Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nextgrid | Hacker News Reader

Watch out, Here Maps has the Facebook SDK malware embedded in it that will call home to Zuck on every app launch (at least) and send a device fingerprint and persistent identifier.

View on HN

Very unfortunate, since HERE maps allows offline maps.

We need a public registry of apps that embed tracking SDKs.

And iOS needs an outbound firewall, now that it is shipping an App Privacy Report.

> And iOS needs an outbound firewall

This can already easily be added through third-party apps. Would a system-wide firewall be a worthwhile improvement? I suppose it would help to have it enabled by default for users who wouldn’t install a tracker firewall app afterwards.

Is there an iOS 3rd-party app which can provide on-device outbound firewalling across all apps?

Yes, AdGuard seems to do so and IIRC also has customizable block lists. The default includes Safari-only blocking but it is able to add a device-wide filter using Apple's API for VPNs. It seems to identify the various trackers used by the social media apps on my device, for instance.

App store link: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1047223162

GitHub link: https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardForiOS

System-wide blocking: https://adguard.com/en/blog/how-to-configure-system-wide-blo...

Thank you!

Looks like system-wide blocking is via DNS, which would leak DNS requests to AdGuard's DNS server? The same could be accomplished with a local PiHole device.

Thanks for the pointer! Unfortunately FB is free on the major mobile operators and thus basically mandatory for communication, so my phone calls "home to Zuck" regularly anyways :/

Reference?

My own testing on iOS by monitoring the network traffic - I don't see why Android would be any different.

Edit: Exodus Privacy also confirms that Facebook malware is indeed present: https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.here.ap...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com