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Apple Jams Facebook's Web-Tracking Tools (bbc.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the right-to-privacy dept.

The next version of iOS and macOS "will frustrate tools used by Facebook to automatically track web users," reports BBC. At the company's developer conference, Apple's software chief Craig Federighi said, "We're shutting that down," adding that Safari would ask owners' permission before allowing the social network to monitor their activity. BBC reports: At the WWDC conference - held in San Jose, California - Mr Federighi said that Facebook keeps watch over people in ways they might not be aware of. "We've all seen these - these like buttons, and share buttons and these comment fields. "Well it turns out these can be used to track you, whether you click on them or not." He then pointed to an onscreen alert that asked: "Do you want to allow Facebook.com to use cookies and available data while browsing?" "You can decide to keep your information private."

Apple also said that MacOS Mojave would combat a technique called "fingerprinting", in which advertisers try to track users who delete their cookies. The method involves identifying computers by the fonts and plug-ins installed among other configuration details. To counter this, Apple will present web pages with less details about the computer. "As a result your Mac will look more like everyone else's Mac, and it will be dramatically more difficult for data companies to uniquely identify your device," Mr Federighi explained.

5 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Do this by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Firefox can do this already, but it's not that effective unfortunately.

    The real problem these days is fingerprinting. Particularly installed fonts and user agent strings. Those two alone are often pretty unique, and combined with canvas fingerprinting and IP address are very powerful tracking mechanisms.

    Unfortunately no browser can block them, and I have not found any plug-in except for NoScript that can block getting a list of installed fonts. There is a tool called "fluxfonts" that randomly installs and removes fake fonts in the background, but it would be nice if a mainstream browser did something about this.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. Re:Do this by Mordaximus · · Score: 5, Informative

    The real problem these days is fingerprinting. Particularly installed fonts and user agent strings. Those two alone are often pretty unique, and combined with canvas fingerprinting and IP address are very powerful tracking mechanisms.

    They are addressing this as well in Mojave. Slimmed down system information, it only reports system fonts. Essentially one MacBook will look like the next, etc. In theory, anyway

  3. Don't think this is the right way to fight it by Solandri · · Score: 4, Interesting
    There are two ways to fight this:
    • Try to stop these tracking methods. Which just results in the people doing the tracking coming up with new tracking methods. That kicks off an endless arms race where each side keeps countering the move the other side makes.
    • Pollute the data. Let them collect the data, but the browser should surreptitiously add fake data. Either generated by randomly crawling linked pages in the background, or by sharing anonymized sites other users have browsed. The moment the "user's" browsing data is no longer an accurate representation of the sites the user is actually browsing, that data loses its advertising value. And advertisers will be forced to place ads based on the type of people who like to visit a certain site (e.g. GPU ads on a gaming site), rather than trying to display ads targeted at the person browsing regardless of what site they visit.

    The first method is a never-ending game of leapfrog. The second method favors users because there are a lot more of them than companies tracking this data. They can generate fake browsing data faster (up to the limit of their Internet bandwidth) than these companies can filter it out.

    1. Re:Don't think this is the right way to fight it by johnsie · · Score: 4, Informative

      It'll still be an arms race. They'll try and find ways around it. GDPR has shown that strong legislation is probably going to be the best way to prevent this sort of tracking.

  4. Re:Do this by theweatherelectric · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hey Firefox, looking for something else to copy?

    What, you mean like how Firefox provides built-in tracking protection? Or how Firefox provides a Facebook Container which isolates Facebook from the rest of your browsing activity? Or how Firefox is developing an anti-fingerprinting mode? Or how Firefox is integrating Tor as a built-in feature?

    I don't think you know what you're talking about. The web browser is the most commonly used piece of application software. If there's one type of software you should educate yourself about, it's web browsers.