>Is that "spyware"?
Yes, absolutely.
It uses energy and bandwidth I paid for to surreptitiously transmit my information for use which will solely benefit Facebook and the software developer.
Yes, absolutely.
It uses energy and bandwidth I paid for to surreptitiously transmit my information for use which will solely benefit Facebook and the software developer.
Software developers want to know whether their existing marketing methods are effective. The FB SDK helps with this. You always have the choice to not install the app (if you don't want to).
This also helps developers make sure their marketing is effective and reaching the right people, which seems like a win-win to me.
- Upton Sinclair (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair)
up until now I wasn't even aware of the facebook sdk or that say, spotify is sharing my data with facebook even if I don't use their login option so it's pretty hard to make a informed decision.
Is this even legal under GDPR?
I guess you could always complain about it to your country's data protection watchdog and then we'll all find out?
As you mention, this is something the software developer want, not necessarily the user.
>You always have the choice to not install the app (if you don't want to).
This argument may have some teeth if directed toward a user in our industry. Depending on the scope of the particular software in question, the majority of users is likely to be those outside the software industry; the layman. The argument falls flat when the other person doesn't have the necessary understanding to be able to perform thoughtful analysis.
>This also helps developers make sure their marketing is effective and reaching the right people, which seems like a win-win to me.
That may be one reason this practice is in-use. I don't see how it makes the difference: the software developer continues these practices with no consideration of their user, much less the user's consent or indication anything is going on at all. It's all about what the software developer wants, not the user and that's not OK.
That the user was “sold” to is not inherently positive. Not all products are good. Not all users can afford products they’re buying. Not all users necessarily understand they’re paying in ways they’re unaware of.
Straying away from social media in this example, cigarettes and alcohol feel like good candidates here.
There are much better argument for it being spyware, e.g., that it spies. It's not a very strong argument that a thing is bad simply because it helps the provider of the thing.
It isn't so nice when they don't.
I'm not sure I follow. If you're paying the same amount in either scenario, how are you adversely affected when a portion of your bill is allocated to a healthcare account?
>There are much better argument for it being spyware, e.g., that it spies. It's not a very strong argument that a thing is bad simply because it helps the provider of the thing.
I'm lost here, as well. Your argument is that I haven't made any arguments stronger than "that it spies"? I agree that stating only "that it spies" would be lacking critical thought and analysis, but my arguments have been more specific. The whole "it spies" assertion, generally speaking, is the basis for the more detailed responses I've submitted to this discussion.
[1] although people might have issues with unethical or illegal uses.
I work in Software Development. Most of the time, the user doesn't know what he or she wants. They might feel that something is just not right, but don't know why, or cannot express why, because they don't know. Or don't care: I used to send out surveys, and the response rate was usually around 300 out of 50.000 confirmed users. That's... not much. At least for me, if I need to make major decisions.
My main takeaway with metrics is that I'm fine to give metrics to the vendor, as long as it's only me and the vendor, and as long as I know what it's used for. Also, it depends a lot on what is tracked.
Starting and closing the app, ways the user took to get to a certain point - I'm fine with that. But dare you transmitting my file names over to your server. Or any data I enter. That's none of your business.
It’s extremely unethical, and should be illegal.
Might help streamlining the market, so I‘m open for that.
Before this article came out was this information available to the users to help them in making this decision.
No, it was not! Hence the problem.
If the app is paid-for, it's less forgivable to be using this kind of spyware.
Apparently you don't think actually knowing if the app includes the SDK is relevant, this is victim blaming of the highest tier.
so what?
If I were to project this pattern 10 steps further, a software developer may want to know the gender and emotional state of the user installing their software using the front camera. That would also be a spyware, but it's on the higher end of the spyware spectrum.
That’s user-hostile.
The problem with saying “just don’t install the app” is that you have to be informed first, and that even then you have no real choice. If you want to take part in digital social networks you must surrender control and privacy. If your data is a valuable commodity you should be able to decide who gets what, just like you decide with your money. But you can’t, not really.
You also have the choice to consider the practice questionable, unethical, a systemic problem once it becomes widespread; to highlight it in public posts and forums, to protest how widespread it has become, to believe that it should be illegal in the context of consumer and privacy protections, to lobby for making it illegal, etc.
It’s win-win for facebook and the app developer. It’s only lose for the actual user.
>> Yes, absolutely.
Much much worse: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19595478
There's even comments in this HN thread that point you on how to do it on Android if you're so inclined.
I'd give more credence to "the market is making an informed choice" hypothesis if consumers were, in fact, informed.
At some point users are allowed to complain about shady behaviour done by huge corporations with resources they use to try to thrust their way into everyones lives.
I sometimes will load a website that uses React when really it's just a static content site. It just gets tiring, and doesn't add to the conversation, when every discussion about an article that could be HTML devolves into that. I get that other people feel that way, and in many ways I share their values... But it becomes its own sideshow and hijacks the otherwise interesting conversations, without adding anything new.
With sincere respect, I don't understand this argument, in general, whenever it comes up. Whenever I find a discussion unhelpful or tedious, I move on or mute it. Often, I've been in an interesting online discussion, and someone pipes up with the wish for everyone to stop talking about this topic because it's not interesting, when they have the tools available to not follow the discussion.
Can you explain? Honest question.
No, they are only allowed to monetize according to laws and regulations. There is nothing magic about software making it right to disregard laws or not having respect for customers. It feels like some think software should be where to world was at the start of the industrial revolution, where companies could do what they wanted and there was no laws stopping them from dumping acid in the river.
Edit: fixed spelling
Why deflect criticism.by saying "well you don't have to use their app now do you?"
When a person does something immoral rarely do people defend them by saying "well you don't have to engage with them now do you?
Why not debate the morality or legitimacy of the act in question rather than deflect try to deflect the criticisms?
Wrong. At least for EU citizens.
If Spotify are collecting data in this way (and not only using the SDK for Facebook Login), they are in violation of the GDPR. There must be clear unambiguous consent to collect the data in the form of an affirmative action of the user and it must be possible to use the app without giving consent, because the Facebook data collection is not essential for the app to operate.
If they do share data with Facebook, Spotify should be scared, since they are definitely large enough to be on the radar of the EU or national bodies.
Moreover, outside the EU it would be dumb for Spotify to say "just don't install the app if you don't agree". The 10 Euro per month that premium users pay is worth more than some Facebook tracking.
(IANAL)
It's kinda worse. They "only" open the gate wide and any of your data they can see is there for Facebook to take. It can feast on any data it can grab with the same permissions the main app has. Like a fucking virus from MS-DOS times infecting binaries, but this time developers are doing it quite voluntarily.
Regardless of which SDK features they use the SDK calls out to Facebook with the device's fingerprint and a persistent UUID every time the app is launched or brought back into foreground.
I was glad today when watching this newsline, to have avoided the facebook SDK.
I think OAuth is usually better because every major provider has some version of it and so you basically can implement them all the same or at least in a really similar fashion.
If apps start charging money, there would be a significant drop in the # of average user installs. Then the app would only make money off of privacy focused users, which is comparatively small.
Because they don't know.
Like every industry, there are practices involved to which the layman is oblivious. It is important to remind ourselves that the reason the majority of users aren't vocalizing their concerns with these unsavory practices isn't because they don't care but because they don't know.
Sorry, I'm lost here. Can you elaborate?
>We as developers have sortof taken for granted that the FB/Google/etc SDKs can do no evil. Maybe that attitude should change, because public opinion certainly has.
Previously, you mentioned
>If apps start charging money, there would be a significant drop in the # of average user installs. Then the app would only make money off of privacy focused users, which is comparatively small.
I don't have any reason to believe sales would lessen if a formerly "free" application began charging. The difference, however, I have no idea. You mention "significant" which is, of course, relative.
It isn't difficult to see the incentive at work in this scenario:
a) I could charge a nominal fee for use of my software, foregoing the unsavory practices discussed in this thread, and make X amount of money.
b) I could sell my user out and potentially make more than X amount of money. How much more? I don't know, but more.
Is that what it comes down to?
A lot of software these days don't offer a way for casual users (read: not enterprise/small business) to pay for it. It's "free" or nothing.
There would be no reason to put advertising in the app the user has already paid for.
And paid software (such as Spotify) still does shady stuff like reporting to Facebook that I'm a user of their app and the schedule on which I use it.
1. People realize the label is powerful.
2. They begin applying the label to as many things they don't like as they can get away with.
3. This changes the definition of the label, causing it to become some blanket umbrella term.
4. The label loses its power, because it now describes many lukewarm behaviors instead of just the worst offenses.
For example, it's popular nowadays to say "everyone is racist." Well, if everyone is racist, is being labeled a racist really that bad? Not compared to what it used to imply about you.
I don't agree. I was very specific in stating that the practice of consuming a user's resources to transmit their information, without their explicit consent, nor an indication of the activity, for the sole benefit of Facebook and the software developer, can absolutely be considered spyware.
But slowly, the Internet population grew to include the masses, and it turns out most people don't care whatsoever about what their software is doing or how it works so long as it gets the job done, whether that's communicating with relatives, playing music, or providing a platform for other applications.
Additionally I don't think there is anything wrong with client-side analytics in general since it's basically the only way to monitor performance/usage in production. And this type of thing is hard to discern from the more benign case
But therein lies the rub: the overwhelming majority of users of software are not like you and me and have no idea what's going on behind the curtains.
>Additionally I don't think there is anything wrong with client-side analytics in general since it's basically the only way to monitor performance/usage in production. And this type of thing is hard to discern from the more benign case
I hear this argument a lot and I empathize with the idea that having such information can aid in the development process. However, the argument asserting that some data may be useful to the developer so the developer is thus entitled to it, doesn't wash.
Regardless of the ubiquity of this behavior in today's software development industry, the fact remains that this process consumes the user's resources without their knowing or say in the matter and it's not OK.
I think I as a user should get to decide that.
Some of them aren't, though. The Facebook SDK isn't a trivial resource. It also depends a lot on the specific device the software is being loaded on to. It may be trivial to a newer device or one with upgraded hardware, but perhaps not so with baseline hardware or devices several years old.
>If you don't like it you don't have to use the app that you chose to install.
This argument may work with someone working in the software industry, but falls flat the moment the implied obligation is place on the unsuspecting.
I love and happily pay for Spotify, but it is eye-opening that they send any data to Facebook. Well, shit.
In fact I would say that the incident we are discussing here shows that adding the sdk adds a failure mode.
I think in these situations it often helps if we would find this behaviour acceptable in the real world. For example we see advertisment in airport toilets or malls or whatever. As someone pointed out, the company advertising does have an interest in finding out if the ad is effective. So would people find it acceptable if someone was following the from the advertisement and writing down which stores they go to, what they buy? I acknowledge that there is significant effort to develop technology (e.g. using ultrasound) to do this, but the efforts to do this covertly are IMO a good indication that people would not accept it if it was done in the open.
https://falkvinge.net/2017/04/15/schiphol-airport-tracking-e...
If I pay for the service, I can expect that the service is taking nothing more from me than the payments I make. Our contract is explicit.
If it's a free-as-in-beer service, then the user must realize that the business which is offering the service expects to get something for its purposes from the user, such as user's eyeballs and user's computing resources.
I mostly agree. But, in some(most) also the user by encouraging the developer to release updates and launch new features.
In the consumer app cases, either I'm hitting somebody's backend with wrong data, which fails and so I update the app, or more frequently, those whiny apps with almost daily updates are just a WebView shell to some website.
Otherwise, what a hacked iOS sandboxed app can do? If there's an exploit to escape the sandbox, like in the WhatsApp case, we have a way larger issue and I wouldn't expect a random hacker to waste such an exploit that could be better targeted at Jeff Bezos or so.
Other exploits are for system apps (Mail, Safari, etc) and are handled by OS updates.
I support you in your courageous fight against nuance.
Of course not because it describes the same behavior.
I'm not sure that argument works.
If we expand a bit, It wouldn't be difficult to find that governments are mostly comprised of <industry> illiterate politicians. There is no need for a government to be comprised of digital advertisement industry specialists in order to pass meaningful industry regulation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...
And a few where we dodged a billet.
I commented on your initial response because it was overly dismissive and implied the only way forward is to first wait until we have a government stocked with domain experts who only act only on policy within their domain. It dismisses the fact that it is unlikely that the politicians introducing regulation were solely responsible for its construction.
Yes, there is corruption in government and yes ignorance is painfully obvious in some legislation, but to dismiss the idea of enacting regulation because the politician(s) signing it into law may not be experts in the field the regulation addresses, isn't at all practical.
I'd further argue that it is incumbent upon those working in industry to ensure the creation of regulation is conducted transparently and includes representatives from the industry to contribute the necessary knowledge and expertise required to formulate the law(s) such that society benefits from the protection and commerce suffers no undue burden.
The government can do and has done far more damage than big tech.
There is no easy way to tell whether an app shares data with third-parties without setting up an MITM proxy or a packet capture. As far as the majority of users are concerned it is a secret.
It is a secret, though. Outside of you, me, and a few other folks like ourselves, users of this software have no idea what's going on behind the curtains. There is no overt disclosure to the user explaining the myriad communication exchange, occurring on a nearly constant basis, between their device and some remote server(s); much less giving the user a say in the matter.
Stating the use of the word "surreptitious" (to act in a clandestine manner; exactly how these communications are executed) amounts to a mere quibble is disingenuous.
I can't say I completely understand the scenario, but if you're talking about a user filling out a form, then submitting that form, then no. That would be expected behavior.
Data may be encoded in any number of encodings depending on need. Encoded data isn't always human readable; especially so during secure transmission. It's not so much the inability for a human to read the encoded data as it is the data being consisting of only what is necessary to perform the action expected by the user; those expectations, of course, set via whichever means the user is interacting with the software.
Please correct me if I've misunderstood.
That's exactly my point. "Surreptitious" is being used to mean "I think it's bad, and I think it's not expected." The "bad" part is obviously subjective, but even if we agree on that, the latter is where you really need standards bodies to agree on what is acceptable technology practices. To me, ad tracking is definitely expected (regardless of whether I think it's bad). I suspect it's also expected by nearly all HN participants, and ubiquitous ad tracking is even in the mainstream public consciousness outside of tech circles.