Facebook does its best to take your data by working its way around every loophole it could find in your Apple device.
The recently released App Tracking Transparency in iOS 14.5 does a great job of restricting web, app activity, and location tracking. Unfortunately, Facebook is also coming up with new ways to get your data.
In these last few months, news of Facebook's data breaching tendencies has flooded the internet. The social media platform does so because a majority of its revenue and income comes from digital advertising. This means that Facebook tries to collect as much data as it could about you so that it could customize a few advertisements to your interests. Businesses pay Facebook a huge amount monthly to advertise their services.
Unfortunately, Facebook is also gaining an infamous reputation, especially after being hacked and leaking over 500 million user information to malicious actors. The social media platform reported on working to repair its systems. However, privacy and security matters are emphasized to be the user's responsibility.
iPhone App Tracking Transparency
The new feature Apple proudly presented its users is the App Tracking Transparency, where you can manually toggle on or off an app's tracking rights on your data. This feature managed to block out Facebook from tracking your data across third-party websites, like using Instagram and Whatsapp and linking these data back to your Facebook account.
Unfortunately, Facebook is coming up with new ideas to steal your information. Even when using the App Tracking Transparency and input on the iPhone to "Never" allow Facebook access to your location and "location history for mobile devices," Facebook is now harvesting your data through the iPhone's systems.
Forbes reported that iPhones usually add GPS tags to photos or images taken, which helps you later sort out through your smartphone's gallery according to location, dates or other useful tags. When uploading these photo-taken images on Facebook, the social media strips down the photo details and records it to their local servers. To verify this, you could try opening your "Facebook Privacy Settings," "Facebook Information, and "Download" a copy of all the data Facebook has stored about you using this method.
4 Ways to Stop FB From Collecting Your Data
To avoid getting your data stolen, Forbes has a few recommendations and tips you could follow:
- Don't upload images on Facebook or Instagram with data embedded: Generally, you also have to avoid posting more information that the social media platform could steal from you when uploading images.
- Use third-party apps like iVerify: This would automatically strip the metadata attached to your photos, helping your upload clean and info-free data from your social media account.
- Avoid loading advertisements in your account: You can do this by heading to "Mail," Toggle Off the "Load Remote Images." The next time you see an email advertisement, it should have unloaded images and remain blank boxes.
- Lastly, try loading your Facebook through a browser like Safari or Firefox instead of the application: The browser would help buffer up your security profile a lot more effectively than the mobile app does.