I was planning to wait and see what Boost has to offer before deciding if I should pay $20 to remove ads on Sync, but seeing this has convinced me to delete the app for good. Even Reddit isn’t half as bad as Sync when it comes to trackers and shady ads.

  • im stuff@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    97·
    1 year ago

    we seriously need some kind of disclaimer for what duck duck go is doing on y’all’s phones. i don’t even use the app and i’ve seen a dozen posts exactly like this.

    TLDR: ddg includes data from ANY website you visit from within the app’s built-in browser in its results. since basically every modern website is also a privacy nightmare, this will show up in ddg’s statistics

      • shameless@lemmy.worldEnglish
        17·
        1 year ago

        Speaking of alarmist. This reminds me of the app called “Zone Alarm” back in the day people would install it as a “firewall” it would then periodically pop up saying it blocked some hacking attempt from a foreign country. Obviously it was all a scam to get the person to buy the pro version, I wonder if that’s kind of what we are going through with some of these apps that “block” tracking attempts

        • typo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I’ve got nothing to add to the ddg discussion but today is the first time I’ve heard of ZoneAlarm. But I saw a post to a Firefox community about the latest update that included support for it and a couple people mentioned it. Just an amusing coincidence

    • Botree@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      Try it and report back. I’m genuinely curious to see if it’s what you’re claiming it to be on your end, cause I have yet to see any FOSS Lemmy apps getting triggered in DDG, no matter what links I click. Maybe I’m just lucky?

      The biggest alarm in this thread is everyone thinking that apps are at the whim of advertising companies and completely innocent on their part. They are not. Ads can work without trackers and devs can prevent users from being tracked within embedded browsers.

      • couragethebravedog@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I have seen multiple foss lemmy apps do this. Here’s what I’ll do though. I am going to use the sync app for a day and not click any external links. I’ll then post the results here and we can compare.