What fresh hell is this?
Why on earth would Twitter, of all things, need access to my network devices from my iPhone?
The answer, of course, is to sell my data to advertisers. But why would I want Twitter to have access to that data?
I wouldn’t. And there are precious few scenarios I can imagine where anyone would want to give Twitter that access.
Evidently this has been going on for a while, but it seems like a huge security hole to me, and another vector by which a malicious attacker could launch a cross-app privilege escalation attack.
Tags: data security, Media Watch, Twitter
Not just to sell to advertisers and data farms, but it’s juicy info for intelligence agencies & law enforcement.
Biggest reason not to is just because Jack Dorsey is a human stain.
Another question might be, why the hell would you install twitter’s software on any of your machines if you didn’t want them stealing your data?
Probably to configure printing, the AirPrint functionality of printers on your network is discovered this way.
If you’re still using FB or Twitter at this point, you’re just into the abuse
Looking for Alexa, Apple, and Google (maybe Cortana?) devices. If you have a Roku with voice control, or smart TV it might connect to that too. Ostensibly for ease of use, but I isolated phones and “smart” devices to different subnets. My garage door opener had an api that provided all sorts of network info including Mac addresses, subnets, security level, ssid, you name it.
When you first set up a new iPhone, it sends all of the MAC addresses it can find – when you first install a SIM card – to Apple. Apple could never explain why the “privacy phone” company would do this.
Every app that has a “use Facebook to login” option sends a ton of data to F*c*book, even if you don’t have a F*c*book account. (They actually send more data if you don’t, because if you do use F*c*book, they already know a lot about you)
It goes on from there…
Yet another reason to never use specialized “apps”.
Use the web access and do your best to make your browser trustworthy…
I think the pertinent question is “why do you have Twitter on your phone at all?”
Why are you continuing to support and enrich a company that hates you and everything you believe in?
You’re in an abusive relationship that you feel trapped in; you won’t leave it because you can’t live without that entity that keeps punching you in the face.
Doesn’t seem very healthy to me.
Your location can be accurately detected (to within a couple of feet at times) by what radio networks are available to connect to. This isn’t even secret data, maps of all wifi networks available in the US are public, and anyone could calculate it if they have a list of the closest network(s).
This is a big reason why governments are eager for 5G technology. Once wifi signals are ubiquitous, it means your location can be tracked everywhere at all times. Total surveillance is the goal.
Based in the Netherlands, an obscure but powerful browser site called “SmartPage” dates from about 2006.
In brief, this privacy-dedicated site A) Never collects or sells search history; B) Uses no third-party ad trackers, cookies, or penetrable algorithmic databases; and C) Provides absolute browsing-searching anonymity, erasing all interim cyber-traces every six hours.
Because Firefox and other intrusive interlopers hate individual security, their various portals never list SmartPage as a startup option. As we’ve found, fisking these crypto-police/surveillance thugmeisters requires saving SmartPage’s installation routine (below) as a Bookmark, then clicking on it when Big Data’s smarmy home-page –for example, Firefox in “private browsing” mode– comes up:
https://eu.startpage.com/?sc=Qk1528LcOKhY00&cat=web&language=english&lui=english&t=dawn [clicking SmartPage will include this as an option].
Running this, even with its “?sc” ID component, bypasses Firefox & Co.’s
clandestine date-theft routines, while the fact that SmartPage erases one’s data-trail four times a day renders Twitface Jack et al. impotent in face of non-existent traffic.
As an aside we never communicate anything whatever via so-called “social media”, using strong 15+ element alpha-numeric, certifiably random-generated, one-time pass-codes for all online transmissions.
Too much trouble?– wait’ll your friendly local Stasi/KGB node copies a “domestic violent-extremist” (DVE) text (anti AGW, contra-pandemic Vaxx-addiction, any non-CRT/PCBS reference whatever) to your naive l’il account, proceeding then to harass-intimidate-threaten (HIT) every aspect of your anonymous, autonomous, free-association existence.
Solemque suum, sua sidera nolunt.