In the few short hours since I started using #Threads, #DuckDuckGo has already blocked over 200 data tracking attempts. These include things like "headphone status" and "screen density."
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Holy crap are you kidding? Mastodon IIRC requires zero priviliges/personal information to run.
Also, what the hell does it need "headphone status" for?
Bluetooth headphones have unique identifying information. Another data point for apps that the headphone jack doesn't provide.
Honestly not defending them because the android app can potentially track your credit score, but this is probably to pause videos when headphones unplug and perform similar actions.
But it seems like DuckDuckGo is blocking them, which implies the system that's tracking that is trying to upload that data onto a server, not just using it for pausing videos and stuff.
Right, it wouldn’t need to communicate to corporate, just to the app itself.
You both are probably right I forgot this was the android app. Meta has a habit of sending everything they could possibly ever get incase someone wants to buy it. Although I could see them using that for BI purposes to be like X Users were wearing headphones on these types of posts, but that may be giving them too much credit.
No - DuckDuckGo blocks the app from getting the data. It doesn't know if that particular data is being sent over the internet or not. Seeing headphone status in its list just means the app tried to check the headphone status, not that it tried to send it anywhere.
Determine if you're a candidate for headphone ads.
Could just be another piece of data that can build a more unique fingerprint for you.