Social media grassing me up - VPN?
Discussion
Getting sick and tired of the ever increasing intrusiveness of social media.
Bought my wife a birthday present earlier this year using my laptop.
Week or so later, she gave me her phone to look at something on her Facebook feed & when scrolling down I saw a "Suggestion for you" showing the name/page of the jewellery place plus the actual item I had bought front and centre of two or three photo examples of stuff they had for sale.
Similarly, was looking at a surprise short-break and she commented that for some reason she was seeing loads of adverts related to San Sebastian...
Presume this is because we use the same WiFi network?
It's bloody irritating - never contemplated using a VPN before & not too clued up on them - would it stop this sort of thing?
Any other ways of preventing browsing/apps/WiFi telling tales on me?
Cheers for any input.
Bought my wife a birthday present earlier this year using my laptop.
Week or so later, she gave me her phone to look at something on her Facebook feed & when scrolling down I saw a "Suggestion for you" showing the name/page of the jewellery place plus the actual item I had bought front and centre of two or three photo examples of stuff they had for sale.
Similarly, was looking at a surprise short-break and she commented that for some reason she was seeing loads of adverts related to San Sebastian...
Presume this is because we use the same WiFi network?
It's bloody irritating - never contemplated using a VPN before & not too clued up on them - would it stop this sort of thing?
Any other ways of preventing browsing/apps/WiFi telling tales on me?
Cheers for any input.
Delete Facebook. Your life will be better for it.
Or if you must have it install Firefox and use the Facebook Container extension
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/fac...
Or if you must have it install Firefox and use the Facebook Container extension
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/fac...
This. FaceAche is unbelievably invasive.
Example: I held a work meeting a few months ago, in a building where one of my colleagues couldn’t be allowed in unescorted. I asked her to SMS message me when she got there, which she did. Two words: “I’m here”.
A couple of days later when I logged into Facebook via browser on my laptop, she’s the first name in the “People you may know” list. My phone didn’t have the Facebook App, only FB messenger. Permissions for Messenger were locked right down, no access to anything essentially. She’d messaged me from a business phone, not personal.
That was when I deleted my account completely.
The amount of data harvesting going on is scary, and I’m not comfortable with that. I suspect they may also be gathering location data, which becomes even more concerning.
If they’re hacked, a threat actor will be able to gather a lot of potentially very damaging data, so I’ve taken the view that I don’t want anything of mine on their platform. They’ll still be harvesting data about online activity, but I’d like to minimise what they can get.
Example: I held a work meeting a few months ago, in a building where one of my colleagues couldn’t be allowed in unescorted. I asked her to SMS message me when she got there, which she did. Two words: “I’m here”.
A couple of days later when I logged into Facebook via browser on my laptop, she’s the first name in the “People you may know” list. My phone didn’t have the Facebook App, only FB messenger. Permissions for Messenger were locked right down, no access to anything essentially. She’d messaged me from a business phone, not personal.
That was when I deleted my account completely.
The amount of data harvesting going on is scary, and I’m not comfortable with that. I suspect they may also be gathering location data, which becomes even more concerning.
If they’re hacked, a threat actor will be able to gather a lot of potentially very damaging data, so I’ve taken the view that I don’t want anything of mine on their platform. They’ll still be harvesting data about online activity, but I’d like to minimise what they can get.
Edited by Magnum 475 on Saturday 5th April 08:50
Edited by Magnum 475 on Saturday 5th April 08:55
OzzyR1 said:
Getting sick and tired of the ever increasing intrusiveness of social media.
<snip>
It's bloody irritating - never contemplated using a VPN before & not too clued up on them - would it stop this sort of thing?
Any other ways of preventing browsing/apps/WiFi telling tales on me?
Cheers for any input.
VPN won't help. It's your device permissions and cache.<snip>
It's bloody irritating - never contemplated using a VPN before & not too clued up on them - would it stop this sort of thing?
Any other ways of preventing browsing/apps/WiFi telling tales on me?
Cheers for any input.
The only way to stop it is to studiously go through all settings for hardware, and all settings for App, and all Account settings for any 'product' i.e Facebook.
For personal/ private shopping, use a restricted browser (like Brave/ DuckDuck etc) or Incognito.
A weaker alternative is to just change settings for 'Targeted Advertising'. At a minimum you'll then see unrelated advertising.
Last week me and the missus were away on Honeymoon. One day we went to swim with dolphins, we shared the very small boat with another couple from South Africa, never met them before in my life, we all had our phones on us.
That night "people you may know" popped up with both the woman and man. They must use your location data and see who you have spent time with recently (we spent about 3-4 hours with them).
That night "people you may know" popped up with both the woman and man. They must use your location data and see who you have spent time with recently (we spent about 3-4 hours with them).
Location data is worrying, because it seems it is being used somehow even when the App settings are set to “ Do not allow” for location data.
In some cases, this becomes more worrying. If you work in “Sensitive” locations, can this be picked up by the app? And if it can, what are Meta, TikTok, etc doing with that data??
In some cases, this becomes more worrying. If you work in “Sensitive” locations, can this be picked up by the app? And if it can, what are Meta, TikTok, etc doing with that data??
Magnum 475 said:
Location data is worrying, because it seems it is being used somehow even when the App settings are set to “ Do not allow” for location data.
In some cases, this becomes more worrying. If you work in “Sensitive” locations, can this be picked up by the app? And if it can, what are Meta, TikTok, etc doing with that data??
In theory, only your network provider can access the mobile's location without it being explicitly permitted.In some cases, this becomes more worrying. If you work in “Sensitive” locations, can this be picked up by the app? And if it can, what are Meta, TikTok, etc doing with that data??
The Apps are probably getting it from cell tower and wifi connections. Media giants are scraping uploaded image metadata too.
vaud said:
For Facebook I just use false data.
Wrong DOB, name, etc and just use it for the local village groups which are genuinely quite useful.
So if they are hacked my data would be mostly useless.
If you have the app installed on your phone or anyone else takes and uploads photos on your birthday (even without tagging you) they already know the truth. Wrong DOB, name, etc and just use it for the local village groups which are genuinely quite useful.
So if they are hacked my data would be mostly useless.
They even have profiles for people without profiles, courtesy of image processing and data mining.
Very, very insidious product.
Being on Facebook and wanting privacy are pretty much mutually exclusive. Facebook exists to spy on you. They were even caught trying to use the mobile camera when the app was in the background. You would certainly want rid of Instagram and Threads too.
Google is no better. So you would want Apple phones.
After that there are alternate browsers with stricter privacy settings. It all works but it can be an inconvenience, signing you out of everything all the time. Alternate search engines too.
A VPN would be the last thing you would consider. And you would have to have it on all of your devices and set them to different locations.
Your phone company knows your location all the time, too. There is no end to it.
Google is no better. So you would want Apple phones.
After that there are alternate browsers with stricter privacy settings. It all works but it can be an inconvenience, signing you out of everything all the time. Alternate search engines too.
A VPN would be the last thing you would consider. And you would have to have it on all of your devices and set them to different locations.
Your phone company knows your location all the time, too. There is no end to it.
A Pixel phone with GrapheneOS installed on it is a good place to start for privacy, delete all social media profiles.
Whatsapp for example is owned by Meta. Signal/Telegram are other options, I know Signal has been in the media recently but because somebody added somebody to a chat they shouldn't.
Whatsapp for example is owned by Meta. Signal/Telegram are other options, I know Signal has been in the media recently but because somebody added somebody to a chat they shouldn't.
Baldchap said:
If you have the app installed on your phone or anyone else takes and uploads photos on your birthday (even without tagging you) they already know the truth.
They even have profiles for people without profiles, courtesy of image processing and data mining.
Very, very insidious product.
Given how dull my life is, I don’t really care.They even have profiles for people without profiles, courtesy of image processing and data mining.
Very, very insidious product.
the-norseman said:
Signal/Telegram are other options...
I'm not convinced that Telegram isn't up to mischief too.When I'm in the office there's no mobile signal so I rely on the company wi-fi to tell the OH I've arrived at work safely. I use Whatsapp for this. For a time Whatsapp wouldn't work over the company wi-fi, so I installed Telegram with a view to trying this out instead.
I deliberately used a completely ambiguous username so I didn't end up with friends/family who might be on there connecting with me as I might want to delete it again if it didn't work or if the Whatsapp issue was fixed.
There should have been no way anyone I know who happened to be on Telegram would have found me in a search and known it was me, yet a neighbour who we're friends with messaged me on there within a day or two of me joining and knew it was me. How was this possible?
They must have had a notification on Telegram suggesting me as a contact and explicitly identifying me to the extent that they were able to message me and start with "Hi Mitch...", even though nothing in my Telegram profile revealed who I was.
I'm literally at the point of sacking off these massaging apps and using email for all communication.
EmailAddress said:
They've probably allowed the App access to their Contacts which in turn has your phone number or email.
I can't access the app now to check as it seems to want me to register again, but I'm pretty sure it enabled me to say I didn't want it to connect to my contacts when I set it up before. Is it too much to ask for an instant messenger that can be kept independent from your contacts and other apps? Literally need a burner phone! MitchT said:
EmailAddress said:
They've probably allowed the App access to their Contacts which in turn has your phone number or email.
I can't access the app now to check as it seems to want me to register again, but I'm pretty sure it enabled me to say I didn't want it to connect to my contacts when I set it up before. Is it too much to ask for an instant messenger that can be kept independent from your contacts and other apps? Literally need a burner phone! Your phone footprint, phone number, email etc are still the same, even if you anonymised the App setup.
i.e I can leave my house in a Teletubbie costume but the postman still knows who lives here.
It's a similar issue with DNA and its sale. I may never have consented to an exploration, but if anyone in my family ever has they've now narrowed down a pool of 8billion randoms to <100 folks.
Getting away with murder is just not a easy as it used to be || spoilt hobbies.
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