Some users have noticed settings that let Meta analyze and retain phone photos

Meta isn’t just crawling your photos. If you gave it permission not just “While using the app” to anything, it’s gathering up metadata about you and sending it home. Contacts, emails, location, imei, photos, video exif, browser history if you happen to open a mini-safari view from an ad, app usage statistics, your IP address, your device information, anything they can gather - they are.

I uninstalled Facebook, Meta, MetaQuest, Instagram and deleted my accounts. I’ll never put one of their apps on my phone again.

> Facebook, Meta, MetaQuest, Instagram and deleted my accounts. I’ll never put one of their apps on my phone again.

Hope you also removed WhatsApp, a very popular chat app especially outside the USA.

Yup, anything Meta backed, not on my phone.

Even without permission, they're doing as much as they can technically manage: https://localmess.github.io/

Uninstall is indeed the only option. There is no way in hell this is the last time they do something like this, nor is it the first.

Some of those data brokers have no qualms with breaking cybersecurity laws either.

I specifically refuse to have any Google or Meta apps on my phone. Yes, my phone is an iPhone made by Apple, but I figure I'll put all my eggs in one violator's basket. At least this violator has a financial incentive not to siphon and sell all my information.

Oh but they do, however, what’s the alternative? PinePhone? LibreRola? At least I know Apple cares about encryption and keeps the keys to the kingdom behind paywalled doors.

The amount of malware installed on Android just from visiting a website is crazy.

> The amount of malware installed on Android just from visiting a website is crazy.

What do you mean by this? Is it because of the embedded browsers that pop up before Chrome/Firefox? I thought that was your own browser in some special session (that hopefully doesn't retain state).

...and it's unlikely the police or three-letter organizations would cut off one of their main sources of information by enforcing laws against them.

I mean some ad, hijacking the page, before the click of some grandma registers, and volla! Now they’re on the play store about to download some “game” called royal kingdom and since they have the attention span of a gnat, they install it for a fun afternoon.

Or same hijack ad shows some bogus virus scan result, convincing grandma to click. Or drive-by download where it redirects to some infected pdf you end up downloading.

Yes, they all require a click, an install, some action. But it’s so cleverly disguised that unless you’re really diligent, someone’s going to get your credit card.

The worst are the drive-by downloads because a user doesn’t have to do anything. Once the pdf is on the phone, the phone access it, releasing the malware.

"People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks."