Tech Brief: Is #DeleteFacebook That Easy?

Thanks to a series of privacy blunders, #DeleteFacebook is now a thing. But is that it? Is it that easy to get away from the panopticon's prying eyes? AdGuard's new research suggests that it's not: "The problem is, even if you delete the Facebook app from your smartphone and never ever again visit their website, you still won’t be able to stop analytics companies from gathering information about you or to control its use. Facebook is secretly present in numerous mobile apps, thanks to a product called Facebook Audience Network."

What AdGuard's research found (Screengrab from Aguard)

Here's what they found after analysing 2,556 popular apps on the Google Play store: 41 percent of them were communicating with Facebook Audience Network, and even more troublingly, none of them sought explicit user consent prior to tracking. But it's not just Facebook, mind you. There is Google, Yahoo, Twitter and just about every other company that lives off adtech, implying the general unsaid truth that "contemporary internet runs on the exploitation of user data." (Tip: To get a taste of what all of this looks like, you can install an extension like uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger on your browser.)