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Instagram and Facebook Are Stalking You on Websites Accessed Through Their Apps. What Can You Do About It?
Social media platforms have had some bad press in recent times, largely prompted by the vast extent of their data collection. Now Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has upped the ante.
Not content with following every move you make on its apps, Meta has reportedly devised a way to also know everything you do in external websites accessed through its apps. Why is it going to such lengths? And is there a way to avoid this surveillance? ‘Injecting’ code to follow you Meta has a custom in-app browser that operates on Facebook, Instagram, and any website you might click through to from both these apps.
Now ex-Google engineer and privacy researcher Felix Krause has discovered this proprietary browser has additional program code inserted into it. Krause developed a tool that found Instagram and Facebook added up to 18 lines of code to websites visited through Meta’s in-app browsers.
This “code injection” enables user tracking and overrides tracking restrictions that browsers such as Chrome and Safari have in place. It allows Meta to collect sensitive user information, including “every button and link tapped, text selections, screenshots, as well as any form inputs, like passwords, addresses and credit card numbers”.
Krause published his findings online on August 10, including samples of the actual code.
In response, Meta has said it isn’t doing anything users didn’t consent to. A Meta spokesperson said: We intentionally developed this code to honour people’s [Ask to track] choices on our platforms […] The code allows us to aggregate user data before using it for targeted advertising or measurement purposes.
The “code” mentioned in the case is pcm.js – a script that acts to aggregate a user’s browsing activities. Meta says the script is inserted based on whether users have given consent – and information gained is used only for advertising purposes.
So is it acting ethically? Well, the company has done due diligence by informing users of its intention to collect an expanded range of data. However, it stopped short of making clear what the full implications of doing so would be.
People might give their consent to tracking in a more general sense, but “informed” consent implies full knowledge of the possible consequences. And, in this case, users were not explicitly made aware their activities on other sites could be followed through a code injection.
Why is Meta doing this? Data are the central commodity of Meta’s business model. There is astronomical value in the amount of data Meta can collect by injecting a tracking code into third-party websites opened through the Instagram and Facebook apps.
At the same time, Meta’s business model is being threatened – and events from the recent past can help shed light on why it’s doing this in the first place.
It boils down to the fact that Apple (which owns the Safari browser), Google (which owns Chrome) and the Firefox browser are all actively placing restrictions on Meta’s ability to collect data.
Last year, Apple’s iOS 14.5 update came alongside a requirement that all apps hosted on the Apple app store must get users’ explicit permission to track and collect their data across apps owned by other companies.
Meta has publicly said this single iPhone alert is costing its Facebook business $10 billion (roughly Rs. 79,400 crore) each year.
Apple’s Safari browser also applies a default setting to block all third-party “cookies”. These are little chunks of tracking code that websites deposit on your computer and which tell the website’s owner about your visit to the site.
Google will also soon be phasing out third-party cookies. Firefox recently announced “total cookie protection” to prevent so-called cross-page tracking.
In other words, Meta is being flanked by browsers introducing restrictions on extensive user data tracking. Its response was to create its own browser that circumvents these restrictions.
How can I protect myself? On the bright side, users concerned about privacy do have some options.
The easiest way to stop Meta tracking your external activities through its in-app browser is to simply not use it; make sure you’re opening web pages in a trusted browser of choice such as Safari, Chrome or Firefox (via the screen shown below).
If you can’t find this screen option, you can manually copy and paste the web address into a trusted browser.
Another option is to access the social media platforms via a browser. So instead of using the Instagram or Facebook app, visit the sites by entering their URL into your trusted browser’s search bar. This should also solve the tracking problem.
I’m not suggesting you ditch Facebook or Instagram altogether. But we should all be aware of how our online movements and usage patterns may be carefully recorded and used in ways we’re not told about. Remember: on the Internet, if the service is free, you’re probably the product.
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YouTube will roll out a slew of artificial-intelligence-powered features for creators, the latest effort from parent company Alphabet to incorporate generative AI — technology that can create and synthesize text, images, music and other media given simple prompts — into its most important products and services.
Among the new products YouTube announced Thursday is a tool called Dream Screen that uses generative AI to add video or image backgrounds to short-form videos, which the company calls Shorts. It also announced new AI-enabled production tools to help with editing both short- and long-form videos on its platform.
“We’re unveiling a suite of products and features that will enable people to push the bounds of creative expression,” Toni Reid, YouTube’s vice president for community products, said in a blog post timed to the announcement Thursday. The Google-owned video platform first announced that it was developing the tools in March.
Google has been under pressure to show results and practical applications for its generative AI products. Some critics have been wary the company, which has long been seen as a leader in artificial intelligence, was falling behind upstarts like OpenAI or rival Microsoft, and that the products Google was rolling out weren’t yet ready for public consumption. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and a new Bing chatbot from Microsoft — which has invested $13 billion (nearly Rs. 1,08,100 crore) in OpenAI since 2019 — have been wildly popular and gained mainstream favour.
Over the past few months, Google launched its own ChatGPT competitor, Bard, and released a steady flow of updates to the product. It’s also incorporated experimental generative AI features into its most important services, including its flagship search engine, in what the company calls its experimental “search generative experience.” The product generates detailed summaries based on information it’s ingested from the internet and other digital sources in response to search queries.
The announcement of the new features also comes as YouTube is locked in fierce competition with ByteDance‘s TikTok and Meta Platforms‘s Instagram Reels to gain more share of the vertical, short-form video market. YouTube said it now sees more than 70 billion daily views on Shorts, and the new generative AI tools appear to be aimed at attracting even more users and creators and gaining a competitive edge over its rivals.
The company also announced YouTube Create, a mobile app aimed at helping the platform’s creators make video production work easier. The app includes AI-enabled features like editing and trimming, automatic captioning, voiceover capabilities and access to a library of filters and royalty-free music. The app is currently in beta on Android in “select markets,” the company said, and will be free of charge.
Beyond creation, YouTube said it would also provide creators with more tools to get AI-powered insights, help with automatic dubbing of videos and assist with finding music and soundtracks for videos.
© 2023 Bloomberg LP
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WhatsApp has begun rolling out support for a new feature that will allow you to log in to your account using the biometric authentication mechanism on your smartphone. The messaging service will soon allow you to create a passkey — a kind of login credential that eliminates the need to use or remember a password — on your device and use it to securely log in to apps and services using the facial recognition or fingerprint scanner on your device.
Feature tracker WABetaInfo spotted the new passkey feature on WhatsApp beta for Android 2.23.20.4 on Tuesday, that is rolling out to beta users. However, not all users who have updated to the latest beta release will have access to the feature, which is reportedly rolling out to a “limited number of beta testers”. Gadgets 360 was unable to access the feature on two different Android smartphones that are both enrolled in the beta program.
The new Passkeys feature on WhatsApp
Photo Credit: WABetaInfo
The new passkey feature is described as a “simple way to sign in safely” to WhatsApp in a screenshot shared by the feature tracker. This suggests that it could be used to help sign in to other devices via secure authentication on your primary device.
Authenticating using passkeys isn’t a novel concept and the technology is slowly gaining traction online— Google already allows you to log in to a new device by using fingerprint-based biometric authentication for passkeys in place of a password. These passkeys are securely stored on your device and used when biometric authentication is provided.
The screenshot posted by WABetaInfo also states that WhatsApp will store the passkey in the device’s password manager — for most users, that would be the device’s default password store that is handled by Google with autofill support. The feature is also expected to make its way to iOS, where it is likely to be stored in the iOS Keychain.
It is currently unclear whether WhatsApp will also support storing passkeys in third-party apps like Bitwarden, 1Password, or Dashlane. We can expect to learn more about how the feature works when it is rolled out to more users in the beta program and the feature is expected to arrive on all smartphones on the stable channel in the future.
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Britain urged Meta not to roll out end-to-end encryption on Instagram and Facebook Messenger without safety measures to protect children from sexual abuse after the Online Safety Bill was passed by parliament.
Meta, which already encrypts messages on WhatsApp, plans to implement end-to-end encryption across Messenger and Instagram direct messages, saying the technology re-enforced safety and security.
Britain’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman said she supported strong encryption for online users but it could not come at the expense of children’s safety.
“Meta has failed to provide assurances that they will keep their platforms safe from sickening abusers,” she said. “They must develop appropriate safeguards to sit alongside their plans for end-to-end encryption.”
A Meta spokesperson said: “The overwhelming majority of Brits already rely on apps that use encryption to keep them safe from hackers, fraudsters and criminals.
“We don’t think people want us reading their private messages so have spent the last five years developing robust safety measures to prevent, detect and combat abuse while maintaining online security.”
It said it would update on Wednesday on the measures it was taking, such as restricting people over 19 from messaging teens who do not follow them and using technology to identify and take action against malicious behaviour.
“As we roll out end-to-end encryption, we expect to continue providing more reports to law enforcement than our peers due to our industry leading work on keeping people safe,” the spokesperson said.
Social media platforms will face tougher requirements to protect children from accessing harmful content when the Online Safety Bill passed by Parliament on Tuesday becomes law.
End-to-end encryption is a bone of contention between companies and the government in the new law.
Messaging platforms led by WhatsApp oppose a provision that they say could force them to break end-to-end encryption.
The government, however, has said the bill does not ban the technology, but instead, it requires companies to take action to stop child abuse and as a last resort develop technology to scan encrypted messages.
Tech companies have said scanning messages and end-to-end encryption are fundamentally incompatible.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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