On Android it's possible for example to run Facebook as a web app, because Chrome on Android can deliver notifications, keeping that connection persistent, so even after the page has been closed.
And this is pretty cool because the browser is a much better sandbox than the OS. Now I use an iPhone and I'm very uncomfortable giving access to my photos to Facebook just for uploading a file.
Every time browsers get new features people (ESPECIALLY ad networks) abuse it for tracking and other nefarious purposes.
Battery level, light level, probably even gyroscope stuff. Hell they fingerprint canvas which isn’t even an iOS thing.
I don’t want these issues. I LIKE these restrictions so random sites I visit (and even worse random code injected in them) can’t watch me as easy.
Apps have issues but I control what apps I download and can delete them. At least I have a _chance_ there.
That's not an argument. Desktop browsers have features and add-ons for the privacy conscious right now. You can block trackers, third party cookies, JavaScript execution and anything you need. Personally I feel much, much safer loading a website than when executing a binary on my computer or phone.
You can block any elements on any website from loading, but you can't inspect application binaries and block specific elements from it — only requests to certain IPs or domains, if you had root access that is.
Can you block Facebook's in-app advertising on your iPhone? You can't and even more so, the app insists on opening all URLs in its own dumbed down view instead of Safari, which means they track those visits and their duration as well, probably without content blocking active, because AFAIK it doesn't work in web views.
Well I can block Facebook's ads and tracking in my Firefox for Android, since it supports extensions and it probably works using iOS Safari's content blockers as well.
(I avoid the vast majority of ad laden apps anyway, partlybfor tracking reasons).
The website operator/publisher is the one choosing to track you (or not). Not some magic third party.
If you don't trust example.com from tracking you, you certainly cannot trust example.App from tracking you.
For web, the technology is at least transparant and you can detect being tracked. With native apps, there is nothing you can do, other than reverse engineering the binaries, monitoring internet-traffic and hoping that example.App was built with privacy in mind.
If I download the example.com app then any tracking is limited to what they included either themselves or through an SDK. I know that $random_advertiser doesn’t get to execute their own code.
You either trust them, or you don't. If you don't trust the ad-networks they embed in their site then you don't trust them.
> If I download the example.com app then any tracking is limited to what they included either themselves or through an SDK.
You either trust them, or you don't. If you decide you trust the ad-networks they embed in their site then you can trust them.
Both are no different. Other than that you can evaluate the first quite easily but not the latter.
My point is that it is silly to trust someone from including advertising and tracking on one platform (binary-app) but not when they do the exact same on another (html-app).