This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Does anyone know if there's additional sandboxing of local ports happening for apps running in Private Space?
E: Checked myself. Can access servers in Private Space from non-Private Space browsers and vice versa. So Facebook installed in Private Space is no bueno. Even if the time to transfer data is limited since Private Space is running for short periods of time, it's likely enough to pass a token while browsing some sites.
Meta should be broken up and its leadership barred from working in tech (or politics)
and its leadership barred ~~from working in tech (or politics)~~
Well, it's always been a cat and mouse game.
Just earlier today, I got a pop-up on YouTube about how they would block me after 3 videos because I use an ad blocker. Jump to now and everything is fine again. Thank you, uBlock Origin!
I've been on Librewolf for a couple of years and yt is nagging me about ad blockers not being allowed, suddenly. Are they going to black screen me again?
they still try that?
i can't remember the last time i have seen one of those warnings.
I'm guessing you use Firefox? It's much better at evading that tracking.
Nah I saw it on FF as well. Forcing an update on the "Quick Fixes" blocklist on uBlock Origin got rid of it.
Google doesn't do global roll outs with their updates. The anti adblock stuff especially. They target only some % of randomly selected users to spread confusion online, and I would guess their hope is to frustrate people into disabling ad blockers on Youtube after reading a bunch of misinformation and placebo bad advice when looking for tech support.
The business cycle dictates that companies try to re-implement bad ideas every six months to two years.
If the idea was good, they'd have implemented it and made their money. Only bad ideas are still ripe for exploitation and new economic growth, because you haven't had someone as smart as me to make them work right.
Fair warning: Last week one of my accounts was seemingly shadowbanned, and now gets "This content isn't available" on every video.
Logging out plays videos, making a new brand account worked, etc. and no notification from youtube.
You were shadowbanned for watching youtube in a web browser with adblock? Sounds excessive.
Useless article, but at least they link the source: https://localmess.github.io/
We disclose a novel tracking method by Meta and Yandex potentially affecting billions of Android users. We found that native Android apps—including Facebook, Instagram, and several Yandex apps including Maps and Browser—silently listen on fixed local ports for tracking purposes.
These native Android apps receive browsers' metadata, cookies and commands from the Meta Pixel and Yandex Metrica scripts embedded on thousands of web sites. These JavaScripts load on users' mobile browsers and silently connect with native apps running on the same device through localhost sockets. As native apps access programatically device identifiers like the Android Advertising ID (AAID) or handle user identities as in the case of Meta apps, this method effectively allows these organizations to link mobile browsing sessions and web cookies to user identities, hence de-anonymizing users' visiting sites embedding their scripts.
📢 UPDATE: As of June 3rd 7:45 CEST, Meta/Facebook Pixel script is no longer sending any packets or requests to localhost. The code responsible for sending the _fbp cookie has been almost completely removed.
Thanks for the update, pitchforks down people. Let's go back to blindly trusting these anti consumer cabals.
I almost didn't copy the update because my focus was on the technical background. I did a double-check before submitting, if I caught the gist correctly, and decided that people would probably want to know that the report triggered that change.
Not surprising, it's always expected from tech corporations, where at the end of the day it's profit and favor with conservative politicians. If they're not trying to use information gathered on people to bad government looking to cut costs ("saving taxpayers' money") by removing minority beneficiaries, they love to shove content you don't even want.
Why I never use my real name online.
laughs in adguard
We found that browsers such as Chrome, Firefox and Edge are susceptible to this form of browsing history leakage in both default and private browsing modes. Brave browser was unaffected by this issue due to their blocklist and the blocking of requests to the localhost; and DuckDuckGo was only minimally affected due to missing domains in their blocklist.
Aside from having uBlock Origin and not having any Meta/Yandex apps installed, anyone aware of additional Firefox settings that could help shut this nonsense down?
I know that people here generally like to shit on Brave, but it seems that the claim "Privacy by default" has held up in this context.
Isn't that Proton's tagline?
I feel like that's all you need. You don't have their apps installed, so the problem is already solved. If you use uBlock Origin to block their trackers, the problem is solved. So you've solved it twice.
De-anonymising Yandex
Me: Ha! Good thing I am not Russian!
De-anonymising Meta
Me: Damn..and it is hard for me to let go because my social circle use Meta-owned social media and couldn't care less about privacy....I am toast...
I used to be in your situation and one day I just told everyone I was leaving and if they want to contact me they would have to use Signal. You can't change most people's minds and Meta knows it, that's how they keep their monopoly
I am assuming all of this trash is blocked by uBlock Origin?
Seems like it's transferred through a cookie and javascript, so in theory you can block it with ublock or noscript and the like, but a sure way to block is to not have meta apps installed on your phone (or not signed in).
I don't have any Meta apps installed. :)
That's the fun part. They come preinstalled!
some android phones go as far as come with an ununinstallable system app called "meta services" beyond the regular zucc apps.
For those use Universal Android Debloater Or Canta with shizuku from android to install for the current user.
No WhatsApp?
I'd nail my foot to the floor before I installed WhatsApp.
So you got all your friends, family and coworkers and acquaintances using Signal?
So you got all your friends, family and coworkers and acquaintances using Signal?
Only the ones I like.
Joking aside, yes. I've found that just letting a friend or relative ask exploratory "how bad can WhatsApp be?" questions for about five minutes gets them to start the switch to Signal.
I can't take any credit, Meta decided to lean in hard on spying on people.
Most of the people I talk to regularly, yes. I also use Discord for less private stuff, less personal contacts, and for video chat when I play D&D. I text with my wife and one friend who I mostly discuss D&D with. Both of them have Signal if I needed to reach out to them privately or while abroad. For the record, I would like to get off Discord but audio and video quality are really important to me and I haven't found a good replacement yet.
I also have a seperate (company paid) phone for all work communications. There's ups and downs to that but it definitely contributes to my ability to be restrictive in what apps I put on my phone.
Got me on that one! I forgot about WhatsApp.
For what it's worth I didn't have it logged in until last week when I needed to get in touch with someone.
I will need to log out.
Check that "Filter lists > Privacy > Block outsider intrusion into LAN" is enabled and you should be fine
EasyPrivacy should block Meta and Yandex pixels by default. If you have the knowledge you can put uBO in "hard mode" which will block all 3p connections. It requires you to know which CDNs to allow or websites will be broken.
I am aware of hardmode, I used to use NoScript.
It's a bit too much work these days.
Block all tracking scripts and use Firefox Nightly with ublock when possible.
Not sure about the "nightly" part (as opposed to beta or stable), but yes.
I prefer nightly because about:config is accessible unlike on the mainline version. Does Beta also allow that?
Beta does and unlike nightly doesn't update every night.
There's also Fennec on fdroid if you need something stable with about:config support.
