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Comment by bnpxft | Hacker News Reader

Another reason not to install big tech's apps and only use their websites if you must.

Not only our their websites painful which discourages use, websites are more sandboxed.

I am not sure which Meta apps open ports, but e.g. Samsung phones come with a bunch of Meta apps pre-shipped. IIRC just removing the Facebook app is is not enough, there is another service installed that is not visible as an app (com.facebook.services etc.), which you can only uninstall from the data partition with something like ADB/UAD.

Or buy an iPhone or a Pixel.

I remember a few years ago analyzing a modern Samsung phone's web traffic. It had by far the most ad-related and monetizing connections out of any other phone I've ever seen. And they were part of "necessary" functions, so you couldn't just block that traffic.

Samsung has great tech, but I avoid because it's so bloated and abusive.

My Samsung phone has Netflix, Spotify, and some Microsoft stuff installed, but nothing from Meta.

I think Samsung stopped preinstalling Facebook's weird services a while back. Xiaomi still seems to be shipping Facebook last time I checked, though.

Even outside of Samsung a lot of "normal" apps come packed with Facebook crap because of Facebook's SDK (for the "log in with Facebook" button). There was that one incident where many/most iOS apps didn't open anymore because Meta fucked something up on their servers that crashed every app with the Facebook SDK inside of it (https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-sdk-ios-apps-spotify-ti...).

Even the flagship Galaxy S25 (OEM, unlocked) has Facebook services preinstalled.

The Pixel "Private Space" feature should prevent Meta apps from running in the background. It also prevents you from getting notifications.

I kinda wonder if pushing it into a separate/work profile would isolate it from this... though it kinda smells to be like something that might accidentally (or "accidentally") leak.

I tend to buy stock Android, e.g. Motorola moto g30, etc. It still has lots of Google stuff, but you can get rid of them, and I have a work profile specifically designed for Google-related stuff, and my personal profile is de-Googled as much as possible.

I would recommend everyone who wants a clean Android to look into Google Pixel phones. Aside from being mostly bloat-free (and most bloat can be uninstalled), it is one of the few phones that supports unlocking/relocking and a secure open source alternative (GrapheneOS).

Does grapheneos prevent this? In what way? I know apps like ShareViaHTTP [1] are able to open ports (listening not just on the loopback address). If I installed a meta app, could it still run its listener that scripts on webpages could talk to?

[1]: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.MarcosDiez.shareviahttp

I didn't say that. Only that GrapheneOS does not come with any adware/malware preinstalled. That said, their default browser did block one of the attack vectors:

https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114620254209885149

Article did mention Facebook and Instagram at some versions.

Samsung devices are loaded with malware and AI slop in general. I'd avoid them if you at all care about privacy. Since Google is still missing end to end encryption for cloud data, iOS seems like the only good choice currently.

iOS sends data to metrics.apple.com, metrics.icloud.com, iadsdk.apple.com, etc. a lot. They are much better than Samsung (who send data to Samsung and other parties), but I am not convinced they are much better than Google devices. It's more who you prefer sending your data to.

In the end something like GrapheneOS is the only good choice. Has all the security features of Pixel (which is similar to iPhone) and the tracking of neither.

Not all metrics are equal. I don't really care if Apple collects anonomized data on which features are most used or collects crash reports. That's worlds away from using preinstalled apps to backdoor your phone to provide tracking scripts your details in incognito mode.

> Not only our their websites painful which discourages use, websites are more sandboxed.

This isn't remotely true. It is pretty trivial for a well-resourced engineering organization to generate unique fingerprints of users with common browser features.

Wouldn't native apps be even worse in that regard, most of the time?

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