The amount and types of data a mobile app can access is infinitely higher than a web app.
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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Privacy
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True.
But whether usage data is transmitted back to the service needs a quick check too. For example, compare accessing Gmail via its web app and via a boring IMAP mail client. Or in the old days, Twitter's web app and an app like Tweetbot.
Website using Mull, Ublock origin and Noscript. Or on the Desktop Librewolf + the same
In this case, is using the web version of the app (which is often an option) more private? I’m assuming mobile Safari with privacy relay, plus some extensions to stop trackers etc.
Long story short: probably.
The crucial bit in this example is that the extensions explicitly blocks code being executed on your device used to track you. They aren't a silver bullet, though.
Officially on iOS it is forbidden to track users' activity on between apps and websites unless the user explicitly grants it via the AppTrackingTransparency framework (https://developer.apple.com/app-store/user-privacy-and-data-use/).
Not a silver bullet either.
Whether there is a significant difference how usage data is used and abused from accessing content via a website versus mobile app is a tricky question to answer definitively. We can measure things like network requests, blocked scripts. We can read policies which promise stuff and can be enforced through courts etc. But things happen behind closed doors like selling data through legal loopholes, grey areas, and data breaches. It's a big business.
If you've got any specific examples we could dig a bit deeper. Assuming you're Australian: I just checked first news provider that came to mind and found that https://abc.net.au can be read easily without Javascript enabled at all. That's hard to beat.
Thank you. That’s very helpful.
And yep, https://www.abc.net.au/news is exactly one of the sites I was thinking of. I notice their app makes many calls to firebaselogging-pa.googleapis.com and similar. Sending who knows what.
Moving to the web version I’m hoping can blunt such things. On iOS I use AdGuard, Hush, and StopTheMadness. https://d3ward.github.io/toolz/adblock.html tells me I’m not doing too bad in terms of ads and tracking.
Two others which are pretty bad with their apps but have very similar webpages:
For news in particular, RSS feeds are a great option if you can find them. No ads, no Javascript, purely chronological sorting of articles. Here's some feed links for SBS, for example: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/feeds/nbv1rs3kw I highly recommend the open source app NetNewsWire for iOS.
Yes! Excellent advice!
I am a big fan of RSS and have been using it as my primary source of info for at least a decade.
I actually already had SBS but only just now realised that ABC pages (eg “just in”) can be entered directly and it’ll find the RSS version (using Reeder at least).
Do you have advice about how to centralise/organise RSS? I use Feedly as a cloud source that I point Reeder at (have also been playing with Fiery Feeds). But I can’t help but think there’s a better way that doesn’t involve a third party (again, privacy).
Nice! I actually didn't know they had RSS feeds at all, so I'm going to help my news junky friend get set up with them. Thanks for the tip on the ABC RSS! :)
Right now I've got NetNewsWire configured to use my iCloud account (which uses CloudKit under the hood), so that syncs my iPhone and iPad. This still involves a 3rd party - Apple's magic hosted database service thing - but I'm ok with this for now.
Ideally I would set up something like FreshRSS and host it on one of my own servers. FreshRSS exposes the old Google Reader API which NetNewsWire and Reeder can use to sync feeds. Personally I'm not interested in the FreshRSS web interface and I'm not too keen on running a PHP app either. So I'm considering writing my own service which serves the bare minimum required to be able to point apps like NetNewsWire and Reeder at.