The parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Meta, has been sued by two Facebook users in the US for monitoring their online browsing patterns.
According to the lawsuit, the Facebook app’s built-in browser unknowingly provides Facebook privacy-sensitive data. The Facebook app would achieve this by getting beyond iPhones’ tracking protection.
Last year, Apple enhanced the tracking security of its iPhone and iPad operating system. That should stop tech firms like Meta and Google from monitoring users’ browsing patterns. The lawsuit claims that Meta uses the Facebook app’s built-in browser to get around this security.
The two accusations are supported by a study by data privacy expert Felix Krause. He claims that when users access websites using the built-in browser, the Facebook and Instagram applications upload JavaScript (programming code) to such sites. Meta would be able to monitor “anything you do on a website,” including entering passwords.
A Meta representative in the Netherlands was unable to respond to inquiries about the lawsuits. The representative acknowledged that built-in browsers are widespread “across the industry.”
🗣 “We use built-in browsers in the app to let users surf the Internet safely, easily, and reliably,” the spokesperson said. “Correcting or completing Web addresses prevents people from being redirected to malicious sites.”
“Adding this type of feature requires additional programming code. We carefully designed the code to respect users’ privacy choices,” the spokesperson said. Meta denies that the company illegally collects data from users.
