On Thursday, the text-based Instagram alternative Threads by Meta was made available in more than 100 nations. Mark Zuckerberg’s app, which is often regarded as a direct rival to Twitter, has experienced rapid growth in popularity and record-breaking downloads. Its privacy policies and demands for user data collecting, however, have also come under scrutiny.
Does Thread collects data points?
The Threads software gathers even more specific data than Twitter, including a user’s health information and “sensitive” information. Despite the fact that Twitter appears to collect significantly less personal information than Threads, research from Top10VPN shows that it still uses 10 data points to track users around the internet, despite the fact that the new Meta app purports to do so not at all.
While Twitter does not, threads compile the following noteworthy user-related data points:
Financial Info: Credit Info, Payment Info, Other Financial Info
Contact Info: Name, Physical Address, Phone Number, Other User Contact Info
Health & Fitness: Health data, Fitness data
User-related Content: Emails or Text Messages
Search History
Sensitive Info
Which portion of sensitive information is being collected?
According to the Threads privacy statement, users may elect to provide information about their racial or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, political opinions, health, philosophical ideas, or membership in a labour union.
“However, this appears to refer to the content of posts made on the Threads platform. Under this interpretation, Twitter should really have the same privacy label and yet does not,” the research further stated.
What sort of individual data points is assembled and collected bu Twitter?
Ten of the data points that Twitter utilises for tracking are made public, most notably:
Precise Location
Email Address
Browsing History
Purchase History
User ID
Device ID
Even though Threads collects data points based on the aforementioned pointers yet it must be considered that in case of the absence of any “Data Used To Track You” mark, Meta does work in the same way.
Are Instagram and FB users already sharing their data?
Simon Migliano, Head of Research at Top10VPN.com, mentioned: “Threads certainly collects significant amounts of personal data, however, any user of Instagram or Facebook will already be sharing this data with Meta and the permissions sought are fairly standard for a social media app.”
Currently, only Instagram accounts can use the Threads app, which makes it hard to deactivate your Threads account without simultaneously deleting your Instagram account, according to Mogliano, who spoke to Hindustan Times. “This isn’t made clear before sign-up and is really quite deceptive.”
Should India be concerned for the recent development?
Privacy issues become much more crucial for India because Instagram has a sizable market share there. “India has made it a habit of conveniently dismissing all data concerns including the latest Cowin breach,” Mishi Choudhary, technology lawyer and online civil rights activist stated while speaking to Hindustan Times.
She further mentioned, “Threads are intertwined with Instagram and there’s bound to be data sharing. At present, India has no law to prevent this. Rampant data sharing happens across apps and here we are talking about Meta’s own properties. The Digital Data Protection Bill, a draft of which we had seen in the fall of 2022, will not be able to prevent this either.”
What security measures can Threads users take to safeguard their private data?
Simon Migliano states:
1) Even though the 3 days are still too long, you can shorten the amount of time Meta keeps your search history in the Account Centre.
2) You can manually clear searches as often as you’d like to stop this information from being used for marketing initiatives.
3) You ought to refrain from syncing contacts.
4) You can lessen tracking by deselecting all optional cookies.
5) Be sure to adjust your ad settings to exclude “more relevant” advertising since they depend on your personal information.
6) If you want to stop Threads from tracking you, switch off Location Tracking for Instagram since whatever permissions you grant for Instagram also apply to Threads.
