Comment by zaptheimpaler | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zaptheimpaler | Hacker News Reader

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I went to look at the off-site facebook history on my profile. Its truly scary the amount of data they have. The worst part is this:

https://imgur.com/a/A8JVQOR

So Mozilla, which is one of the companies behind the effort to understand the Meta Pixel, is also sending data to Facebook? I was not a member of the Rally study.

What the f** is going on? Is Firefox itself tracking me too? Or maybe some extension? Which extension? How am i supposed to tell without hoping that the right person magically sees this comment or going 100% technical and running packet captures and Wireshark?

Why can't we just get access to the _RAW_ data being sent or stored about us?

As of now, VS Code will send encrypted data to Microsoft when you use it. So my machine, OS, applications all send data about me to companies, and I'm not even allowed to know what it is (not to single them out, VS Code is just one example I have inspected myself). I don't claim to understand SSL all that well, but i think they used certificate pinning and pre-master secrets that makes it impossible or very difficult for anyone outside MS to decrypt the data in any way...

This is all completely normal now. On mobile devices its even worse. Its not even possible to completely inspect the data a phone/tablet sends without rooting it and many are already impossible to bootloader unlock or root/jailbreak.

With certificate pinning, on an encrypted smartphone volume with a hardware key, that is only unlocked just in time by the OS (the way android works now), it is LITERALLY impossible to know what data is being transmitted or received over SSL on your own device. You are not allowed to know.

>Why can't we just get access to the _RAW_ data being sent or stored about us?

Because most of it isn't interesting or relevant to you. Most data being sent isn't actually data about you, but data about the product.

>On mobile devices its even worse

This is because mobile devices are more secure and privacy preserving than the desktop platform. What you think is locking you out is actually just the platform locking everyone out so that they cripple the capabilities of malicious apps. Also keep in with that device users and app developers are both stakeholders. App developers want to keep their platforms secure which can conflict with the interests of the device users. The platform tries to balance the needs of everybody to try and make the best platform possible for all parties.

> Because most of it isn't interesting or relevant to you. Most data being sent isn't actually data about you, but data about the product.

Thanks but that's for me to decide. And all of the privacy abuses in clear view by Meta and others over the past few years make that assertion sound ridiculous. In my view the owner of a device has a right to have complete visibility into said device's communications.

Personally I agree that this endless back-door privacy leakage is unwelcome.

That said, the idea that we have self-described "rights" waters down the concept of actual "rights".

Things like Miranda rights, 2nd ammendment rights and so on are codified trade-offs between public good and personal good. Often these rights are local, and differ from country to country. Some travel, some don't. Most people in the UK presume they have free-speech rights (they don't) but pretty-much no-one in the UK believes they "have the right to bear arms."

I don't negate your point. I too have a desire not to leak data to corporations from my devices. Equally I choose which browser I use, which sites I visit, which OS I run, and so on.

I guess I'm saying that I understand that companies don't exist for my benefit, but for theirs, and I balance their desires with my desires when making my choices.

Perhaps more generously, to Firefox, they’re interpreting Firefox user strings as an app sending data to them. For curiosity, where did you pull that data from?

See https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity

What Chrome extension do I have to enable to make it so Facebook doesn't know this level of data?

Edit: looks like https://privacybadger.org/ or https://ublockorigin.com/

Thank you for sharing.

I can see it as well. I don't understand it either. I use facebook container on the desktop. Perhaps it is on Android or iPhone? I would also like to know what data Firefox shared with Facebook about me.

https://i.imgur.com/w8h9HeS.png

If you follow the trail of links (or directly go to https://www.facebook.com/dyi), you can request a detailed report. I have my doubts about on how complete this is, but in my case, the only thing I saw from Firefox were ACTIVATE_APP events; based on the timestamps almost definitely all from my phone.

Maybe it detects you using facebook container and infers you use firefox from that? Mine doesn't show anything firefox related, using ublock origin everywhere.

> Maybe it detects you using facebook container and infers you use firefox from that?

Not sure. I have used Facebook since then as well but the last sent date was end of March...

What's the equivalent for people who don't have Facebook accounts? I presume data about me has been sent to Facebook despite that fact.

It‘s called shadow accounts. This is an article explaining the basic gist: https://www.howtogeek.com/768652/what-are-facebook-shadow-pr...

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