Post #259875

I’ve recently been working on scraping the app api for instagram for a project, and I’m surprised at the amount of data it sends that it shouldn’t need. I knew it did a lot of tracking already, but after looking at what it sends, I am never installing that app outside of an emulator. When you login it sends: How many sim cards you have installed Whether you have whatsapp installed whether you gave permission for: call logs, contacts, answer phone calls Timestamps for when you opened the app and when you clicked any component. On most requests, it sends: Your connection type (WIFI/mobile data) Your connection speed Whether google play attestation is working If your phone is foldable or not Whether you have dark or light theme enabled What device you are running instagram on The components you clicked on to navigate to whatever page you are on, as well as timestamps for when you clicked them. When loading your timeline, they payload contains: Whether instagram has permission for your camera Your battery level Whether your phone is charging The time you opened the app at. Whether you used pull to refresh to load your feed. Your volume level Your timezone offset. For every useful request it sends about 2 to /logging_client_events, which has a binary, encoded as base64 payload.