"I am shocked, shocked to find out that gambling is going on in here."
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Analysis Suggests Instagram Tracks User Web Activity Through In-App Browser
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Perhaps -- except that you might be assuming that the intel guys don't also have access to all of that social media data.
They are definitely not injecting Javascript into every web page to track every action or I think someone would have noticed, just like they did here.
But now that I think about it I suppose they could do deep monitoring like this at the system level and no one would notice as long as it stops when analytics is turned off. I don’t think Apple or even Google would do this though.
Even not doing it deliberately, phones hardly even work anymore without a constant connection to the mothership. There’s a lot of metadata to be gleaned there.
The dirty industry secret is that Apple and Meta track, both companies encrypt data although Apple makes decryption almost impossible. But Apple is the greatest offender by tracking your iPhone usage behavior as much as possible. Apple is better at marketing themselves as being the good citizens. I interviewed at Apple before they advertised security as a feature, and they weren't shy regarding the amount of anonymous data they collect from individual iPhones.
I’ve always felt like Zuckerberg looked more like a lizard person than a robot. I kinda felt like he was the greatest gift possible to the lizard people conspiracy crowd, a guy we could all safely say, “if they exist, yep, he’s one of them!”
Meanwhile the government focus is on further restricting Apple’s ability to interfere with this kind of nonsense…. *sigh*
Yes they can.
When you control the browser you can inject anything they want... and if they want a button and input tracker, then they could easily do it WITHOUT the user being aware. With a normal browser, you can inspect and see what JS scripts are loaded and from where, but when you also control the App and prevent the ability to inspect the web resources then they have a full ability to manipulate anything including content on the page that they don't agree with.
So the question is not COULD they, but WOULD they?
And yes Meta has made their entire income based on building profiles on their users. They mostly use this to sell more effective ads to their users but there is a lot of potential income in the raw data too.
Example of a JS that tracks clicks, user input and behavior:
Fullstory: Surface User Sentiment with Behavioral Data | Fullstory
Discover a behavioral data platform that surfaces user sentiment buried between clicks to create better products that win loyal customers for life.
www.fullstory.com
Apple could, sure, but we’d know about it if they were. Project Zero would have already publicized bug reports, and you wouldn’t hear the end of it from Android users. Plus, privacy seems to be where Apple thinks it has a definite advantage over Google, so I doubt they’d sell out for some ad revenue. (Where even does Apple serve ads? The App Store? In terms of Apple and advertising [the real money, at least supposedly*, in tech surveillance], Apple is more of a buyer of advertising than a seller of advertising.)
* I suspect that all of Facebook’s and Google’s data isn’t actually all that useful, and that we, as a society, and especially venture capitalists overvalue the predictive value of personal data. Certainly, network television advertising rates still go for far more than the race to the bottom that is online ad impressions. And Google has a hard time keeping mainstream advertisers happy with YouTube, hence all of Google’s concerns about monetization on YouTube. Clearly, the YouTube offering just isn’t as appealing to advertisers as the network TV offering, and who even watches network TV anymore?
The Facebook android app allows you to use your default browser when clicking on a link while the iOS app has no such option but you are left with the in-app browser. I'm not sure if at some point in the past iOS has the option to open the links using the default browser but since 2016 which is when I started using smartphones, the FB app on iOS only uses the in-app browser.
I freaking hate how apps have a “built in” web browser. Just open safari for me. Your browser experience sucks.
I agree. When the FB app first started doing this my first thought was because they could track how long we look at the page and what we do with it.
Anonymized device telemetry is very very different from what FB is doing…
What a surprise! (not) I only use instagram on third party apps, so for example, on my Mac any link goes to Safari.
I've already disabled microphone access in IG because we found it listens and feeds ads based on what you're saying during a phone call while cruising IG. It's happened a few times between a friend and mine when we were talking about something very obsure (sail shades for patios) and he was presented for an ad for sail shades. Either a million in 1 coincidence or they're listening.
Then you need to reevaluate your browser and/or plugins.
If this is true, very bad. Meta and its apps cannot be trusted.
This is not much of a surprise. It is in Meta’s nature to track everything.
A reminder. We saw it coming when Fb took over IG, but I was a bit surprised at how quickly they did the id linking behind the scenes.
Art...and include the music...
I hate everything that is Facebook.
I knew the rust that is FB would corrode IG in the same way. Unfortunately bondo only covers the corrupt, we need to cut it out and replace it.
Meta, Facebook and Instagram… the most disgusting companies in human history. Twitter is a close second.