Feed: Slashdot
Feed Link: https://slashdot.org/
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Title: Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta's Apps
(and Yandex)

Link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/07/0352...

Meta's Facebook and Instagram apps "were siphoning people's data through a
digital back door for months," writes a Washington Post tech columnist,
citing researchers who found no privacy setting could've stopped what Meta
and Yandex were doing, since those two companies "circumvented privacy and
security protections that Google set up for Android devices. "But their
tactics underscored some privacy vulnerabilities in web browsers or apps.
These steps can reduce your risks." Stop using the Chrome browser. Mozilla's
Firefox, the Brave browser and DuckDuckGo's browser block many common methods
of tracking you from site to site. Chrome, the most popular web browser, does
not... For iPhone and Mac folks, Safari also has strong privacy protections.
It's not perfect, though. No browser protections are foolproof. The
researchers said Firefox on Android devices was partly susceptible to the
data harvesting tactics they identified, in addition to Chrome. (DuckDuckGo
and Brave largely did block the tactics, the researchers said....) Delete
Meta and Yandex apps on your phone, if you have them. The tactics described
by the European researchers showed that Meta and Yandex are unworthy of your
trust. (Yandex is not popular in the United States.) It might be wise to
delete their apps, which give the companies more latitude to collect
information that websites generally cannot easily obtain, including your
approximate location, your phone's battery level and what other devices, like
an Xbox, are connected to your home WiFi. Know, too, that even if you don't
have Meta apps on your phone, and even if you don't use Facebook or Instagram
at all, Meta might still harvest information on your activity across the web.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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