How does an app like Threads get access to financial, political, health, religious or browsing info through your phone's OS. What is the actual source of that data? - eviltoast

I’m trying to understand how an app would even get that info in the first place, how that’s classified and why a mobile operating system even has a way to provide that data.

Am I correct in assuming that if an app is used without play store / play store framework that it would not be able to get access to that data?

Thanks!

  • Lee Duna@lemmy.nz
    61·
    1 year ago

    https://infosec.pub/post/400702

    Threads app itself is a privacy nigtmare

    and YSK : Because of Threads app that makes Meta a threat to the privacy of fediverse users, if there are fediverse instances that remain federated with Meta.

    Ross Schulman, senior fellow for decentralization at digital rights nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that if Threads emerges as a massive player in the fediverse, there could be concerns about what he calls “social graph slurping." Meta will know who all of its users interact with and follow within Threads, and it will also be able to see who its users follow in the broader fediverse. And if Threads builds up anywhere near the reach of other Meta platforms, just this little slice of life would give the company a fairly expansive view of interactions beyond its borders.

    https://www.wired.com/story/meta-threads-privacy-decentralization/

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
      11·
      1 year ago

      Scanning and evaluating context from people who don’t use a given service and haven’t consented should be illegal. For example, I don’t use Gmail because I don’t want Google scanning all of my emails. But everyone else does, so Google gets to scan all of my emails anyways when I email other people, and build a profile on me based on other people’s lack of concern for their privacy. This issue should have been legislated years ago, but instead we have so called progressive politicians slurping Facebook’s balls.

      • Lee Duna@lemmy.nz
        1·
        1 year ago

        No one realised or really cared until the Cambridge Analytica scandal happened, what makes me furious is that this is still happening today. Millions of people joined Threads, even Rochko’s statement on the mastodon blog tends to embrace Meta.

        While other mastodon admins declined Meta’s invitation