Be Cautious Before Signing up for Threads: Here’s the Information It Will Collect About You

Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, made an announcement through his company Meta about the launch of the new app Threads, a direct competitor to Twitter. In a remarkably short span of time, and within just 24 hours of its launch, the new app attracted an impressive 30 million subscribers; this number continued to grow rapidly.

Technology experts focused on the profit-driven technological war between entrepreneurs Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, with the former taking advantage of Twitter’s setbacks to strike a blow against the latter in the competition between the two billionaires in the technology and profit industry.

Meanwhile, others explored with social media activists the extent of freedom of expression by comparing Twitter and the new app Threads, trying to determine which platform promoted more freedom and spied less on users’ secrets and information.

 

Security Investigation

After Musk’s acquisition of Twitter on October 27, 2022, he promised “significant freedom” of expression through posts compared to Meta’s applications, including the latest one, Threads.

On the other hand, Zuckerberg continued to impose various restrictions on freedom of publishing.

Those who made the comparison noticed that the information collected by Threads about its users (upon registration) appears to be intrusive, almost like conducting a security investigation. In fact, it collects more personal information about the user and their friends compared to any other app.

Despite the fact that all free communication apps collect user information for diverse purposes, including advertising, commercial use, and possibly selling it, even to intelligence agencies, there is still a lingering question regarding the specifics of the data collected by Threads, its extent, and the potential risks associated with its usage against users.

A report by the tech website Wired on July 6, 2023, revealed that, within the privacy and data policy of the Threads app, it can obtain a substantial amount of information about users upon registration.

A comparison was made between Threads and platforms like Bluesky, Mastodon, Spill, Hive Social, and Twitter, and it was confirmed that Threads collects more data about users than similar platforms.

It was explained that the app acquires an enormous amount of personal data from subscribers, based on information from purchase records, browsing history, and sensitive data like religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, pregnancy status, and biometric information.

According to the analysis of Wired experts, if you use the new app, it will also collect data about your personality and analyze it, along with financial information and contact details such as your actual address, email, name, phone number, purchase history, as well as photos, videos, game content, and other materials you have on your device.

This means that the Threads platform will indeed spy on your data within the app and store it for potential exploitation whenever and by whomever they choose, despite its owner (Zuckerberg) having previously claimed to refuse the disclosure of his personal data.

This has prompted activists to mock the information collected by Threads about users, and they anticipate its potential leakage, just as Zuckerberg previously did with Facebook, according to previous accusations made against him by users.

On July 6, 2023, the website Quartz clarified that the information and data collected by Threads about any individual may be sent to “service providers” and “analytics partners,” which are often indicative of advertising and marketing companies affiliated with external entities.

The report confirmed that the new app collects data about your work, your company, your role in your team, your work history, and performance evaluations, all of which are sent to external entities!

It also pointed out that the app collects data about your body, health details, fitness activities, and exercises, which are also sent to external parties.

It also collects data about your web activity and interactions with web pages (including advertisements) and the sources from which you accessed link chains of messages. These pieces of information may also be sent to third parties.

Threads platform collects data about your location, and images, videos, or other recordings from users may be collected, in addition to location information based on IP addresses sent to external entities.

If you wish to delete all this information about yourself, you will need to deactivate your Threads, Instagram, and Facebook accounts.

 

Tons of Data

The Wall Street Journal mentioned in a report published on July 7, 2023, regarding privacy, that Threads is merely a new version that accumulates even more data about you over the years.

It explained that through the new app, Meta collects various data about users, including health and fitness information, purchase history, financial details, location, contact lists, and the list goes on.

The problem is that these vast amounts of information and data collected about users remain without clear context, reason, or conditions for their use.

The report stated that if you are a user of Facebook and Instagram, this means that Meta will accumulate significant amounts of data about you over the years, and it offered some advice to users.

One of the pieces of advice is to add hidden keywords to keep your replies clean, and choose who can mention or reply to you in threads.

Threads also collects analytical data about health, financial status, purchases, purchase history, payment information, and content present on the user’s device, such as photos, audio recordings, videos, and more.

Similarly, Twitter collects tons of user data, including that of Threads, and among this data are tracking information such as purchase history, movements, and contact information, like email and phone content and search history.

Both platforms use this data for advertising, marketing, and data analysis purposes, but they do not analyze the contents of your emails and text messages.

The app is available in over 100 countries but not in the European Union due to regulatory concerns that have postponed its launch.

European Union laws prohibit data transfer, while social media apps face no barriers in Arab and Islamic countries and collect massive amounts of data that is transferred to European countries.

Meta is subject to the new Digital Markets Act, which imposes strict rules on major internet companies in European Union countries.

One of these rules restricts the transfer of personal data between different products, which will also apply to transfers between Instagram and Threads, as Zuckerberg has been caught doing before when acquiring WhatsApp.