Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta's Apps (and Yandex) (msn.com)
- Reference: 0177950065
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/07/035249/washington-posts-privacy-tip-stop-using-chrome-delete-metas-apps-and-yandex
- Source link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/meta-found-a-new-way-to-violate-your-privacy-here-s-what-you-can-do/ar-AA1GecPs
"But their tactics underscored some privacy vulnerabilities in web browsers or apps. These steps can reduce your risks."
> Stop using the Chrome browser. Mozilla's [3]Firefox , the [4]Brave browser and [5]DuckDuckGo 's browser block many common methods of tracking you from site to site. Chrome, the most popular web browser, does not... For iPhone and Mac folks, Safari also has strong privacy protections. [6]It's not perfect , though. No browser protections are foolproof. The researchers said Firefox on Android devices was partly susceptible to the data harvesting tactics they identified, in addition to Chrome. (DuckDuckGo and Brave largely did block the tactics, the researchers said....)
>
> Delete Meta and Yandex apps on your phone, if you have them. The tactics described by the European researchers showed that Meta and Yandex are unworthy of your trust. (Yandex is not popular in the United States.) It might be wise to delete their apps, which give the companies more latitude to collect information that websites generally cannot easily obtain, including your approximate location, your phone's battery level and what other devices, like an Xbox, are connected to your home WiFi.
>
> Know, too, that even if you don't have Meta apps on your phone, and even if you don't use Facebook or Instagram at all, Meta might still harvest information on your activity across the web.
[1] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/06/03/205251/meta-and-yandex-are-de-anonymizing-android-users-web-browsing-identifiers
[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/meta-found-a-new-way-to-violate-your-privacy-here-s-what-you-can-do/ar-AA1GecPs
[3] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/
[4] https://brave.com/
[5] https://duckduckgo.com/app
[6] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/07/30/safari-best-browser-privacy/
Re: (Score:3)
> It works (for the most part) by establishing one-to-one connections between clients (your device) and servers (what you're looking at) where by construction the client and the server both know eachother's IP addresses.
Precisely zero people are talking about, nor give a shit about IP address tracking. IP address tracking is useless to the people who use your information to profit.
> Privacy and anonymity cannot exist in such a context.
Anonymity is preserved in the context. An IP address does not identify a person, it identifies a network endpoint. Knowing my IP address does not identify me, only my ISP can do that.
Privacy is not an arbitrary concept, it's a sliding scale. The fact you can be tracked by IP doesn't mean you should just give up. Case in point, I'm not posting thi
Re: (Score:2)
It doesn't matter, an IP address doesn't identify you. And yeah I don't live in America, my ISP does not sell this information because they would get get ass-fucked by the regulator if they did.
Re: (Score:2)
It can't be used in court to identify you, but that doesn't mean it isn't incorporated into everyone's surveillance
Re: (Score:2)
An IP address does not identify a person, it identifies a network endpoint.
Very true. And, if you live in an apartment building, as more and more people are every year, the odds are that your Internet connection is provided by the management. That means that your building has exactly one public IP and all of the tenants are on a LAN with only local, non-routable IPs so that getting your public IP tells people where you live, but not who you are, no matter what the extreme privacy phreaques try to tell
Re: (Score:2)
> "Anonymity is preserved in the context. An IP address does not identify a person, it identifies a network endpoint."
Yep
> "Knowing my IP address does not identify me, only my ISP can do that."
Nope, your ISP can't do that either. At home, you should have NAT and very likely multiple endpoint devices and possibly multiple people using them. And your ISP doesn't know everyone who lives in your house or visits (or which neighbor is stealing your WiFi access in the case of insecure setups). So they can't
Sure, but... (Score:2)
I wouldn't exactly trust DuckDuckGo either. I still use the Fox Fire, but there are better options out there.
Re: (Score:2)
Personally, I like Startpage.com. Yes, it uses Google for the actual searching, but not only does it act as a proxy so that Google can't get your IP or know who searched for what, it doesn't keep any logs so that there's no records for the police or three-letter agencies to grab. And, they trim off all of Googles huge list of ads from the results and replace them with a much smaller set of their own. (How do you think they get their money?)
Well, duh (Score:2)
No one in their right mind would install or use any Google or Meta app. I'm glad to see common sense prevailing at WashPo for a change.
Re: (Score:3)
I knew I needed to immediately remove any Meta app when I get a new phone. I wasn't sure why, but now I have confirmation.
As for WaPo, what prevails there is the owner's direction. Certain things they aren't allowed to talk about, like if an Amazon app were to be doing something like this, or the "CBP One" app.
Re: (Score:2)
There are phones that ship with Meta garbage preinstalled? Is this some kind of shit that happens if you get the "free" phone from your carrier?
Man, I forgot what it's like to not just buy the phone that isn't carrier locked and stock from a manufacturer that hasn't pre-sold your information to someone in order to pretend like they're doing you a favor by saving you a few hundred bucks.
Re: (Score:2)
> There are phones that ship with Meta garbage preinstalled?
Yes, virtually all of them. Carrier locking has zero to do with it. That's how phones work, they come with popular stuff pre-installed unless you get an Apple "we decide what is popular" phone, a Google "only Google apps here" phone, or a Chinese "Meta? What's that? Ask on WeChat for the answer" phone. That said they aren't fully installed, it's more like a placeholder that installs on first launch.
Re: Well, duh (Score:2)
What third part shit does Apple think is popular and preinstall? Never seen anything.
Hehehehe (Score:3)
Good advice from 2010.
Re: (Score:2)
> But, I have multiple browsers -- because every browser company thinks they know what is best, not all sites render properly and Google of course changed things so that uBlockOrigin won't work, etc.
I've always said: if it doesn't run uBO, it's not a real browser.
Re: (Score:2)
> "every browser company thinks they know what is best, not all sites render properly and Google of course changed things so"
There are only three rendering of sites. The Firefox way, the Chrom* way, and the Safari way. And if you are not using Apple stuff, there are only two. It shouldn't be hard for sites to handle 'three' browsers, and yet, here we are, trying to slip back into the days of "IE Only".
My continued advice to people, lest we end up in a complete disaster of mono-browser/non-diversity is:
Can't, unfortunately (and they listen in too) (Score:2)
Must use Whatsap - not optional because "reasons". And empirical evidence suggests that (due to its obviously mandatory access to the microphone) it does listen in and processes conversations for later ad targeting. Wish Apple had an option to block microphone access except when the app is active and in foreground.
Re: (Score:2)
If your microphone is active, it should at least show an indicator light and a top-row icon, I'm pretty sure.
Meta[stasize]: The world's biggest... (Score:3)
> Know, too, that even if you don't have Meta apps on your phone, and even if you don't use Facebook or Instagram at all, Meta might still harvest information on your activity across the web
Meta[stasize]: the world's biggest privacy rapist.
Re: (Score:2)
> Sebby the Rapist
Ah yes, Slashdot's favourite [1]clueless, spineless fuck [slashdot.org] as always trying to deflect its role as a privacy rapist in its capacity as a Meta[stasize] employee.
[1] https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23704805&cid=65414309
Facebook gets caught doing this every couple years (Score:3)
They got caught activating your microphone and listening to you a while back too.
Facebook is not an advertising company they are a data aggregator that sells data. That is where most of their profit comes from. The advertising is just a cherry on top.
What I find funny is everyone knows these huge corporations are evil and plan on doing bad things to you and it's not controversial to say that.
But as soon as you talk about regulating them or taking away the almost unlimited amount of power billionaires have by limiting how much money they are allowed to have that's controversial and it ain't going to happen. Nobody is going to vote for that.
It's because Americans have no nuance. They can't think in gradations or iterations.
So if you say that Elon musk should not have enough money that he can threaten to run primary election challenges against every single member of the House of Representatives that's not controversial.
But as soon as you say you're going to actually take his money away from him so that he really can't do that anymore everyone assumes the next step is for the government to steal their car and house and toothbrush.
Because you can't have nuance. You can't say that we aren't going to let somebody have this much money because it's too much power but you can still have your freaking automobile and your dumb little mcmansion.
The assumption is if we are going to take Elon musk's money away we have to take your money away because you can't just do one thing and then stop. Either it gets done everywhere or it gets done nowhere because nuance is something that doesn't exist in the mind of a 12-year-old, and we are a nation of 12-year-olds.
Re: (Score:3)
> They got caught activating your microphone and listening to you a while back too. Facebook is not an advertising company they are a data aggregator that sells data.
Hence the reason they should be referred more accurately as "privacy rapists".
> What I find funny is everyone knows these huge corporations are evil and plan on doing bad things to you and it's not controversial to say that.
Referring to them as what they truly are ("privacy rapists") would align the optics better.
> It's because Americans have no nuance.
Because Americans are stupid. They've proven that twice now.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd feel so much better about the direction of things if we had only proven our collective stupidity twice.
You give us too much credit.
Re: (Score:2)
> I'd feel so much better about the direction of things if we had only proven our collective stupidity twice.
> You give us too much credit.
You're right, I should've said "at least twice in recent history".
Re: (Score:2)
Rules for thee and not for me i suppose.
Re: (Score:2)
Facebook refusnick here. Never installed Facebook on any computer or mobile device and never will. In my opinion, they're a giant Hoover vacuum when it comes to your privileged and personal data. I'm sorry, but the benefits of Facebook are not worth the risk of them leaking your personal data to third parties, or if they have a data breach.
Re: (Score:2)
"But as soon as you talk about regulating them or taking away the almost unlimited amount of power billionaires have by limiting how much money they are allowed to have that's controversial and it ain't going to happen. Nobody is going to vote for that."
American psyche: "Don't penalize the rich, because I could be as rich as them someday". Unfortunately, the odds of you becoming rich are exceedingly small.
In contrast, your odds of living at least a comfortable life with stable non-precarious employment, and
Dupe (Score:1)
Slashdot ran a [1]similar story [slashdot.org] just a few days ago.
Although both Meta and Yandex have stopped spying on users in this manner, that doesn't mean they won't do something different.
[1] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/06/03/205251/meta-and-yandex-are-de-anonymizing-android-users-web-browsing-identifiers
Thanks, Jeff Bezos (Score:3)
For your completely unbiased opinion. Knowing this advice is sponsored by someone with absolutely no conflict of interest makes me happy.
Not just Chrome, anything Alphabet (Score:3)
Not using anything made by Alphabet or Meta is definitely a good start.
WaPo lost all credibility (Score:2)
When it became clear that the owner of that newspaper has as much in the way of backbone as a jellyfish, and that he will bend his knee whenever the orange orangutan makes noises in his direction, the credibility of the Washington Post went down the drain. And that's where it will remain as long the ownership of that paper remains the way it is - unless its owner grows a backbone, that is.
The irony of the WaPo link going to MSN (Score:2)
This is the WaPo article:
[1]https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
OP used an MSN link which ironically is another way big tech has been siphoning off your data. Google loves to return an entire page full of MSN links because Microsoft has been aggregating and news links for fun an profit using Edge as a default browser. The story should have included eschewing the use of Edge along with Chrome.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/06/06/meta-privacy-facebook-instagram/
Android permissions suck (Score:2)
Back in the early days when you installed an Android app it would list all the permissions an app wanted. Facebook was that new shiny thing back then but I was horrified by the huge number of permissions it wanted for access. Basically it was asking for full access to everything. I aborted the install.
Fast forward to now and about the only thing Android warns you about is apps wanting to know your location. I suspect they dumbed it down as telling the truth would hurt app store sales.
Remember (Score:2)
You are all "dumb fucks" according to Zuck.
Re:Remember ["professional courtesy"?] (Score:2)
Mod parent funny?
However i think the biggest joke may be that the sharks might be going after each other. Not the only reason, but one of the requirements for becoming so stinking rich is that they ALWAYS want MORE money, even though they already have more money than makes any human sense. Up to now, they have mostly been content to squeeze blood out of the impoverished cabbages like you and me, but if they are sincerely attacking each other, then maybe they've realized there isn't any more cash = blood ava