The British company Privacy International revealed on Sunday at 35 Chaos Communication Congress how app developers deliver data to Facebook, even if users are not Facebook users.
The company conducted a research on the subject, testing 34 applications Android που έχουν μεταξύ 10 και 500 millions users, and says it is "particularly concerned" about how user data is being "exploited" in the back-end systems of Facebook and Google.
Privacy International found that 23 of the apps tested sent data to Facebook (data that tells the social network that a user opened or closed a particular app along with information about device, ρυθμίσεις languageς και ζώνης ώρας). Οι εφαρμογές έστελναν επίσης το αναγνωριστικό διαφήμισης της Google του χρήστη, το οποίο επιτρέπει στις εταιρείες monitorings to easily match user profiles.
Πραγματοποιώντας μάλιστα μια ειδική επεξεργασία στην ταξιδιωτική εφαρμογή Kayak, οι ερευνητές ανακάλυψαν ότι παρέδιδε δεδομένα στο Facebook με κάθε αναζήτηση μέσα στην εφαρμογή: χρόνος search, city of departure and arrival, airport and date, number and class of tickets.
Privacy International pointed out that this behavior was repeated regardless of whether the user had disconnected from Facebook or had no social networking account.
"Facebook offers analytics and advertising services to application developers, which help them get centralized information on how people handle their applications, which is a common practice for many companies," Facebook said in a privacy statement. International.
Facebook also highlighted the Clear History feature, first announced in May during the scandal Cambridge Analytica, as a means of handling complaints from Privacy International.
Privacy International also looked at how Facebook's policies compare to the GDPR requirements of Europe and the plan to minimize data.
But with apps transferring data to Facebook before the user can use the app, Privacy International said there are many questions about whether there is any legal basis in transport data.
"The fact that the default application of the SDK automatically transmits data when an app is opened, and that a feature to delay this transmission was released in July 2018 (meaning Clear History), raises questions about Facebook's responsibility to developers as well as the company's compliance with data protection," said Privacy International.
It is difficult to protect yourself from the kind of data exchange we have described in this survey.
Let's recall that last month, Facebook was once again exposed to users' data when it revealed an error in one of its APIs, exposed private photos of about 6,8 million users.
In October, we passed social network announced that strangers had combined three errors to access token IDs of 30 million accounts.
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