Exposed: Facebook's Corrupt Spyware is Tracking you OFF the platform
From internal leaks within the company as well as external analysis, the tip of the iceberg behind Facebook's spyware empire is exposed. Take a look to better protect yourself when you're not even on the platform: https://simplifiedprivacy.com/facebooks-corrupt-off-platform-surveillance/
Everyone should use uBlock + Facebook Container. It's still far from perfect, but every step counts.
I wish Facebook Container worked on mobile, whenever I would click a link that went to Instagram or FB it would endlessly refresh and never resolve so I had to get rid of it. They need to port containers over officially
Firefox is finally working on all extensions being available on mobile, so soon.
Also PrivacyBadger
One thing that really bothers me is Instagram “hearing” conversations. I swear the app is listening in, even with the microphone being disabled for the app. My wife & I would talk about a certain product or restaurant and sure enough, we see ads for it on Instagram the next time we’re on it. Very disturbing.
Could it be confirmation bias? Regardless, physical kill switches for microphone, camera and gyros/accelerometers is a necessity.
I have experienced it, and in my experience it was in no way possible for it to be confirmation bias. My wife and I sometimes do something weird where we just talk for hours. Crazy I know, but we bounce ideas off each other to an extent that we get into conversations about stuff we have never talked about nor ever searched for. Not even anything remotely close to related to things we search for.
We used to have and use a lot of Google home minis. Within hours we would see ads for the exact thing we were talking about. We would see ads for thing related to conversations we had within hours. We started getting hyper vigilant about it. We started randomly talking clearly and loudly about nonsense subjects and products that we have no sense to talk about and waiting to see how long it would take to see a suggested ad pushed to us by Google. It usually took less than 24 hours no matter what it was. This went on for months.
It became a running joke to us and I would walk into the room and say something like "I would love to buy a farberware brand vegetable peeler. There is nothing more that I would like than to purchase farberware brand appliances and homewares". My wife would laugh, and usually before the end of the night I would have large targeted ads on my phone for farberware appliances.
Honestly since we stopped using the Google home minis (since they barely work with anything due to googles bullshit software support) it happens far far less.
I have noticed the same thing as well. I don't understand how they can do this without microphone access...
One thing that they are confirmed to do is when someone you interact with a lot searches for something, that person may be interpreted as a family member and results from their searches may show up in your ads. Devious af.
If you are on Android, I'd try using DuckDuckGo's app tracker blocking feature. Basically, it routes it through a VPN and blocks trackers.
The therapist / client thing is so true. Within the last year I had an old therapist from like seven years ago show up in “people you may know” suggestions and one of the most annoying things is they don’t tell you why they think you know each other. Proximity? Is that person uploading contacts? Who knows.
Did you ever use their WiFi? Joining on historical IP addresses would be easy.
Oof. I knew facebook was bad but had I known how bad… maybe looking into email ads for interacting with customers.
Should I be surprised?
Duh. Like this isn't news. In fact, their tips for avoiding Facebook tracking you are terrible. VPN + VM? Still going to track your data habits through finger printing which is not specific to hardware or browsers but browsing habits. Of course, as well, you can't control your friends or family's habits which are going to upload pictures and other data about you. Facial recognition is going to tie your data to anything you put your picture on. None of these things actually help. They just take the algorithm an extra millisecond to compute the data.
Even if you and your family got off of Facebook right now, Facebook would still understand your browsing habits and realistically they don't even need to be accurate, just enough data to massively sell that data to the NSA or advertising agencies or whoever else. So, I'm not saying get a Facebook account but I will say, don't make your life harder for little to no gain.
Leaving Facebook has likely never made anyone’s life harder.
It can and has. There's no way I could keep in touch with old army mates. They won't all move to other platforms. I don't even know of an alternative for group chats and finding people.
Unfortunately I have to go along with it. I keep it locked down as much as possible, use it only on Linux desktop etc. But there you go.
Communication with loved ones can be harder without Facebook.
Using weird anonymization techniques will also make you more unique. Disabling JS, running in a VM and having uncommon settings in general will make you very easy to follow around.
I guess I'll just wait for the Carrington Event.
You can not use Facebook with JS disabled. uBlock Origin is an option to reduce facebook off the platform. Running a VM is an effective strategy for isolation of certain sites. No solution is perfect, nor is it for everyone.
Honestly, account or not, they are still able to track you in full. It doesn't truly matter if you have an account. They track everyone with or without an account. So all I am saying is don't make your life harder by deleting an account and thinking "Haha, I got one over on Facebook, they can't track me now!" They can, and are, and have a full profile on you. GDPR fines are just the cost of business. They can afford it and make more off of the sale of data than they get fined. It's a net positive.
At least, it's illegal in Europe. People have a right on their image.
They have a point, if your run noscript on firefox or trackercontrol on android, almost every website has a facebook script trying to glean data. Dumping facebook is only one step in removing facebook from your life
No name calling at Beehaw. Please, be nice here. Enjoy your seven day vacation from Beehaw.
How can Facebook track your browsing habits if they can't access third party cookies?
You know how most websites have a Facebook like button?
If third parties agree they can send Facebook plenty of information when you visit to figure out who you are.
You are correct that facial recognition and any data put into facebook would still be tracked regardless of the steps you took. You're also correct that your friends and still leak info about you. However, I strongly disagree with your criticism regarding VPNs and VMs. A VPN is something you should be doing anyway, this is not really news to anyone here. And regarding VMs, the article does not say it's for everyone, only those with a high threat model that want to use facebook anyway. It is not true that if you browse in a KVM machine with a given fingerprint, that it would lead back to browsing outside it. You are correct that a VM is a lot of effort for most people, and in fact, the majority will not choose this route. But this is educational material for those who ARE interested, this is what some choices are.