Get popcorn for iOS 13 privacy with frightening Facebook data captures – TechCrunch

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Changes to smartphone operating systems, which highlight the core business of third-party applications, help to further highlight the surveillance infrastructure deployed by Adtech giants to track and profile human eyeballs for profit.

Namely: iOS 13, which will be released generally later this week, has already been seen surprising the Facebook application that tries to use Bluetooth to track nearby users.

Why could Facebook want to do that? Matching Bluetooth identifiers (and wif-fi) that share a physical location could allow it to supplement the social graph gleaned by the activity of extracting data between users on its platform.

This tracking of location provides a physical confirmation that individuals were (at least) nearby.

Combined with personal data that Facebook also holds about people and contextual data about the nature of the location itself – a bar, for example, or a home – the company has a clear way to make inferences about the nature of the relationship C & # 39; is the short-range wireless technology reused to determine if they are in close contact.

For a company that earns money by advertising targeted ads to humans, there are obvious business reasons for Facebook to seek to intimately understand the networks of friends of its contacts.

Facebook uses Bluetooth for benign purposes, such as pairing devices so that its advertising activity can "couple" people, this is the devious mode of operation that iOS 13 has caught in the act.

Advertisements are Facebook's business, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg celebrated in the Senate last year. But it should be noted that the social networking giant has recently sought to enter the dating space – offering it a new, product-based incentive to look for where and with whom humans spend their time.

Algorithmic pairing based on cold signals as shared interests (in Facebook's base currency, that could mean things like loving the same pages and events) is of course not new.

However, mix the bloody signals gathered by observing who is involved with whom, where and when – by reassigning Bluetooth to gather interpersonal interactions via the tracking of people's physical movements – and Facebook can push even further its monitoring of human behavior.

If users of the Facebook application opt for tracking the location on their devices, the least refractory solution to tracking the movements of people is the path followed. This means that users enable location services – a location tracking feature on smartphones that covers wireless Wi-Fi access points and GPS, Bluetooth and consumer mobile phone towers.

Of course, while Facebook Dating requires that location services be enabled. The company has confirmed that the Facebook app invites frequent users to activate location services if they have not already done so. Facebook also told us that it did not use Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to determine a person's exact location if location services were turned off.

He also insisted that users can disable location services at any time. Not if they want to use, uh, Facebook Dating …

As usual, the company mixes separate purposes for data processing, thus preventing individuals from making an important choice in terms of privacy protection. As a result, Facebook dating users have the choice to choose between being able to use the service; or be able to completely deny Facebook's ability to track their physical movements. Love it or give it as a whole.

The new iOS 13 privacy pop-up windows calling background application activity is a clear answer to such dishonest methods from an Apple industry. CEO Tim Cook has dubbed the data-industrial complex – putting a degree of control in the hands of the user, who has a third choice of manually prohibiting Bluetooth proximity tracking (in the same way). 39, example above).

Android 10 has also recently extended the location tracking controls offered to users – with the ability to share only location data with apps while you use them. Although Google's operating system is way behind what Apple currently offers with these granular pop-ups.

Facebook reacted to the delicate changes in the incoming confidentiality at the operating system level of smartphones by publishing an update on location services last week, in order to forestall the flood of warnings related to data entry by iOS users of the Facebook application. likely to experience the update to iOS 13.

Here he tries to proactively highlight application application tracking tactics through push notifications of "reminders" – in one fun brand change.

But in a really shameful contradiction, Facebook also claims that: "You control who sees your position on Facebook" (because it indicates that users can use the Location Services setting on a phone or tablet to decline tracking). – before admitting that disabling localization services does not mean that Facebook will not follow your position.

The fact that you very clearly signal to Facebook that you do not want your position to be collected by Facebook does not mean that Facebook will respect that. Surely not!

"We can always understand your position by using things like records, events, and information about your Internet connection," he writes. (For a better understanding of Facebook's use of the word "understand" in this sentence, we suggest that you try to replace the word "steal".)

In an ultimate shameless kick – in which Facebook almost seems to want to claim credit for smartphone operating systems creating more privacy features in response to its data entry – the company is looking to finish on a prospective note , according to his preferred crisis strategy, writes: "We will continue to help you control when and how you share your position."

Describe Facebook's misleading (for example, "easier") claims that blanking out the scale of its creepy data entry is nothing new. But how long can he still hope to rely on such sheets to cover his faults of protection of privacy while the wind of change is heard, remains to be seen …

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