All I can say is that building your own in-app browser takes a non-trivial time to program and maintain, significantly more than just using the privacy and user-friendly alternative that’s already been built into the iPhone for the past 7 years. Is Instagram doing this on purpose? I can’t say how the decisions were made internally.Summary: Whenever you open a link from Instagram (or Facebook or Messenger), make sure to click the dots in the corner to open the page in Safari instead. How can I protect myself? For full details scroll down to the end of the article.As shown in the past, if it’s possible for a company to get access to data legally and for free, without asking the user for permission, they will track it. Does Facebook actually steal my passwords, address and credit card numbers? No! I didn’t prove the exact data Instagram is tracking, but wanted to showcase the kind of data they could get without you knowing.Can Instagram/Facebook read everything I do online? No! Instagram is only able to read and watch your online activities when you open a link or ad from within their apps.This article does not talk about the legal aspect of things, but the technical implementation of what is happening, and what is possible on a technical level. The message of this article is about how the iOS Instagram app actively injects and executes JavaScript code on third party websites, using their in-app browser. I explained the above to provide some context on why getting data from third party websites/apps is a big deal. Note added on : Meta is following the ATT (App Tracking Transparency) rules (as added as a note at the bottom of the article). ![]() – EFF - Facebook Says Apple is Too Powerful. It got small businesses to defend user-tracking, claiming that when a giant corporation spies on billions of people, that’s a form of small business development. It threatened an antitrust suit against Apple. With web browsers and iOS adding more and more privacy controls into the user’s hands, it becomes clear why Instagram is interested in monitoring all web traffic of external websites.įacebook bombarded its users with messages begging them to turn tracking back on. With 1 Billion active Instagram users, the amount of data Instagram can collect by injecting the tracking code into every third party website opened from the Instagram & Facebook app is a staggering amount. Websites you visit on iOS don’t trigger tracking prompts because the anti-tracking features are built in. The approach the Instagram & Facebook app uses here works for any website, no matter if it’s encrypted or not.Īfter the App Tracking Transparency was introduced, Meta announced:Īpple’s simple iPhone alert is costing Facebook $10 billion a yearįacebook complained that Apple’s App Tracking Transparency favors companies like Google because App Tracking Transparency “carves out browsers from the tracking prompts Apple requires for apps.” With the rise of HTTPs by default, this isn’t an option any more.
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