this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024
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Privacy Guides

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In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.

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[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 8 points 6 months ago (4 children)

It's a proprietary platform .... what do people expect?

It's visiting someone's business and you are in their property and you are watching TV on their TV set. You are reading newspapers and books that are on their property. And everyone acts surprised when the property owner keeps track of what you watched and what you read on their property.

You have no rights to do anything on their property .... other than the rights they give you, which they can also take away, or just kick you out.

[–] natecox@programming.dev 28 points 6 months ago (1 children)

…what?

This was one company spying on the users of its competitor via unofficial means. Even in the furthest stretch of the corporate boot licking bullshit that “you signed up for the app so you deserve to be spied on” exists in, I don’t see how this scenario is covered.

[–] ZeroCool@slrpnk.net 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

This is just typical Lemmy. User doesn’t read the article but has very strong opinions based on what they imagine it to be about. Comment gets upvoted by a bunch of other users who also didn’t read the article but imagine they know what happened too. Rinse and repeat.

[–] ZeroCool@slrpnk.net 13 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

It's a proprietary platform .... what do people expect?

It's visiting someone's business and you are in their property and you are watching TV on their TV set. You are reading newspapers and books that are on their property. And everyone acts surprised when the property owner keeps track of what you watched and what you read on their property.

You have no rights to do anything on their property .... other than the rights they give you, which they can also take away, or just kick you out.

Are you under the impression that Facebook owns Snapchat? Because they don’t. Nothing about this little “blame people for using proprietary services” rant is actually relevant to what happened. At all.

You should read the article because you clearly didn’t. Hell, all you’d have to do is read the first paragraph to understand they were spying on the users of a competitor.

[–] 4am@lemm.ee 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

~~I think you are thinking of Instagram. Facebook doesn’t own Snapchat.~~

Oh it’s Onavo. Onavo was the “Facebook VPN” software they shuttered in 2019. So it had access to network traffic on-device before it was sent out.

Seems like it was more than a VPN, and put its claws deep into the network stack if it was reading packet buffers before they were encrypted. Not good; I’m sure that users were not made aware of this but in light of this possibility, your point stands.

[–] xilliah 2 points 6 months ago

I like your analogy but from my perspective it isn't fitting.

It would be more like the postal service opening your letters.