“Apple is taking active steps to block Facebook’s data collection practices. The Safari-maker said Monday that it will give users the ability to stop Facebook, Google and other platforms from tracking them across the web through ‘like’ and ‘share’ buttons,” Dylan Byers reports for CNN. “The announcement is Apple’s most significant counter yet to Facebook’s data collection practices, and comes after years in which Apple executives have criticized Facebook as reckless with user privacy.”
“When Safari users arrive at a page with a Facebook like, a pop-up window will appear that asks: ‘Do you want to allow ‘facebook.com’ to use cookies and website data while browsing [this site]? This will allow ‘facebook.com’ to track your activity,'” Byers reports. “Facebook’s chief security officer Alex Stamos immediately took issue with the move, questioning on Twitter whether it was a serious effort to protect privacy or ‘just cute virtue signaling.'”
https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1003716676813090818
MacDailyNews Take: Facebook advising on how to protect privacy is like Sirhan Sirhan advising on the maintaining the safety and welfare of Presidential candidates. Potentially useful, but definitely repulsive.
Byers reports, “In an interview with CNN’s Laurie Segall on Monday, Cook said, ‘I think that the privacy thing has gotten totally out of control and I think most people are not aware of who is tracking them, how much they’re being tracked and the large amounts of detailed data that are out there about them … We think privacy is a fundamental human right.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple needs to continue to relentlessly point out how FaceBook and Google make their money: By vacuuming up your personal data and selling it to the highest bidder.
As we’ve written previously, “If you trust Mark Zuckerberg to be the keeper of your photos, contacts, political views, religious beliefs, etc., you’re batshit insane.”
Instant messages sent by Mark Zuckerberg during Facebook’s early days, reported by Business Insider, May 13, 2010:
Zuckerberg: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuckerberg: Just ask
Zuckerberg: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend’s Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?
Zuckerberg: People just submitted it.
Zuckerberg: I don’t know why.
Zuckerberg: They “trust me”
Zuckerberg: Dumb fucks—
We use FaceBook as an RSS feed. Our CMS automatically reposts our article headlines and links them back to our website. That is our only interaction with Facebook and has been our only interaction with Facebook for years. We deleted our personal accounts [which we opened only so we could understand the Facebook phenomenon] many years ago.
If you want to share photos and videos with friends, text them using Apple’s end-to-end encrypted iMessage service. You need to control your social networking, not cede it to a gatekeeper like Facebook. – MacDailyNews, March 19, 2018
SEE ALSO:
Facebook gave personal data to 60 companies including Apple, Amazon and Samsung – June 4, 2018
Haha I love it. Just the reaction I was expecting after Apple’s announcement yesterday. Go for it Apple and tell those Facebook scum bags exactly where to go.
Oh I think Apple is doing a lot more towards privacy than just cute virtue signaling, thankfully.
Facebook could not have done anything better for promoting Apple products. Perfect example of a company demonstrating how little they care about privacy after they have been exposed for selling it to the highest bidder.
Anything which upsets Facebook is good for the rest of us and Stamos’ reaction shows that Apple is on the right course.
He thinks that Apple should block all third party JS and pixels. Well it may come to that one day, but Apple generally addresses the biggest offenders first and then looks at what remains.
If these companies weren’t being cavalier with user’s data and disregarding individual privacy, Apple wouldn’t need to block them.
recently, MDN had a link to a “nuclear option” against facebook, by disallowing any contact with their servers. Just want to report that it works really fine, it seems. fewer ads!
Please share that link again! FB is about to find out how much there business is worth when they don’t actually make anything…
If there’s anything that Facebook knows about, it’s virtue signaling.
That, and thieving.
Good for Cook. It isn’t just Facebook that is using this data. NSA, CIA, FBI and other 3-letter agencies don’t need to get court orders anymore for the data they need; they just buy it from Facebook (plus Google and Amazon, among others).
Don’t be evil = don’t be Facebook
Enough said
Tim Cook is a disingenuous schmuck and if you think that his attacking Facebook doesn’t have something to do with wanting to start up a new ad business under iOS, you’re ridiculously naive.
but also, where’s TC’s criticism of Google? Like the possible ad competition with FB, is it reasonable that TC doesn’t want to disrupt the Goggle relationship because of new/strengthened ties mentioned yesterday (read: maps)? Google now wearing a nice sheep-coat?
You are certainly entitled to your opinion, TMac, but that doesn’t mean that you are correct. I certainly do not agree with you on this topic. Apple has long been a leader in personal privacy, and I believe that is part of the company’s core values as established by Steve Jobs. I recognize that Apple has a distinct advantage relative to Google and Facebook in supporting consumer privacy because Apple makes money from hardware sales. Facebook and Google make money from the collection, analysis, and sales of personal data – your data. How would those companies develop a viable business model without sucking up your data in as many ways as possible, legal or not. Google has already demonstrated its willingness to secretly circumvent Apple’s iOS app data collection rules. I do not trust Google or Facebook at all, and that mistrust logically extends to any company that relies on my personal data to make money.
Install a copy of Little Snitch or Ghostery and be amazed.
Ghostery is EXCELLENT! Use it on all my computers and iOS devices.