On Friday July 10, 2020, widespread crashes of popular apps running on Apple iPhones were caused by Facebook’s iOS Software Development Kit (SDK). Apps such as Pinterest, Spotify and Tinder implemented a Facebook login to their own apps, and when a Facebook iOS SDK outage occurred, the apps started to crash. The app crashes Friday occurred even if users were not logged in to the apps using Facebook.
Early Friday, users of the apps reported crashes as soon as they tried to open the apps. Facebook attributed the outage and crashes to a bug in its software development kit, or SDK, a tool developers use to integrate their apps with Facebook. The problem was quickly fixed, but a similar problem occurred as recently as May 2020.
The integration of a Facebook log-in allows people to use their Facebook user name and password to log in to the apps. However, it is not so convenient when Facebook has an outage, or if Facebook ever decides to suspend you (e.g., for sharing unacceptable speech) or if you decide to deactivate your Facebook account. For some apps you can use a different credential method. However, Friday it didn’t matter because the software but caused crashes even if users didn’t previously specify a Facebook log-in method.
Historically, some apps have only included the Facebook log-in option. Facebook prefers to offer its log-in to users and app developers because it also allows the app developers to send data from their app to Facebook, which tracks and measures what people do on the apps. The tracking data can be used by the app developers and Facebook to detect how people respond to ads, how they use its service, and how much time they spend on it.
In March 2020, the video teleconferencing service Zoom was sued for sharing user data with the Facebook SDK, which Zoom stopped.
Facebook said in a statement Friday that a ‘code change triggered crashes for some iOS apps using the Facebook SDK.”
Users facing a Facebook bug can try to block Facebook’s methods from affecting their apps with a firewall and privacy protection app, such as ‘Lockdown Apps’
Virtual Private Network (VPN)
A VPN is created by establishing a virtual point-to-point connection with security levels through the use of dedicated circuits or tunneling protocols over existing networks (public Internet).
‘Lockdown Apps’ uses a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to block Facebook’s iOS SDK and other trackers from loading in third-party apps. ‘Lockdown Apps’ should allow apps like Pinterest, Spotify and Tinder to launch during a Facebook iOS SDK outage. However, once logged in their may some other features that don’t work. You can turn off or delete ‘Lockdown Apps’ once
‘Lockdown Apps’ is free, and is set up as follows …
Download ‘Lockdown Apps’ from the App Store
Launch ‘Lockdown Apps’ and follow the on-screen tutorial
Touch cancel when it asks you to sign up or log in
Touch the “firewall on” button at the top of the app
(agree to set up a VPN profile on your iPhone)
Once set up, you can toggle the VPN / firewall from within Lockdown Apps
Skip the trial, and malfunctioning, Facebook-hampered apps should allow unobstructed log-in methods.
‘Lockdown Apps’ is produced by Confirmed, Inc. which provides VPNs for Mac, iOS, PC and Android.
Of course this advice involves trust in the ‘Lockdown Apps’ because when you set up a VPN you’re ‘tunneling’ your data through the assets of Confirmed, Inc. Some people might just want to avoid the apps until the Facebook outage is over.
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