Facebook scans system libraries on Android and uploads them to their server

Re:Facebook scans system libraries on Android and uploads th... by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Friday August 30, 2019 @03:35PM (#20841826)

Ok, so let's say you've solved this problem tomorrow. You've just made it impossible for an application to know which OS version, security patch level, and hardware revision it is running on, meaning it can't do anything like dynamically adjust itself depending on features (or bugs) it will know are available or not. It also can't submit any of this in crash reports, so fixing bugs that occur in rare combinations of hardware and software is now much more problematic.

All to prevent... what? If you log into Facebook, which is presumably why you have the application, then it already knows who you are. Not to mention the hundreds of other ways to fingerprint you.

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Re:Facebook scans system libraries on Android and uploads th... by mirimir on Friday August 30, 2019 @06:26PM (#20843288)

There are situations where different people use the same machine to access Facebook. And indeed, where they also (foolishly, I know) expect that Facebook will preserve mutual privacy. Partners. Parents and children. Siblings.

So Facebook, if it's relying on hardware/software fingerprinting, might compromise multiple users to each other.

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