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Xinja - We Hardly Knew Ya

ACCC Sues Facebook

Australia’s consumer watchdog has launched Federal Court action against tech giant Facebook,
The ACCC is alleging two of its subsidiaries secretly collected and aggregated users’ personal data for Facebook’s commercial benefit.
The action relates to Facebook’s Onavo Protect mobile app, which provided a virtual private network (VPN) for users.
For those that don’t remember, Onavo was ‘data saving’ VPN client for Android and iOS, that Facebook purchased and rebranded in 2013
In 2019, Techcrunch revealed Facebook had been using the traffic of Onavo users to find what other apps were popular amongst young people - helping guide its purchases of competitors Instagram and Whatsapp
When Onavo was removed from the Apple App Store for this reason, Facebook relaunched the App under its developer program
It paid users $20 to install the app, in a move that violated Apple’s developer program
Apple revoked Facebook's Enterprise Developer Program, and for a few days no Facebook employee could test any of the company’s apps. It’s probably the harshest penalty Apple has ever given one of the big tech companies
Facebook said “We will review the recent filing by the ACCC and will continue to defend our position in response to this recent filing.”

Sticking with Facebook and Apple..

iOS 14.3 is live and part of the update includes the new privacy policy
The new policy lists all the ways an app uses your data, including what it requests and uploads
I’m disappointed to see the list is only on the App Store, and only then it is truncated at first view, so you just get a summary
But if you click through to the full list, even if you are a techy, you’ll be amazed at the amount of stuff facebook grabs from you, including all your contacts, cross referenced with all your contacts contacts, etc
We’ve included a tweet in the show notes from MacRumours, that scrolls through the facebook privacy notice. Grab a cup of tea before hitting play on it
I’d really love to see this list as a splash screen for all apps on launch!

And topping off a very bad, inevitable week for big tech..

The European Union Tuesday unveiled sweeping new proposals to control tech industry giants as "gatekeepers" who could be fined up to 10% of their revenue for breaking EU rules on competition.
The EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA)...
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