Menu
EN

One does not simply delete Facebook

Calls to "delete Facebook" across different social media are growing in popularity. This is users’ reaction to recent publications in media about how a certain analytics company purchased personal data of 50 Million Facebook users from one of the app’s developer, and then proceeded to use this information to influence elections and political campaigns outcomes.

Facebook accumulates immense amounts of information about people and gives third-party apps access to this information. And in reality developers of these apps can easily sell this data, or use it in any other way that goes against their own policies.

The problem is, even if you delete the Facebook app from your smartphone and never ever again visit their website, you still won’t be able to stop analytics companies from gathering information about you or to control its use. Facebook is secretly present in numerous mobile apps, thanks to a product called Facebook Audience Network.

This is an ad network and a service to analyze app audiences, two in one. Developers sign up for Audience Network to monetize their apps through ads and to analyze their users. Well, it is Facebook who does the ‘analyze’ part — effectively, you are sharing your data with the social network giant even if you haven’t used it once in your life, just by installing some other app and giving it permissions.

According to the Facebook privacy policy, it can collect and store data about its partners’ users, even if those users have not registered an account on the social network.

We did a research on Android mobile apps to find out what information they hand out to Facebook, what are possible ways to process it and how big of a problem it is.

Methodology

We developed an automated platform to analyze top apps from Google Play. Each app gets installed on the device, its traffic gets scanned and analyzed, then the app’s code gets decompiled and analyzed, too. We applied this method to the top 2,556 popular apps (by the androidrank.org information). We have already used this platform before to discover popular apps stealing your email address.

Our research does not cover iOS apps per se, but general principles of Apple ecosystem are similar to those of Android. There are also developer tools, there are also ad networks and trackers that provide their owners information about users — nothing that you haven’t heard of by that point.

Research Summary

  • We scanned the top 2556 most popular Google Play apps.
  • We recorded all these apps network activities and data they send to remote servers.
  • We discovered that there are two obvious leaders that collect most of the information. Obviously, one of them is Google. The second one is Facebook. It appears that "Facebook Audience Network" is the most popular third-party service among the surveyed apps.

What data is being collected

We observed that on a device with no Facebook apps installed, it collects at least the information listed below.

  • Google Advertising ID "is a unique, user-resettable ID for advertising, provided by Google Play services".

  • Device information (OS, brand, model, screen resolution).

  • Language code and timezone.

  • Mobile carrier name.

  • App information including the name of the current activity. It does not sound too bad, but consider this: it is often used in the apps that work with private information (banking apps for instance), and activity names might be pretty descriptive (i.e. TransferFundsActivity).

  • Your IP address.

    Ensuring accurate location and device-level information for our platform is paramount and one of the core signals we use is the device IP.

  • Whatever the app developer decides to include additionally. For instance, they can send information about in-app purchases, user registration, etc.

Here is what Facebook is telling about that in their privacy policy.

Apparently, "Services" are not just Facebook own apps. And, by the way, Audience Network is not the only tool that Facebook offers to developers.

Not just Facebook

Facebook is not the only company that wants to grab your sweet data through analytics, ad networks, and other developer-oriented services. Google, Yahoo and a lot of other lesser companies are known to do that.

Trackers that belong to various Google services, for example, were discovered in 62.5% of all apps (this is not surprising, though, considering that Google owns Android itself). Even Chinese Alibaba got ‘caught in the brights’ during our research; to be fair, it was only present in less than 3.8% of apps we checked.

What can you do to get rid of Facebook for real?

Actually, it is not that hard. All the information is sent to a single domain graph.facebook.com. So to make sure that nothing leaks to Facebook, block this domain in your mobile ad blocker. Please note, that you'd need an ad blocker capable of network-level device-wide blocking. For instance, both AdGuard for Android and AdGuard Pro for iOS can block it device-wide on the network-level.

  • Photo source: Businessinsider.com
Liked this post?
By downloading the comments you agree the terms and policies

AdGuard for Windows

AdGuard for Windows is more than an ad blocker. It is a multipurpose tool that blocks ads, controls access to dangerous sites, speeds up page loading, and protects children from inappropriate content.
User Reviews: 12906
4.7 out of 5
By downloading the program you accept the terms of the License agreement
Read more

AdGuard for Mac

AdGuard for Mac is a unique ad blocker designed with macOS in mind. In addition to protecting you from annoying ads in browsers and apps, it shields you from tracking, phishing, and fraud.
User Reviews: 12906
4.7 out of 5
By downloading the program you accept the terms of the License agreement
Read more

AdGuard for Android

AdGuard for Android is a perfect solution for Android devices. Unlike most other ad blockers, AdGuard doesn't require root access and provides a wide range of app management options.
User Reviews: 12906
4.7 out of 5
By downloading the program you accept the terms of the License agreement

AdGuard for iOS

The most advanced ad blocker for Safari: it makes you forget about pop-up ads, speeds up page loading, and protects your personal data. A manual element-blocking tool and highly customizable settings help you tailor the filtering to your exact needs.
User Reviews: 12906
4.7 out of 5
By downloading the program you accept the terms of the License agreement

AdGuard Browser Extension

AdGuard is the fastest and most lightweight ad blocking extension that effectively blocks all types of ads on all web pages! Choose AdGuard for the browser you use and get ad-free, fast and safe browsing.
User Reviews: 12906
4.7 out of 5

AdGuard for Safari

Ad blocking extensions for Safari are having hard time since Apple started to force everyone to use the new SDK. AdGuard extension is supposed to bring back the high quality ad blocking back to Safari.
User Reviews: 12906
4.7 out of 5
App Store
Download
By downloading the program you accept the terms of the License agreement

AdGuard Home

AdGuard Home is a network-wide software for blocking ads & tracking. After you set it up, it’ll cover ALL your home devices, and you don’t need any client-side software for that. With the rise of Internet-Of-Things and connected devices, it becomes more and more important to be able to control your whole network.
User Reviews: 12906
4.7 out of 5

AdGuard Content Blocker

AdGuard Content Blocker will eliminate all kinds of ads in mobile browsers that support content blocker technology — namely, Samsung Internet and Yandex.Browser. While being more limited than AdGuard for Android, it is free, easy to install and still provides high ad blocking quality.
User Reviews: 12906
4.7 out of 5
By downloading the program you accept the terms of the License agreement
Read more

AdGuard Assistant

A companion browser extension for AdGuard desktop apps. It offers an in-browser access to such features as custom element blocking, allowlisting a website or sending a report.
User Reviews: 12906
4.7 out of 5
Assistant for Chrome Is it your current browser?
Install
By downloading the program you accept the terms of the License agreement
Assistant for Firefox Is it your current browser?
Install
By downloading the program you accept the terms of the License agreement
Assistant for Edge Is it your current browser?
Install
By downloading the program you accept the terms of the License agreement
Assistant for Opera Is it your current browser?
Install
By downloading the program you accept the terms of the License agreement
Assistant for Yandex Is it your current browser?
Install
By downloading the program you accept the terms of the License agreement
Assistant for Safari Is it your current browser?
If you can't find your browser, try the old legacy Assistant version, which you can find in AdGuard extension settings.

AdGuard Temp Mail β

A free temporary email address generator that keeps you anonymous and protects your privacy. No spam in your main inbox!
User Reviews: 12906
4.7 out of 5

AdGuard for Android TV

AdGuard for Android TV is the only app that blocks ads, guards your privacy, and acts as a firewall for your Smart TV. Get warnings about web threats, use secure DNS, and benefit from encrypted traffic. Relax and dive into your favorite shows with top-notch security and zero ads!
User Reviews: 12906
4.7 out of 5
Downloading AdGuard To install AdGuard, click the file indicated by the arrow Select "Open" and click "OK", then wait for the file to be downloaded. In the opened window, drag the AdGuard icon to the "Applications" folder. Thank you for choosing AdGuard! Select "Open" and click "OK", then wait for the file to be downloaded. In the opened window, click "Install". Thank you for choosing AdGuard!
Install AdGuard on your mobile device