Apple and Android Difference Security Ping!
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Posted on 03/25/2018 8:05:21 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Facebook scraped call, SMS data for years from Android phones. iPhones never allowed this.
When you think there's something lurking in the dark, you turn on the lights. And, now that Facebook's data harvesting, hoarding, and exploitation is being lit up by the internet version of the Bat Signal, more and more problems are being discovered. Most recently: That Facebook was scraping call and SMS logs of Android phone users.
And yes, this is what happens when neither your operating system nor your app care about your privacy.
From ArsTechnica:
"This past week, a New Zealand man was looking through the data Facebook had collected from him in an archive he had pulled down from the social networking site. While scanning the information Facebook had stored about his contacts, Dylan McKay discovered something distressing: Facebook also had about two years worth of phone call metadata from his Android phone, including names, phone numbers, and the length of each call made or received."
Others reported finding the same, and Ars was able to independently verify the data collection.
"If you granted permission to read contacts during Facebook's installation on Android a few versions ago—specifically before Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean)—that permission also granted Facebook access to call and message logs by default. The permission structure was changed in the Android API in version 16. But Android applications could bypass this change if they were written to earlier versions of the API, so Facebook API could continue to gain access to call and SMS data by specifying an earlier Android SDK version. Google deprecated version 4.0 of the Android API in October 2017—the point at which the latest call metadata in Facebook user's data was found. Apple iOS has never allowed silent access to call data."
People began looking into the records because of the #DeleteFacebook movement, which followed the revelation that the Facebook data of 50 million users was abused by political data firm Cambridge Analytica.
It's unclear whether Facebook's tool to delete contact information would also delete the call and SMS logs. It's also unclear why this was happening, whether Facebook was intentionally scraping the information for exploitation, or whether it was an unforeseen side-effect of the contact sharing implementation. What is clear, though, is that repeated problems like this form a pattern and a pattern of problems makes negligence indistinguishable from malice.
More recent versions of Android should prevent this kind of data collection.
The salient point is, of course, that iOS never allowed it. This type of abuse was simply never possible if you used an iPhone. Apple built it that way on purpose and it protected its users from privacy violations like this before they ever happened.
Google and Facebook's business model allow them to give you a lot of great, convenient services for free. Apple's business model allows them to give you great privacy protections by default.
If you're concerned about any of this, consider how much, if at all, and in what way you want to continue using Facebook or Android. Everything is a tradeoff. Everything has advantages and disadvantages. But for many, those cost of free-as-in-your-data is becoming too high a price to pay.
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Not being on Facebook in the first place protects you completely.
Glad I have an iPhone and have never signed up for Facebook.
Not my phone. I do not have FaceBook.
Dittos!
I am a winner two ways:
I don’t have an iPhone,
and
I don’t use Facebook.
Your online privacy is more secure if you are not on Facebook, but every time you go to a webpage and a cookie is put on your computer it is basically doing the same thing. Facebook just perfected it first.
In reality, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and others know far more about you than the government.
I have Facebook. I just didn’t put it on my phone. seemed silly.
Here a great thread from the guy who discovered it, for those that like to read their info:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/976368845635035138.html
Can confirm that Facebook didn’t harvest my calls or text messages on my Iphones, 3, 5c and 6c
I did take Messenger and Facebook off my phone though.
And my wife snickered at me for not allowing Facebook or Yahoo on my Android phone.
In reality the government cane easily find out anything Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and others know, if they don't already know it themselves.
To quote the bureaucrat Thaddeus Araman in the Asimov story The Dead Past: "You have created a new world among the three of you. I congratulate you. Happy goldfish bowl to you, to me, to everyone, and may each of you fry in hell forever."
“I did take Messenger and Facebook off my phone though.”
—
Facebook is unnecessary - it’s easier to send people an email, text or just call them. They probably don’t don’t care about seeing a pic of what someone had for lunch or a bunch of duckface pics, anyway.
That’s why if a person just must do Facebook, Google, etc. use a fake name, provide fake info and connect it to a free throwaway email account and don’t interact with anybody or click on anything.
FreeRepublic scrapes your landline’s metadata.
I grow my own food, sew my own clothes, forge my own transistors and never ever connect to the internet.
“I grow my own food, sew my own clothes, forge my own transistors and never ever connect to the internet. “
Same here. I don’t log on to FR or even turn on my computer.
I actually have been making transistors since the early 70s...
Bkmk FakeBook
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