Meta sued for skirting Apple’s privacy rules to collect data
Tech giant Meta Platforms Inc is facing a proposed class-action complaint that states it allegedly build a secret work-around to safeguards that Apple Inc launched last year to protect iPhone users from having their internet activity tracked.
In their complaint filed on Wednesday in San Francisco federal court, two Facebook users have accused the company of skirting Apple’s 2021 privacy rules and violating state and federal laws limiting the unauthorised collection of personal data, Bloomberg reported.
This comes after a similar complaint was filed in the San Francisco federal court last week.
Complaints have been filed in the court based on a report by data privacy researcher Felix Krause.
Earlier, Krause said that Meta’s Facebook and Instagram apps for Apple’s iOS inject JavaScript code onto websites visited by users. He stated that the code allowed the apps to track “anything you do on any website,” including typing passwords, the Bloomberg report stated.
As per the complaint, Facebook gets around Apple privacy rules by opening web links in an in-app browser, rather than the user’s default browser. “This allows Meta to intercept, monitor and record its users’ interactions and communications with third parties, providing data to Meta that it aggregates, analyzes, and uses to boost its advertising revenue,” according to the suit.
(With inputs from agencies)
