Gadgets
Facebook’s App Store Privacy Labels: What They Mean for Your Data
The social media giant had to disclose how it collects data after Apple made it mandatory last December for apps to submit the information with reviews for app updates or new app listings. The privacy labels suggest Facebook uses important data like contact information to track users across other websites and apps.
Where can I see Facebook’s privacy labels?
Head to Facebook’s App Store listing and scroll down to a section called App Privacy. This section details all the data collection and tracking practices by the social media giant. You can click on ‘See Details’ at the top right corner of the section for more intricate information.
What kind of data does Facebook use to track users across other websites and apps?
Facebook collects contact information data like physical address, email address, name and phone number and uses it to track you across other websites and apps. It also uses identifiers like User ID and Device ID as well. User ID can be screen name, handle, account ID, assigned user ID, customer number, or other user- or account-level ID that can be used to identify a particular user or account.
What kind of data does Facebook collect to for third-party advertising or developers’ advertising/marketing?
For the purpose of showing third-party ads, Facebook collects users’ purchase history, and financial information such as salary, income, assets, or debts. It even accesses users’ precise location, coarse location, contacts, physical address, email address, name and phone number. Additionally, Facebook peeps into users’ photos and videos, gameplay content (such as saved games, multiplayer matching or gameplay logic, or user-generated content in-game), search history, browsing history, User ID, and device ID.
Product interaction such as app launches, taps, clicks, scrolling information, music listening data, video views, saved place in a game, video, or song, or other information about how the user interacts with the app is also recorded for third-party advertising purposes. Facebook also collects advertising data such as information about the advertisements the user has seen. If this was not enough, the social media app also sees your crash logs and performance data such as launch time, hang rate, and energy use.
Besides third-party advertising, Facebook also uses all of the same data for its own marketing and advertising purposes such as displaying first-party ads in your app, sending marketing communications directly to you, or sharing data with entities who will display your ads.
What kind of data does Facebook collect for analytics?
In its privacy labels, Facebook has disclosed that it also collects a varied amount of data for analytics. This means it uses data to evaluate user behaviour, including understanding the effectiveness of existing product features, plan new features, or measure audience size or characteristics. The app collects health and medical data, including but not limited to data from the Clinical Health Records API, HealthKit API, MovementDisorderAPIs, or health-related human subject research or any other user provided health or medical data. It also collects fitness and exercise data, including but not limited to the Motion and Fitness API.
Apart from this, Facebook uses payment information like form of payment, payment card number, or bank account number for analytics. It also uses purchase history, precise location, coarse location, contacts, physical address, email address, name, phone number, photos, videos, and gameplay content. The company says it looks into the user’s voice or sound recordings and data generated by the user during a customer support request for analytics.
Additionally, Facebook looks at search history, browsing history, User ID, Device ID, product interactions, advertising data, crash logs, and performance data as well. The company mentions that it looks at sensitive information like racial or ethnic data, sexual orientation, pregnancy or childbirth information, disability, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, political opinion, genetic information, or biometric data for analytics only.
What kind of data does Facebook collect for product personalisation and improved app functionality?
Product personalisation means customising what the user sees, such as a list of recommended products, posts, or suggestions. App Functionality, on the other hand, means data used to authenticate the user, enable features, prevent fraud, implement security measures, ensure server up-time, minimize app crashes, improve scalability and performance, or perform customer support. Facebook says that it collects purchase history, financial information, precise location, coarse location, physical address, email address, name, phone number, contacts, photos, videos, gameplay content, search history, browsing history, User ID, Device ID, crash logs, performance data, product interactions, advertising data, and sensitive information for product personalisation.
For improving app functionality, Facebook uses health and fitness data, purchase history, payment information, credit score, precise location, coarse location, physical address, email address, name, phone number, contacts, emails, texts, photos, videos, audio data, gameplay content, customer support data, search history, browsing history, User ID, Device ID, product interactions, advertising data, sensitive information, crash logs, and performance data.
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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