Meta Found a New Way to Track Android Users Covertly via Facebook & Instagram

A sophisticated tracking method employed by Meta (Facebook) and Yandex that potentially affected billions of Android users through covert web-to-app communications via localhost sockets.

The technique allowed native Android apps, including Facebook and Instagram, to silently receive browser metadata, cookies, and commands from Meta Pixel scripts embedded on thousands of websites, effectively linking mobile browsing sessions to user identities and bypassing standard privacy protections.