“This sounds fairly basic, but it really isn’t. Since the data is sent with a unique identifier, a user’s Google advertising ID,

it would be easy to link this data into a profile and paint a fine-grained picture of someone’s interests, identities and daily routines.”

https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/5/18252397/facebook-android-apps-sending-data-user-privacy-developer-tools-violation

COMPARE THAT TO LIFELOG:

In 2003, a project called LifeLog was started at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under Douglas Gage. Lifelogging was going to be achieved by combining several technologies to record the activities of life to create a life diary. Shortly after, the notion of lifelogging was identified as a technology and cultural practice that could be exploited by governments, businesses or militaries through surveillance. [12]. The DARPA lifelogging project was cancelled by 2004, but this project helped to popularize the idea and usage of the term lifelogging in everyday discourse. It contributed to the growing acceptance of using technology for augmented memory.[13]

FACEBOOK IS THE COLLECTOR OF DATA

All these other apps are designed to scrape data and transfer it to facebook, where they gather, build a profile, and store your information. Combine it with facebook trying to gain access to medical records and it becomes seriously spooky what someone could do with the data.

>>5559088

As Facebook’s privacy practices come under even greater scrutiny in the aftermath of last year’s Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, a spotlight is being shone on the lesser-known arrangements between large advertising companies and the smaller app makers that use those platforms to reach new users and target existing ones with ads. As revealed by the WSJ last month, a number of prominent iOS app makers use a Facebook analytics tool known as “custom app events” that, in this case,

was sharing sensitive health, fitness, and financial data with the social network for ad targeting purposes.

On Android, Facebook has long collected sensitive user data such as contact logs, call histories, SMS data, and real-time location data, for the purpose of informing its ad targeting and improving features like friend suggestions. Yet the practices have caused vocal outcry from privacy advocates and users concerned Facebook is amassing far too much data about their personal lives and online and offline behaviors. Following reports about Facebook using its location-tracking capabilities to catch company interns skipping work, it said it would allow Android users the ability to explicitly disable the feature.

In this case, PI is underscoring one of Facebook’s longstanding indirect data collection policies, one that relies on third-party apps to autonomously collect and send information about app usage to the social network without telling users about the arrangement.

APP MAKERS SEND INFORMATION ABOUT USERS STRAIGHT TO FACEBOOK, OFTEN WITHOUT CONSENT OR DISCLOSURE

“Facebook routinely tracks users, non-users, and logged-out users outside its platform through Facebook Business Tools. App developers share data with Facebook through the Facebook Software Development Kit (SDK), a set of software development tools that help developers build apps for a specific operating system,” PI explained in the initial December 2018 report. The report found that nearly two thirds of the 34 Android apps PI tested — including big names like Spotify and Kayak and all of which had between 10 and 500 million installs — sent information to Facebook without informing users or gaining express consent.

>>5559145

Here’s the bad news: seven apps, including Yelp, the language-learning app Duolingo and the job search app Indeed, as well as the King James Bible app and two Muslim prayer apps, Qibla Connect and Muslim Pro, still send your personal data to Facebook before you can decide whether you want to consent or not. Keep in mind: these are apps with millions of installs.

Since we published our report, mobilsicher.de could also confirm that apps on iOS exhibit similar behaviour.