The American tech giant, founded by Mark Zuckerberg, was suspected of tracking users of its products. Internal web browsers of Facebook and Instagram are used for this purpose. And although it is not necessary that the company purposefully collects confidential data, many users do not like this fact.
The ban tells about the secret of the internal browsers of the most popular social networks in the world.
How Facebook and Instagram track users online
When going to websites through the social networks of the company Meta, the pages are not opened in standard web browsers, but in the internal browsers of the programs themselves, writes Engaget. In this way, special JavaScript code is inserted into each site visited, allowing the parent program to potentially track activity on them.
“Instagram [and Facebook as well] injects its tracking code into every website that is displayed in the internal browser, including when an ad is clicked, allowing them [to track] all user interactions: any click and follow-through, text selection , screenshots, and any input, such as passwords and credit card numbers,” explained former Google engineer and cybersecurity researcher Felix Krause.
He was able to find this out while testing the Facebook and Instagram apps for iOS. Starting with system version 14.5, Apple allows users to turn tracking on or off the first time they use apps using App Tracking Transparency (ATT).
Meta did not deny the use of the tracking code. But they explained that they needed it to aggregate user data for targeted advertising and research, such as in-app purchases.
Facebook and Instagram do not necessarily use JavaScript embedding to collect sensitive data. For example, another Meta product, WhatsApp, does not have this feature. However, for users, according to Krause, it would be much better if the applications opened an external browser (Safari or Firefox). Yes, Meta would not be able to add its code on any secure site.
Previously, Zaborona talked about an extension for Facebook called Feeds, with which you can view posts in chronological order, as well as updates to the main page of the social network.