Bitdefender sending data to Facebook?

SNH

I’d like to know why Bitdefender products communicate with Facebook without my consent.

I denied all apps to track me.

SNH

Hello? Can I get an official statement about why a security company helps Big Brother with profiling people?

Gjoksi

Hello.

I think that only @Alexandru_BD or/and @Mike_BD (they both work at Bitdefender) can give you the correct answer.

Regards.

Alexandru_BD

Hello @SNH and welcome back to the Community!

The information displayed in your screenshot does not serve tracking purposes.

Bitdefender offers data security products and services. Our goal is to ensure information and network security by providing quality products and services in these areas while also respecting privacy and personal data of customers, Internet users and business partners.

For this purpose, we collect only that personal data absolutely necessary for the specified purposes, on a best efforts basis. We do not sell your data. For the collected information and data, we strive to apply adequate solutions to anonymize them, or at least to pseudonymize them.

In the above context, the Bitdefender apps are required to ensure functionality of the login process, as Central offers multiple login options, as shown in the screenshot below:

For more information regarding the personal data we collect, how and where we may use it, how we protect it, who has access to it, with whom we share it, and how you may correct it, you can access our Privacy Policy below:

https://www.bitdefender.com/site/view/legal-privacy-policy-for-home-users-solutions.html

Should you have any questions concerning your Bitdefender account, please do not hesitate to contact our Support Teams for personal data inquiries using the link below:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/

Best regards

SNH

Thanks for the response @Alexandru_BD.

I read a bit about the Facebook Graph API on the web, and while I'm no expert one thing is clear, and that is that graph.facebook.com is used as a primary gateway (info taken from documentation) in and out of Facebook, and that it can be used for various purposes, among which is [shadow] profiling people. To quote a Reddit user:

"Sites you are visiting will have FB integration, and as a part of that they will be tying into the Facebook Graph API, which is effectively a method used to track the activity of Facebook users, as well as some digital fingerprinting to identify an abstraction of "you", without knowing your actual identity."

While I understand BD added social login options, I'm wondering why the apps keep contacting graph.facebook.com on a regular basis, especially since I'm no Facebook user, and I'm logged in to the apps. Having the app query Facebook once on login is understandable, but continuously after a successful login? That does raise eyebrows.

Because I'm new to the forums I can't post links, but check out an article over at Gizmodo titled "How Facebook figures out everyone you've ever met". It's about Shadow Profiling.

I'm concerned that this is happening despite the fact I explicitly denied all tracking app requests on my device, and somehow your statement @Alexandru_BD doesn't put me at ease.

I wish Bitdefender stopped querying Facebook and other malicious domains after I've logged in to the app. Yes, Facebook is not your friend. It's malicious.

Alexandru_BD

Hi @SNH,

For us to get a better understanding of your settings, could you please let me know exactly how did you denied apps to track you? What steps have you followed and where exactly?

Regards

SNH

👋 I disabled the ability in iOS for apps to even ask me to be tracked, which automatically denies such requests (per iOS documentation). Then I use the premium version of AdGuard, which blocks ads on the DNS level and in Safari, and is supposed to block most of the tracking.

I don't have a Facebook account, yet I periodically check the logs in the privacy settings and I see that Bitdefender (and what's most infuriating, the BitdefenderVPN (!!!), which is supposed to protect my privacy) is contacting graph.facebook.com.

You can probably tell I'm quite infuriated about this fact.

Kozlow67

hello,

it seemed, facebook is tracking everybody, even if they don't have a Facebook account....

when the "logo" facebopok appear on the screen, they steal our personnal data !

I also wish Bitdefender stopped querying Facebook

Alexandru_BD

Hello @SNH, welcome to the discussion @Kozlow67.

Following your inquiry, the development teams are doing some research to find ways to implement a possible improvement for the Central application, through which this query to graph.facebook.com will be performed only if the user chooses the option to login with facebook.

The product teams will further investigate to search for a fix that could be deployed in a later update, if it's a behavior controllable by us.

Thank you for your understanding and for the valuable feedback!

Regards