Slashdot Mirror
Several Popular Apps Share Data With Facebook Without User Consent (ft.com)
Some of the most popular apps for Android smartphones, including Skyscanner, TripAdvisor and MyFitnessPal, are transmitting data to Facebook without the consent of users in a potential breach of EU regulations. From a report: In a study of 34 popular Android apps, the campaign group Privacy International found that at least 20 of them send certain data to Facebook the second that they are opened on a phone, before users can be asked for permission. Information sent instantly included the app's name, the user's unique ID with Google, and the number of times the app was opened and closed since being downloaded. Some, such as travel site Kayak, later sent detailed information about people's flight searches to Facebook, including travel dates, whether the user had children and which flights and destinations they had searched for. European law on data-sharing changed in May with the introduction of General Data Protection Regulation and mobile apps are required to have the explicit consent of users before collecting their personal information.
Once people get over their knee-jerk sense of outrage (if there is any), I doubt anyone will even uninstall these apps from their phones.
wow no way gasp i'm super surprised oh my stars garters amen
Calorie Counter - MyFitnessPal
Duolingo: Learn Languages Free
Family Locator - GPS Tracker
Indeed Job Search
Instant Heart Rate: HR Monitor & Pulse Checker
KAYAK Flights, Hotels & Cars
King James Bible (KJV) Free
Muslim Pro - Prayer Times, Azan, Quran & Qibla
My Talking Tom / My Talking Hank etc
Period Tracker Clue: Period & Ovulation Calculator
Qibla Connect® Find Direction- Prayer, Azan, Quran
Shazam
Skyscanner - Cheap Flights, Hotels and Car Rental (Ad Personalisation = Off)
Skyscanner - Cheap Flights, Hotels and Car Rental (Ad Personalisation = On)
Spotify Music
Super-Bright LED Flashlight
The Weather Channel: Local Forecast & Weather Maps
TripAdvisor Hotels Flights Restaurants Attractions
VK (vkontakte)
Yelp
Salatuk (Prayer time)
Bible - Audio, Daily Verse, Study & Offline, Free
BMI Calculator & Weight Loss Tracker
Candy Crush Saga
Clean Master - Antivirus, Cleaner & Booster
Dropbox
HP ePrint (No Longer in Google Play Store)
Opera Browser
Period Tracker, My Calendar
Phone Tracker By Number
Security Master - Antivirus, VPN, AppLock, Booster
Skater Boy
Speedtest by Ookla
WeChat
Beware of the Leopard.
firewalls on their android devices to block outgoing connections (especially to bookface)
NetGuard, AFWall+ (requires root)...
Seems a better headline would be more along the lines of: Free apps make their money one way or the other.
I think one of the most effective privacy regs we could have would be a law that requires a plain English explanation of what data is sold or transferred to third parties, including wholly-owned subsidiaries that are operating as a separate company (ex WhatsApp and Facebook).
No legalese, something that a person with a GED or high school degree should be able to read like this:
If it were spelled out in those terms, a lot more people would notice and care.
... the worse Facebook looks.
the average person not understanding how this stuff works and the dangers therein, but anyone in IT should have declared Facebook, et al. pariahs long ago. I remember years ago when working as an IT security auditor thinking that I would never join "social media". Many people saw this coming, but people simply don't want to hear about it because it's "free". Everyone in IT understands it's not free. You (metaphorically) are paying for it. In more ways than one.
I value what little privacy is left over, and as an anecdote, I recently left Fastmail over the Access and Assistance bill. I was a paying customer, but no longer.
The Security Derangement Complex: Technology Companies And Australia’s Anti-Encryption Law
In the end, I think people will not be able to trust companies. 99% of people will never encrypt their missives or online content before storing them. That's crazy, despite not having anything to hide. That old chestnut people love to trot out saying, "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.", is garbage. We all have things to hide or would prefer to remain under wraps.
I drive a grey car with no bumper stickers. I wear plain shirts. I don't advertise. I pay cash for booze and tobacco, buy certain things face to face, and generally don't put myself out there for the data miners. My browsing is all done as privately as I can make it. More and more companies are selling, unbeknownst to end users, their data to insurance companies, banks, credit companies, and various governments. We are entering an age where everything is going to be transparent. Those who use encryption that is not "backdoored" will stand out brightly. The cold war between clever end users and the powers that be is coming. VPN/VPS traffic is routinely being deep packet inspected (already a thing) in many places. They are not the panacea people think they are. You cannot trust what you do not control. The Australian AA Bill has really nailed this down for me, and as my only paid account save my ISP, I'm thinking about how to address this in a way that works for me going forward with the friends and family I do communicate with on a regular basis. I'm not paranoid, I just see the patterns being matched around the world with control closing in.
*IF* you're going to flaunt the law and send info your app collects to Facebook without the phone owner's consent, doing it from the phone is stupid. It allows the phone owner to check on the data your app is transmitting, and catch it sending info to Facebook as TFA did.
The smart way to do it would be to have your app send the info to you, then you send it to Facebook directly. That way there's no way for the user to detect that you're sharing data with Facebook. I wouldn't at all be surprised if this is what most apps do.
Nobody cares. On a rooted Android phone with a privacy guard, firewall and a good blocklist, no app can get or send data anyway.
Nothing good ever came from the Financial Times
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
The price of the phone doesn't matter at all. You can have a great Android device with super-tight privacy almost for free if you learn how to do it. It doesn't even take a lot of work, just a bit of reading and following a few basic steps.
Sadly, this seems too much work for the average slashdot "nerd" of year 2018.
There needs to be penalties.
If CEO's get some jail time this stuff will stop right now!
There is no motivation to self police.
They are like "Ooopsie someone made a mistake" "thats against our policy"
Meanwhile once the cat is out of the bag it's a done deal.
And if someone doesn't call them out they will keep on with the butt sniffing.
The average person is not particularly technically literate, and is happy to presume that there isn't a problem for them.
Mostly, they are right, in the same way that driving without signalling or wearing a seatbelt or putting the headlights on in the rain is mostly ok.
Hopefully they will be fined large amounts of money and Facebook as well for accepting the data...
I've seen numerous sites "debunk" the idea that your phone listens to your conversations and sends data to advertisers. The problem with every one of them is that they were analyzing the behavior of specific applications, typically the Facebook app. Because Facebook gets data from other application vendors, none of those tests were meaningful.
Does your phone listen to your conversations? Probably. Could be your laptop/desktop computer, too.
Mod parent up!
Everything you do on that smartphone you are sending data to Google you cannot even download "apps" without giving them your name e-mail address and your phone number to go with it.
There are many downloader sites freely available on the web. You don't need Google play services and associated malware to download software from the Google play store.
My comment is a response to the baseless OP argument that paying more money is the same thing as caring for your privacy.
However, there is no need for "technical literacy", just for an average ability to read and follow instructions. The hard technical work has been done and is wrapped in convenient apps that are either free, or cost less than 4-5 bucks.
This has been the case for a long time. At least you can deny permissions on Android, or on a rooted Android device, use a utility like XPrivacyLua to allow nosy apps to go slurping all the data they want, as it is fed to it from /dev/urandom.
Before this, it was commonplace for even a basic fleshlight app to require every permission under the sun, even ACCESS_SUPERUSER, and with Android's all or nothing permission approach, most people just allowed the app to install and start slurping data to its hearts content.
Only crAPPy crAPPS can crAPP all over your privacy.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Yeah. I've seen all kinds of cases of bank apps being exploited. Oh wait ... I still have never seen any reports of this happening. I think you mean "even though Android is quite secure and stable and most banks have Android apps that are secure I hate Google so I'm going to pretend that bank accounts are being compromised left and right even though that assertion is ridiculous, since if that were the case banks would be pulling their apps left, right, up and down."
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
In this day and age I distrust by default any website which keeps my personal data like name, address, etc. and if I have to use such a website I open a private(incognito) tab in my web browser.
Shocked I tell you. And saddened, yes definitely saddened. And shock. Mostly shocked, but also somewhat saddened. Yes that's it, shocked and saddened.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
If they're still using it after all the s**t in the news lately, they definitely don't care about apps sharing their info. Or their IQ is too low to understand what the problems are. Or both.
On a rooted Android phone with a privacy guard, firewall and a good blocklist, no app can get or send data anyway.
Note that as long as your phone is talking to cell towers, your location is being catalogued, and those catalogues are being shared/sold.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Facebook grabs all the data it can, it's really not dependent upon your contacts.
I don't use Facebook and have it very well blocked with a HOSTS file on my personal Computer.
I run "Noroot Firewall" on mobile devices. This Christmas a Parrot Drone was gifted, and "FreeFlight mini" software installed
on a mobile phone; Two packets going to Google and one to Facebook were blocked.
This is true of any cellphone, and has nothing to do with Android or Google.