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 study on the subject, with tests on 34 applications Android που έχουν μεταξύ 10 και 500 εκατομμύρια χρήστες, και αναφέρει ότι “ανησυχεί ιδιαίτερα” για τον τρόπο με τον οποίο “αξιοποιούνται” τα δεδομένα των χρηστών στα back-end συστήματα του Facebook και της Google.
Η Privacy International διαπίστωσε ότι 23 από τις εφαρμογές που δοκιμάστηκαν έστελναν δεδομένα στο Facebook (δεδομένα που αναφέρουν στο κοινωνικό δίκτυο ότι ένας χρήστης άνοιξε ή έκλεισε μια συγκεκριμένη εφαρμογή μαζί με πληροφορίες για την συσκευή, ρυθμίσεις γλώσσας και ζώνης ώρας). Οι εφαρμογές έστελναν επίσης το αναγνωριστικό advertisingof the user's Google, which allows tracking companies to easily match user profiles.
In fact, by doing a special edit on the Kayak travel app, the researchers discovered that it was handing over data to Facebook with every search within the app: time 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 SDK application automatically transmits data when an application opens and that it released a feature to delay this transmission in July of 2018 (meaning Clear History) raises questions about Facebook's liability to developers as and the company's compliance with data protection, ”Privacy International said.
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 unknowns had combined three bugs to access million token IDs of 30 token.
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