This is not just facebook. This is what all the DMPs[1] in advertising do, and charge millions of dollars for it. There is BlueKai from Oracle, one from Adobe, and various others. The core proposition is to collect as much data about the user to understand the interests (profiling) and then target that user or users like him to get a better conversion rate.<p>Why facebook emerged as a big player in this field was because the other companies were really expensive for consumer apps and hence they were used only by the biggest players. Facebook made it cheap, automated the process and allowed for targeting without even telling the advertisers what audience needs to be targeted. All at the cost startups and smbs could afford.
Google also does the same. Infact all the big advertising networks do it, or utilize a DMP to do it on their behalf.<p>I realize that this discussion is about privacy, and in that regard, it should not be allowed by any company. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Almost all the big players in travel have huge customer profiles on us, gained by our credit card transactions, credit history, data from insurance and other friendly companies (you scratch my back and I scratch yours) and various other practices which frequently compromise on user's privacy. I dont know how one can solve this though.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.bluekai.com/files/DMP_Demystified_Whitepaper_BlueKai.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.bluekai.com/files/DMP_Demystified_Whitepaper_Blue...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.adobe.com/analytics/audience-manager.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.adobe.com/analytics/audience-manager.html</a>
NoRoot Firewall: I got a global Block rule for 31.13.<i>.</i><p>The exact same thing applies for all iOS devices. Web banking, airlines, almost every game. There very few exceptions of the most common apps, e.g. Dropbox, Skype, stock apps. Facebook is cancer. It gets into the body and never leaves. Unless you firewall or hosts block their IPs.
Isn't this the nightmare scenario the GPL was created to fight against, a device that is not acting in the users interest but against it, with tons of private APIs [1], complete lack of transparency, deceptive language and hoovering up user data to send to others. And the kicker is this is happening on the supposedly 'open' Android platform. Take that Stallman.<p>Its really disappointing to see how the software ecosystem has degenerated into these shady mercenaries with zero compass. The only thing that can temper this crazy greed fueled appetite for surveillance is regulations and prosecutions because what some of these articles describe is venal and corrupt to restore some sense of propriety and civilization values.<p>[1] <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/25/android-users-security-and-privacy-at-risk-from-shadowy-ecosystem-of-pre-installed-software-study-warns/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/25/android-users-security-and...</a>
I have come across fair share of blog posts on how horrendous this is getting in the current age of <i>big data</i> and <i>app economy</i>. This behaviour is warranted by how VCs, PEs, and potential acquirers value a company... by number of users an app tracks. Boils down to battle for eye-balls all the way down because ads are guaranteed revenue stream that scales in-propotion to number-of-users * user-engagement, I guess.<p>I think everyone agrees there's a market for a simple-to-use solution.<p>Folks at <a href="https://GuardianApp.com" rel="nofollow">https://GuardianApp.com</a> are doing just that for iOS. For Android, apps like NoRootFirewall, NetGuard, Glasswire exist and other solutions like XPrivacyLua require root, or flashing LineageOS/ChromeheadOS and/or de-googling the phone voids the warranty. Most of the 2 Billion Android user-base wouldn't go anywhere near these.<p>A stop-gap then might be to provide a zero-touch / firction-free Firewall/VPN app that's "free" and one that's anti-surveillance <i>and</i> anti-censorship, but is also transparent, in that it enables end-user to inspect the traffic flowing in and out of their devices.<p>The challenge is no one wants to pay the internet provider <i>and</i> a random VPN app for a censorship-free / surveillance-free internet but they might gladly pay the internet provider extra premium if they offered the same experience. I know my dad wants this, but he wouldn't pay two entities for the same service.<p>May be what <a href="https://puri.sm" rel="nofollow">https://puri.sm</a> is doing is the eventual end-game, but I think they're trying too hard. May be its time for an Android phone-manufacturer to launch a privacy focused phone. OnePlus reached its heights by placing itself as a Nexus/Pixel killer offering vanilla Android experience... so may be there's a market for privacy focused phone too, or may be <a href="https://e.foundation" rel="nofollow">https://e.foundation</a> might pull this miracle off and become mainstream enough to matter.<p>Eventually, though, governments have to step in and bring forth regulations that prevents relentless surveillance of the end-user, similar to how wire-tapping phone-calls is illegal.
The only way to crack down on this is to prevent apps sending any data at all and to minimise the use of proprietary software. As soon as your personal data leaves your phone and hits someone else's server they will sell it.<p>Its a bit of a hard problem which we tried to solve using a permissions system but its a hassle because its hard to tell if a permission is being used legitimately and the average user just hits accept on anything because they don't know how to verify if something seems right.<p>The GDPR was a step in the right direction where it allows you to say no to tracking and still use the service as normal.
This is so misleading. Almost all SDKs do this and this also happens on iOS too. If you have an SDK on iOS, there is nothing the OS can do to stop tracking of the users.<p>Also, the author literally says that Google tracks even more apps vs. FB but still chooses to use FB in their headline. Sigh.
Question: it's been almost a year now since GDPR has come into effect. Has there been evidence that people from the EU have been able to completely withdraw themselves from the user-tracking universe?
Is there any solution to ban facebook from your android phone like you can from a browser like firefox through a facebook container? I would imagine something like a firewall that keeps your phone from being able to connect to URLs or IPs owned by Facebook.