Got an iPhone? Remove Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp immediately

Security researchers warn iPhone users about Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. They advise you to get rid of these apps completely.

IOS provides strong security mechanisms for iPhone users. One of the newest is the App Tracking Transparency. This ensures that any application that wants to track user activity on third-party sites and applications for advertising purposes must explain why it is doing so and ask for permission from the user. The user can choose to have a non-tracking option. For Facebook, this means a reduction in ad revenue. As it turns out, Facebook has ways that still allow it to collect user data in the absence of it.

First, even with app tracking turned off, Facebook continues to collect location data using metadata from photos. Every photo you send to Facebook or Instagram keeps the location data in the image metadata. Although the metadata is deleted after the photos are posted on Facebook or Instagram, so other people using these services will not be able to access them, the information is collected by Facebook on its servers. The website stores the IP address from which the photo was sent, the GPS location of the photo from the place where it was taken, and the iPhone model. The larger collection of such data allows Facebook to profile the user as a recipient of advertisements.

See: Facebook may disappear from the business map. In just a few days

The accelerometer will reveal all your secrets

However, security experts have warned about yet other dubious activities by Facebook. They argue that the application uses the iPhone's accelerometer to track the user's movements, observe at what times it is doing something, with what intensity, at what places or when interacting with other applications. The user is not warned that the Facebook application may analyze accelerometer data in this way.

Facebook is reading data from the accelerometer all the time. If you deny Facebook access to your location, the app will still be able to determine your exact location only by grouping you with users matching the same vibration pattern that your phone's accelerometer is recording

- argue researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk.

How is such grouping possible? The researchers explain this with the example of two passengers on the bus, thanks to which Facebook can use the accelerometer to determine the exact location of the user:

If you are on the bus and a passenger shares your exact location with Facebook, Facebook can easily tell that you are in the same place as the passenger. Both vibration patterns will be identical.

The researchers say the problem is with Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, although WhatsApp can effectively disable this feature. In turn, such practices are not used by other popular applications such as TikTok, WeChat, iMessage, Telegram and Signal.

The researchers say that while the accelerometer data appears harmless, the fact how applications can use this data is staggering.

Apps can determine the user's heart rate, movements and even its exact location. Worse, all iOS apps can read measurements from this sensor without permission. In other words, the user may not even know that the app is measuring the heart rate while using the app

- convinces Tommy Mysk.

Tommy Mysk points out that Facebook and Instagram nowhere explain why they use accelerometer data and that it cannot be fully turned off anywhere. When asked about it directly by Forbes, representatives of Facebook argue that access to an accelerometer is necessary in the camera, among other things, for taking panoramic photos.

According to Mysek, the only way to prevent Facebook and Instagram from collecting this information is to remove the application from the iPhone.

See: Facebook says "no" to politicians. Changes are coming See: iPhone users catch a new scam. They want to date, they lose money

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Photo source: Pexels

Text Source: Phone Arena, Forbes

Tags: apple iphonefacebookinstagramioswhatsapp