It appears that the criminal enterprise formerly known as Facebook™ has a solution to Apple's decision to restrict the ability of advertisers to track users across the web, it will just insert malicious tracking code into websites in its iOS apps:
Meta's Instagram and Facebook apps on iOS devices have been injecting JavaScript code into third-party websites from their custom in-app browser, gaining access to data that would be unavailable were those pages loaded in a stand-alone, WebKit-based iOS browser.
In-app browsers – implemented in native Android and iOS code using a component called a WebView – allow native app users to interact with websites without leaving their apps and opening free-standing browser applications. For this purpose, iOS offers WKWebView, part of the WebKit framework, and the more recent (and more privacy protecting) SFSafariViewController, part of the SafariServices framework.
Meta's apps rely on WKWebView, the more capable and customizable of the two options, both of which represent alternatives to opening web links in the iOS version of Safari.
"This causes various risks for the user, with the host app being able to track every single interaction with external websites, from all form inputs like passwords and addresses, to every single tap," explained developer Felix Krause, founder of fastlane.tools, in a blog post exploring the privacy implications of Meta's apps.
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"The code in question allows us to respect people's privacy choices by helping aggregate events (such as making a purchase online) from pixels already on websites, before those events are used for advertising or measurement purposes," said Andy Stone, communications director at Meta, via Twitter.
Yeah, Andy, we believe you. You are protecting people's privacy, just like you have claimed, and have been shown to have lied, every other time.
This sort of sh%$ will continue until Mark Zuckerberg is frog-marched out of Facebook headquarters in handcuffs.
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