Facebook Tracks Users Who Do Not Use Its App

Things are going from bad to worse for Facebook, which is already surrounded by controversies involving data leaks of its 10 million users. Now in the beginning of a new year, a new research has found Facebook is also tracking the data of Android users who do not use the app.

Privacy International, a UK based charity has claimed that Facebook routinely tracks users, non-users and logged out users outside its platform. According to the new findings, app developers share data with Facebook through the Facebook Software Development Kit.

Privacy International examined 34 apps on Android for the study, each with an install base between 10 to 500 million. The research, which is presented at Chaos Computer Congress in Leipzig, Germany, showed that at least 61 percent of apps that Privacy International tested automatically transfer data to Facebook, the moment a user opens the app.

“This happens whether people have a Facebook account or not, or whether they are logged into Facebook or not,” the report said. The apps included language-learning tool Duo lingo, travel and restaurant website Trip Advisor, job database Indeed and flight search engine Sky scanner among others.

The researchers also analyzed what type of data these apps transmitted to Facebook through the Facebook SDK. All the apps were tested during the period of August to December 2018. “In our analysis, apps that automatically transmit data to Facebook share this data together with a unique identifier, the Google advertising ID (AAID)”, the researchers said.

The primary purpose of advertising IDs, such as the Google advertising ID or Apple’s, the IDFA is to allow advertisers to link data about user behaviour from different apps.

Responding to the findings, Google said that its users can disable ads personalization through its control system in the Google Account, which will stop Google advertising services from creating user profiles for advertising purposes and other advertising related activities.

Meanwhile, Facebook has come out with an explanation on the recent findings and said, Privacy International sharing data is “common practice for many companies” and is useful for both users and the companies involved. Facebook said, “This information is important for helping developers understand how to improve their apps and for helping people receive relevant advertising in a privacy-protective way”.

It also said, “We do this in a transparent manner by explaining the practice through our Data Policy and Cookies Policy and by using Google’s advertising identifier, which can be controlled centrally by people using their device settings”.

Scrutiny of Facebook increased manifold since it was revealed last year, how the London-based political consultancy, Cambridge Analytica, illegally procured the data of up to 87 million Facebook users. Now with these new findings, many questions are being raised again on Facebook.