TL;DR version:
Several popular iOS apps, including Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Twitter, have been found to be collecting user data through notifications, even when the app is closed, according to tests conducted by security researchers at Mysk Inc. The data collected includes IP addresses, device information, and other identifiable details, which can be used for targeted advertising and tracking purposes. While some of the companies involved have denied the allegations, the researchers claim that the data collection is unnecessary for notification processing and appears to be related to analytics and tracking. The issue is believed to be widespread among iOS apps, and Apple’s lack of enforcement of its own privacy rules has been criticized. Upcoming changes to the iPhone operating system’s rules may help address the problem, but it remains to be seen how effectively they will be enforced.
Mitigating the issue:
- According to a reply from the researchers under their video:
Disabling the notifications prevents this from happening, but you have to toggle the option “Allow Notifications” of the app off. Allowing the notifications while disabling the alerts isn’t enough.
- Another article from BleepingComputer similarly notes that:
iPhone users who want to evade this fingerprinting should disable push notifications entirely. Unfortunately, making notifications silent will not prevent abuse. To disable notifications, open ‘Settings,’ head to ‘Notifications,’ select the app you want to manage notifications for and tap the toggle to disable ‘Allow Notifications.’
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The data is unnecessary for processing notifications, the researchers said, and seems related to analytics, advertising, and tracking users across different apps and devices.
It’s par for the course that apps would find opportunities to sneak in more data collection, but “we were surprised to learn that this practice is widely used,” said Tommy Mysk, who conducted the tests along with Talal Haj Bakry.
For one, Apple gives app developers details about what’s going on with notifications directly, so there’s no need to collect additional information if you know what happened after you pinged your users.
Furthermore, a lot of the data that apps are collecting seems unrelated to analyzing how well notifications are working, like your phone’s available disk space or the time since your last reboot, Mysk said.
Mysk said if a company like Google can send you a notification without snooping on other details, that suggests there are ulterior motives for the data collection he spotted.
Unfortunately, you might have heard that big companies sometimes tell lies, which would get in the way of that solution, and Apple doesn’t have a stellar track record of enforcing similar rules.
The original article contains 1,384 words, the summary contains 191 words. Saved 86%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
oh really? c’mon, stop trust these shit companies for gods sake
As a mobile app developer I promise that you want to have push notifications that are capable of doing meaningful work on your phone. Apps are often entirely dead but a push notification from a central server will still get you X/Y/Z functionality.
Companies abuse this to then track you, and harvest endless amounts of information but the alternative is your phone no longer notified you of anything and the majority of background functionality for your apps dies entirely.
What I wish would happen is that mobile OSes have another set of location/network permissions for push notifications.
At least for the apps in the excerpt, no big worry if you don’t get the notification. Use the mobile site if possible/necessary.
Agreed though on the permissions bit.
