Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

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How is instagram spying on me? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 3 months ago by countrypunk@slrpnk.net to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I want to preface this by saying that yes, I know that Instagram is bad. I am planning to get rid of it in the future but as of now I have to keep it for communication with people who are only on that platform.

So I have grapheneOS, use protonvpn (free version), use mull as my browser, and do not have google play services enabled on my phone. I do have some apps downloaded through aurora store such as Instagram, whatsapp, mychart, and mint mobile, but the rest came from f-droid.

I have noticed multiple times that after having private conversations on matrix, I get Instagram content in my feed that is scarily accurate to the conversation I had on the other platform immediately after. I know that things discussed in Instagram direct messages and group chat will give suggested content based on those conversations, but I get stuff that that is very specific to what I have ONLY discussed on matrix and didn't look up via my browser.

So my question is how is Instagram doing this and what can I do to mitigate the spying it's doing on my other apps. Thanks.

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[–] Zak@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

Phones also have web browsers, and Instagram is usable that way (several years ago, it was not). It is possible that privacy protections will look like automated behaviors to their systems.

Using an app on a device that's used for little else and has minimal data stored and apps installed on it also limits the potential for data leaks, though probably not as effectively as the browser, particularly when your browser is Mull.