoning people's data through a digital back door for months," writes a Washington Post tech columnist, citing researchers who found no privacy setting could've stopped what Meta and Yandex were doing, since those two companies "circumvented privacy and security protections that Google set up for Android devices.
"But their tactics underscored some privacy vulnerabilities in web browsers or apps. These steps can reduce your risks." Stop using the Chrome browser. Mozilla's Firefox, the Brave browser and DuckDuckGo's browser block many common methods of tracking you from site to site. Chrome, the most popular web browser, does not... For iPhone and Mac folks, Safari also has strong privacy protections. It's not perfect, though. No browser protections are foolproof. The researchers said Firefox on Android devices was partly susceptible to the data harvesting tactics they identified, in addition to Chrome. (DuckDuckGo and Brave largely did block the tactics, the researchers said....)
Delete Meta and Yandex apps on your phone, if you have them. The tactics described by the European researchers showed that Meta and Yandex are unworthy of your trust. (Yandex is not popular in the United States.) It might be wise to delete their apps, which give the companies more latitude to collect information that websites generally cannot easily obtain, including your approximate location, your phone's battery level and what other devices, like an Xbox, are connected to your home WiFi.
Know, too, that even if you don't have Meta apps on your phone, and even if you don't use Facebook or Instagram at all, Meta might still harvest information on your activity across the web.
"But their tactics underscored some privacy vulnerabilities in web browsers or apps. These steps can reduce your risks." Stop using the Chrome browser. Mozilla's Firefox, the Brave browser and DuckDuckGo's browser block many common methods of tracking you from site to site. Chrome, the most popular web browser, does not... For iPhone and Mac folks, Safari also has strong privacy protections. It's not perfect, though. No browser protections are foolproof. The researchers said Firefox on Android devices was partly susceptible to the data harvesting tactics they identified, in addition to Chrome. (DuckDuckGo and Brave largely did block the tactics, the researchers said....)
Delete Meta and Yandex apps on your phone, if you have them. The tactics described by the European researchers showed that Meta and Yandex are unworthy of your trust. (Yandex is not popular in the United States.) It might be wise to delete their apps, which give the companies more latitude to collect information that websites generally cannot easily obtain, including your approximate location, your phone's battery level and what other devices, like an Xbox, are connected to your home WiFi.
Know, too, that even if you don't have Meta apps on your phone, and even if you don't use Facebook or Instagram at all, Meta might still harvest information on your activity across the web.
Remember (Score:4, Informative)
You are all "dumb fucks" according to Zuck.
Re:Remember ["professional courtesy"?] (Score:2)
Mod parent funny?
However i think the biggest joke may be that the sharks might be going after each other. Not the only reason, but one of the requirements for becoming so stinking rich is that they ALWAYS want MORE money, even though they already have more money than makes any human sense. Up to now, they have mostly been content to squeeze blood out of the impoverished cabbages like you and me, but if they are sincerely attacking each other, then maybe they've realized there isn't any more cash = blood ava
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Well, he should know.
Re:Show of hands: know how the internet work? (Score:4, Funny)
It works (for the most part) by establishing one-to-one connections between clients (your device) and servers (what you're looking at) where by construction the client and the server both know eachother's IP addresses.
Precisely zero people are talking about, nor give a shit about IP address tracking. IP address tracking is useless to the people who use your information to profit.
Privacy and anonymity cannot exist in such a context.
Anonymity is preserved in the context. An IP address does not identify a person, it identifies a network endpoint. Knowing my IP address does not identify me, only my ISP can do that.
Privacy is not an arbitrary concept, it's a sliding scale. The fact you can be tracked by IP doesn't mean you should just give up. Case in point, I'm not posting this as an Anonymous Coward, but neither have I used my full name to register my Slashdot account. Go on, tell us all your full name. After all privacy and anonymity don't exist since you're using the internet.
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It doesn't matter, an IP address doesn't identify you. And yeah I don't live in America, my ISP does not sell this information because they would get get ass-fucked by the regulator if they did.
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Re: Rujiel-Z (Score:1)
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Very true. And, if you live in an apartment building, as more and more people are every year, the odds are that your Internet connection is provided by the management. That means that your building has exactly one public IP and all of the tenants are on a LAN with only local, non-routable IPs so that getting your public IP tells people where you live, but not who you are, no matter what the extreme privacy phreaques try to tell
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>"Anonymity is preserved in the context. An IP address does not identify a person, it identifies a network endpoint."
Yep
>"Knowing my IP address does not identify me, only my ISP can do that."
Nope, your ISP can't do that either. At home, you should have NAT and very likely multiple endpoint devices and possibly multiple people using them. And your ISP doesn't know everyone who lives in your house or visits (or which neighbor is stealing your WiFi access in the case of insecure setups). So they can't
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You must still be using IPv4... so NAT is necessary. But my IPv6 address sticks with me a really long time as do all the other IPv6 addresses my ISP assigns. Combine that with other fingerprinting techniques and a list of IPv6 addresses can be associated with my device. Eventually; in the data trail, some useful identifier may be revealed.
People have been convicted based upon evidence taken from their personal computer that wasn't locked under an account login. I remember back to the music sharing lawsui
Sure, but... (Score:2)
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Well, duh (Score:3)
Re:Well, duh (Score:5, Interesting)
I knew I needed to immediately remove any Meta app when I get a new phone. I wasn't sure why, but now I have confirmation.
As for WaPo, what prevails there is the owner's direction. Certain things they aren't allowed to talk about, like if an Amazon app were to be doing something like this, or the "CBP One" app.
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There are phones that ship with Meta garbage preinstalled? Is this some kind of shit that happens if you get the "free" phone from your carrier?
Man, I forgot what it's like to not just buy the phone that isn't carrier locked and stock from a manufacturer that hasn't pre-sold your information to someone in order to pretend like they're doing you a favor by saving you a few hundred bucks.
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There are phones that ship with Meta garbage preinstalled?
Yes, virtually all of them. Carrier locking has zero to do with it. That's how phones work, they come with popular stuff pre-installed unless you get an Apple "we decide what is popular" phone, a Google "only Google apps here" phone, or a Chinese "Meta? What's that? Ask on WeChat for the answer" phone. That said they aren't fully installed, it's more like a placeholder that installs on first launch.
Re: Well, duh (Score:3)
What third part shit does Apple think is popular and preinstall? Never seen anything.
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What third part shit does Apple think is popular and preinstall? Never seen anything.
I think you missed my point: Apple decided for you that *their* apps are the only popular ones. Oh and Google search, because mmmm money.
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I didn't miss your point, but I don't think it's valid. All operating systems come with a minimum set of applications and tools that make it useful. Apple's selection might not be the best or the most functional, but they're good enough to at least get started. I don't think it's their job or right to sift through all the third party alternatives to select what they think is the best for their users, and nor do most people want the Linux experience where you get a dozen of everything and no help deciding
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I've had a few Motorola phones that mostly come with stock Android apps and a couple of Moto apps like an FM radio, file manager and gesture program.
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I just decided to do a quick check by looking at an unboxing video. The most recent phone released is the Motorola Edge 60. It comes with 4 Motorola apps preinstalled. Oh and Facebook. Yes Facebook is the only non-Google / non-Motorola app on the phone.
It is an almost poetic example for even companies that don't pre-load the phone with a mountain of rubbish they still include Facebook.
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Yea, things seem to be getting shittier. Wonder if it was deletable?
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A good phone won't have anything from Meta on it unless you put it there.
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Yeah, I already don't use any of that shit in the article. I guess I'm ahead of the curve, for once.
Hehehehe (Score:5, Funny)
Good advice from 2010.
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But, I have multiple browsers -- because every browser company thinks they know what is best, not all sites render properly and Google of course changed things so that uBlockOrigin won't work, etc.
I've always said: if it doesn't run uBO, it's not a real browser.
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>"every browser company thinks they know what is best, not all sites render properly and Google of course changed things so"
There are only three rendering of sites. The Firefox way, the Chrom* way, and the Safari way. And if you are not using Apple stuff, there are only two. It shouldn't be hard for sites to handle 'three' browsers, and yet, here we are, trying to slip back into the days of "IE Only".
My continued advice to people, lest we end up in a complete disaster of mono-browser/non-diversity is:
Can't, unfortunately (and they listen in too) (Score:2)
Must use Whatsap - not optional because "reasons". And empirical evidence suggests that (due to its obviously mandatory access to the microphone) it does listen in and processes conversations for later ad targeting. Wish Apple had an option to block microphone access except when the app is active and in foreground.
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If your microphone is active, it should at least show an indicator light and a top-row icon, I'm pretty sure.
Meta[stasize]: The world's biggest... (Score:4, Informative)
Meta[stasize]: the world's biggest privacy rapist.
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Sebby the Rapist
Ah yes, Slashdot's favourite clueless, spineless fuck [slashdot.org] as always trying to deflect its role as a privacy rapist in its capacity as a Meta[stasize] employee.
Facebook gets caught doing this every couple years (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook is not an advertising company they are a data aggregator that sells data. That is where most of their profit comes from. The advertising is just a cherry on top.
What I find funny is everyone knows these huge corporations are evil and plan on doing bad things to you and it's not controversial to say that.
But as soon as you talk about regulating them or taking away the almost unlimited amount of power billionaires have by limiting how much money they are allowed to have that's controversial and it ain't going to happen. Nobody is going to vote for that.
It's because Americans have no nuance. They can't think in gradations or iterations.
So if you say that Elon musk should not have enough money that he can threaten to run primary election challenges against every single member of the House of Representatives that's not controversial.
But as soon as you say you're going to actually take his money away from him so that he really can't do that anymore everyone assumes the next step is for the government to steal their car and house and toothbrush.
Because you can't have nuance. You can't say that we aren't going to let somebody have this much money because it's too much power but you can still have your freaking automobile and your dumb little mcmansion.
The assumption is if we are going to take Elon musk's money away we have to take your money away because you can't just do one thing and then stop. Either it gets done everywhere or it gets done nowhere because nuance is something that doesn't exist in the mind of a 12-year-old, and we are a nation of 12-year-olds.
Re:Facebook gets caught doing this every couple ye (Score:5, Insightful)
They got caught activating your microphone and listening to you a while back too. Facebook is not an advertising company they are a data aggregator that sells data.
Hence the reason they should be referred more accurately as "privacy rapists".
What I find funny is everyone knows these huge corporations are evil and plan on doing bad things to you and it's not controversial to say that.
Referring to them as what they truly are ("privacy rapists") would align the optics better.
It's because Americans have no nuance.
Because Americans are stupid. They've proven that twice now.
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I'd feel so much better about the direction of things if we had only proven our collective stupidity twice.
You give us too much credit.
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I'd feel so much better about the direction of things if we had only proven our collective stupidity twice.
You give us too much credit.
You're right, I should've said "at least twice in recent history".
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Rules for thee and not for me i suppose.
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Facebook refusnick here. Never installed Facebook on any computer or mobile device and never will. In my opinion, they're a giant Hoover vacuum when it comes to your privileged and personal data. I'm sorry, but the benefits of Facebook are not worth the risk of them leaking your personal data to third parties, or if they have a data breach.
If you are a extroverted nerd (Score:2)
If you're a nerd and you are an extrovert then your life is basically hell. You want to be around people but due to some sort of physical or mental quirk they don't want to be around you. Basically you're weird whether you like it or not. And so you weird people out through absolutely no fault of your own.
Facebook makes it possible to find groups of people who are like you. So you can completely ignore
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"But as soon as you talk about regulating them or taking away the almost unlimited amount of power billionaires have by limiting how much money they are allowed to have that's controversial and it ain't going to happen. Nobody is going to vote for that."
American psyche: "Don't penalize the rich, because I could be as rich as them someday". Unfortunately, the odds of you becoming rich are exceedingly small.
In contrast, your odds of living at least a comfortable life with stable non-precarious employment, and
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Nobody is mutilating 12 year olds. Even if that was happening, it's a bunch of irrational outrage over less than 0.01% which can just be ignored it's so insignificant. Go get upset about the 40k who die in car accidents every year. On the flipside, preventing treatment of teens who commit suicide is only saving a tiny number of the total teens who kill themselves... and I'd argue it wasn't worth it. We need to stop saving everybody; especially, the extra stupid white boys who grew up to vote for Trump.
The
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Gun laws are another example: It's wrong to mass-murder children but guns are needed to stop the government harming people. Current circumstances reveal the truth: Guns are need to stop the government harming rich people. Where are local police and hired thugs in the USA, pointing their guns? It's definitely not at rich people, and it's mostly, not at white people.
Another sacred cow is "job creators": Jobs are created by consumerism. It's why the USA (and other countries) demand economic growth: So
Dupe (Score:1)
Slashdot ran a similar story [slashdot.org] just a few days ago.
Although both Meta and Yandex have stopped spying on users in this manner, that doesn't mean they won't do something different.
Thanks, Jeff Bezos (Score:2, Insightful)
For your completely unbiased opinion. Knowing this advice is sponsored by someone with absolutely no conflict of interest makes me happy.
Not just Chrome, anything Alphabet (Score:4, Insightful)
Not using anything made by Alphabet or Meta is definitely a good start.
WaPo lost all credibility (Score:2)
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Isn't it odd being a dissident these days? All the former dissidents come up to you and shout at you to obey the US government and lick those boots.
Same thing happened after 9/11. Then the roles were reversed during covid. Now we're here in 2025, it's hard to know which rules to follow or boots to lick because they get changed with a sharpie on a whim, then walked back a few days later when Wall St complains.
The irony of the WaPo link going to MSN (Score:2)
This is the WaPo article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
OP used an MSN link which ironically is another way big tech has been siphoning off your data. Google loves to return an entire page full of MSN links because Microsoft has been aggregating and news links for fun an profit using Edge as a default browser. The story should have included eschewing the use of Edge along with Chrome.
Android permissions suck (Score:2)
Fast forward to now and about the only thing Android warns you about is apps wanting to know your location. I suspect they dumbed it down as telling the truth would hurt app store sales.
BlueSky servers are spying (Score:2)
Every time BlueSky redesigns their web-page, Firefox, Waterfox, Librewolf, Thorium, Vivaldi, stop loading the page. Only spyware-friendly Chrome works. A few days later, the privacy-friendly browsers, can access BlueSky again.
Never like Chrome interface /never trusted it (Score:2)