cross-posted from: https://social.fossware.space/post/123876

In the few short hours since I started using #Threads, #DuckDuckGo has already blocked over 200 data tracking attempts. These include things like “headphone status” and “screen density.”

Trackers, trackers and ol’ Zucc’s roboface galore.

  • omgnvq@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    Not sure just mildly infuriating 😅

    Also infuriating: the number of my friends who have installed this shitty app 😑

    • Annoyed_Crabby@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      And their justification of it.

      Edit: since for whatever reason i couldn’t reply to @BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social, i’ll edit my comment here:

      I have no issue with the difference in opinion, but idk, if giving up way more privacy than it needed to run the app doesn’t seems bad to you, i have nothing much to add 😐

    • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Okay, this is an honest question.

      Why do you care? How does it matter at all to you what apps your friends use? How does it affect you?

      I can totally understand people valuing their privacy strongly and refusing to use mainstream corporate social media. I can also understand people who don’t care about that and decide that they get more out of it than they give.

      Given that people posting on a social network that you’re not on has essentially no effect on you at all beyond a vague bit of FOMO, why does it matter?

      • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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        1 year ago

        Why do I care?

        Well, I get all manner of spam texts because my mom gave some shitty app permissions to access her contacts. The spam messages are directed to me by name.

        It’s not just their personal info they’re putting at risk when they click “agree” on data sucking apps.

        • TheEmpireStrikesDak@thelemmy.club
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          1 year ago

          Yes, whatsapp has my real name and phone number on their servers without my consent because several people I know have my details saved in their phone contacts, and when someone signs up to WhatsApp, they give my personal contact information to WhatsApp because the person signing up to WhatsApp consented to give it, not me. Tbf it’s the same for all messenger apps these days. I miss MSN Messenger.

      • omgnvq@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        It’s a valid question and I understand your point, but it becomes an issue for me when I end up being caught up the a snowball effect and need to use a bad app too. Here in Europe, WhatsApp is an example of something I’d rather not use, but because it’s the platform everyone else is on, it’s very difficult to avoid. The parallel I see is if Twitter is supplanted not by Mastodon, but by Threads, then that is the place people will gravitate towards and then the privacy friendly version becomes less useful due to lack of users and content.

        Of course it is an option to just not use these apps, but the preferably outcome is that I am able to have the nice experience without sacrificing my privacy.

  • SanguinePar@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I just cannot fathom why people would see the shortest that Musk has made of Twitter and think the best solution is to go to a clone made by Zuckerberg. Have they learned nothing?

    • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Because fundamentally, people really don’t care about all that much. They want a simple social network that’s vaguely pleasant to use, has the people and content they’re looking for, and otherwise stays out of their way. They certainly don’t care about Musk’s random crusade du jour against the evil woke libs.

      Nor do they particularly care about targeted advertising so long as it remains vaguely unobtrusive and their data isn’t constantly leaked in ways that directly harm them. Zuck, for all his many flaws, is smart enough to know that the single biggest thing he can do is to largely stay out of the way.

        • ekZepp@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          99% of times “stupidity” is just a lack of information, interest and prospective who let people don’t see how someone else problem could very well become “their” problem too given enough time.

    • dhork@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Because people just submit it. He doesn’t know why. They just trust him. Dumb Fucks.

      • Ragnell@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Worse. No one trusts Zuckerberg, they just all figure nothing bad will happen. “He’s got everyone’s data anyway.” They don’t think.

  • stackPeek@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    What I hate about this is that they say things like “Try the best to protect users’ privacy” etc then do shits like this

    • Ronno@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Well, they need to know your device rotation to serve you the perfect ads! /s
      Seriously, I wouldn’t mind them knowing a thing or two about me, when I’m using their services. But tracking everything, just because they can, is just obnoxious. If you would translate this to the real world, you would definitely get arrested when you would stand on the corner of the street, noting down everything you see, every dimension/detail of every person walking by. You would be labeled “creep”. But if Facebook does it, governments go like: You can build your new data center right here, don’t mind the measly peasants that currently live in the village nearby

  • SSUPII@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    No wonder the app is not available in Europe, there is no way that list passes GDPR :P

    • Gulmar@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I was honestly wondering what this app is cause I haven’t heard of it.

  • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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    1 year ago

    Facebook I’m only comfortable using inside a browser for this reason, and not with Chrome either. Something proper like Firefox that can block third party cookies and run it in a container automatically so it can’t follow you around. I need to contain the filth.

    • 0ddysseus@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I wouldn’t even type fa in by Firefox without the Facebook containers extension. And yeah, chrome can jam it

    • Someonelol@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      What kind of addon do you use to contain the tracking cookies on Firefox? I’d really like to get it too.

      • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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        1 year ago

        It’s built into Firefox! You don’t need one.

        Click on the shield icon in the upper left (on Desktop) and from there you can get into your tracking protection settings. It also has a dashboard showing what has been blocked. Categories are social media, tracking cookies, tracking content, fingerprinting, and cryptominers. Facebook containers are also built into Firefox on desktop. That feature is called Container Tabs and is in settings also.

        On Firefox for Android, you go to the three dots thing -> Settings -> Enhanced Tracking Protection.

        Most browsers today have something like this built-in because it’s such a problem, except Chrome, because Google is an ad company first and would be shooting their own foot.

      • SkipperWannabe@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        There is also this official extension. IIRC, this also makes sure that all the meta owned sites are not able to interact with other sites, but can work fine with each other. It also makes sure that any links leading to their sites also only open in the container, maybe also sanitized to remove the tracker from original link. The last part I am not sure, as I might be confusing it with a different extension. But if you are using any of the Meta sites, I would recommend it.

    • Saneless@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      No but it needs access to your front camera so it can record your face before and after using threads. They want to see if their engagement algorithms made you mad so then they can tell it’s working

      • jdevsd@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Some, like location can be blocked and same for health & fitness. You can also tell iOS to not allow an app to track you but I don’t think that blocks everything. But say you allow access to “all photos” that means they can parse the exif data from all your photos and have map of everywhere they were taken.

      • njordomir@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Potentially, and Ive also seen it used for ads. The first time Spotify noticed me mute my system and paused the ad, I became enraged. Its’s a step too far. Luckily with external speakers I can just mute at the speaker level instead.

        • Schwim Dandy@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          If you’re using Spotify on Windows, consider installing a system ad blocker like Adguard for Windows and route Spotify traffic through it. It will strip the ads.

          If you’re using Spotify on Android, consider installing the app through X-Manager, which will give you an ad-free experience.

          • njordomir@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            This was at work a few years ago. I don’t use windows at home. But thank you for providing those recommendations. Hopefully a fellow Lemming will find them useful!

        • Midnight_Ice@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          That’s like that Black Mirror episode where the people are required to keep their eyes open and focused on the screen for everything

    • TheInsane42@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Because to find the needle in the haystack, you first need a haystack. Until you know which needle you want to use, you need loads of haystacks which could have the needle in it you need.

      Also, hoarders gotta hoard. (and bastards collect all they can get away with, and more, lots more)

      • Chariotwheel@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, they probably don’t need all of that info right now, but you never knew when something suddently becomes valuable. Also, the more data they have, the easier to identify you without any trackers like cookies.

        • Hyperreality@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Basically something like this:

          “The algorithm suggests people who have their phone in landscape more than 28% of the time are more likely to vote for party A. Convincing them not to vote for party A is hard, so we’ll convince them there’s no point voting or make it harder for them to vote, by targeting these users with ads which make them question if their vote matters.”

          • 🦘min0nim🦘@aussie.zone
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            1 year ago

            Don’t worry. Some bright marketing genius will market the ability to change voting preferences by making people only use their phone in landscape orientation.

    • Niello@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It’s probably more meaningful to ask at this point what data can he collects that he’s not collecting.

  • 0ddysseus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Jfc man, thanks for the hot tip on the ddg tracker protection! I’ve been using ddg for a while now on the phone and have out some effort into curating apps so most of what I have is private/secure/open source, but I still have a bunch of things like the Netflix app that I know are sketchy. I’ve just gone through every app I have and confirmed things like Jerboa, VLC, antenna pod, etc are all free of trackers. The real fun surorises though were my bank app and my state government services app, which are each on about 45 tracking attempts across 36 categories. The services one even uses two seperste tracker companies. That’s super fun!

    Fuck I’m glad I have this ddg add on now :D

    • PieMan@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Damn duckduckgo app protection is great! I’d never heard about it, installed and turned on now. Good call-out, thank you.

      I encourage others to look this up too!

      • Screwthehole@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I got it running yesterday after seeing this thread. No noticeable difference to me, very noticeable difference to the online leech companies. I’m a happy camper

          • Screwthehole@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            It’s working great. 36 hours in and more than 33,000 tracking attempts blocked. It’s mind boggling

            And worst offenders are places I wouldn’t have expected, like the docusign app, and being scraped by companies I’ve never heard of like comScore and bugsnag

              • Screwthehole@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Oh ya you download the browser app, then turn on app tracker blocking in settings. I couldn’t find it at first, but just googled it and the first answer worked. So all ya need is the duckduckgo app. At least, on Android