Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
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If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
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Meta could track your browser sessions even in incognito and link them with your real identity (www.zeropartydata.es)

submitted 1 day ago by george@feddit.org to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

45 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Meta devised an ingenious system (“localhost tracking”) that bypassed Android’s sandbox protections to identify you while browsing on your mobile phone — even if you used a VPN, the browser’s incognito mode, and refused or deleted cookies in every session.

This is the process through which Meta (Facebook/Instagram) managed to link what you do in your browser (for example, visiting a news site or an online store) with your real identity (your Facebook or Instagram account), even if you never logged into your account through the browser or anything like that.

Meta accomplishes this through two invisible channels that exchange information:

(i) The Facebook or Instagram app running in the background on your phone, even when you’re not using it.

(ii) Meta’s tracking scripts (the now-pulled illegal brainchild uncovered last week), which operate inside your mobile web browser.

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[–] lobut@lemmy.ca 36 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

I can't remember which one of my phones, probably a Samsung that had Facebook installed and couldn't get rid of it. People were like, you can just not open it or something. There's a good reason I don't want it on my device.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 8 points 16 hours ago

yup. some samsungs also have a hidden "meta services" app thats not uninstallable too.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 16 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I had one of theirs like that. You could disable it instead of uninstall, and this wouldn't happen, but you couldn't uninstall it.

[–] Peffse@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

The real fun started with Android 12. Google introduced the ability for some preloaded apps to avoid being disabled and prevent ADB shell disable.