43% (of the 158 3rd-party requests) is... google. youtube, fonts, and analytics. 55% if you include facebook and twitter.
a government app shouldnt have crazy analytics and tracking and whatever. but i dont think loading google fonts or embedding youtube videos is really all that wild in the grand scheme of things.
given the title, i was half expecting some sort of egregious list with, like, palantir and some ICE domains or something. i dont like the app, but google? facebook? that is pretty boring.
the title probably should focus on nature/severity of the requests. titling it with a % of all requests feels bait-y if google/facebook/twitter isnt off in its own category. they have all sorts of dumb little requests to all sorts of domains that really inflate the numbers.
(as a note, atomic.computer also loads analytics and google fonts. which is whatever. but if they are going to imply 3rd-party requests are inherently bad just by nature of being 3rd-party, they may want to clean their own house a little bit.)
edit: original title at the time of my comment was "We intercepted the White House app's traffic. 77% of requests go to 3rd parties"
> given the title, i was half expecting some sort of egregious list with, like, palantir and some ICE domains or something. i dont like the app, but google? facebook? that is pretty boring.
Current government tries to steer the ship that is the US in the direction of an autocratic state as can be seen by most of their actions. But it's a huge ship and it takes time, no matter how hard you try (luckily).
i am not sure what you are intending to imply. what suits me and how?
i called it boring. flip on a news channel, click any other link on the front page here, or look outside and you will find something more interesting than "app sends a lot of requests to google".
that doesnt mean i think it is good or that i am making an excuse. it means that it is boring. this site is supposed to "optimize for curiosity" or however dang phrases it.
> We installed mitmproxy on a Mac, configured an iPhone to route traffic through it, and installed the mitmproxy CA certificate on the device.
> All HTTPS traffic was decrypted and logged. No modifications were made to the traffic. The app was used as any normal user would use it.
Is it really that simple to inspect network traffic on an iPhone, namely to get it to trust the user-installed cert? I do quite a bit of network inspection on Android and I find it to be painful, even if the apps don't use certificate pinning.
Regardless, it highlights the importance of having control of our own devices, including the ability to easily inspect network traffic. We have the right to know where our data is being sent, and what data is being sent.
I recall during COVID it was discovered that Zoom was sending traffic to China. There was also the recent case of Facebook tracking private mobile browsing activity and sending it to their servers via the FB app. Imagine how much questionable traffic goes unnoticed due to the difficulty in configuring network inspection for apps.
> Is it really that simple to inspect network traffic on an iPhone, namely to get it to trust the user-installed cert?
iOS still trusts user-installed certs by default, unlike Android's opt-in model.
However, this only applies to apps using the OS TLS stack. Apps packaging their open openssl may use their own set of certificate authorities. Also, most big apps use certificate pinning for most of their domains.
Apps from Twitter or Facebook probably won't work due to pinning. Quick and dirty could-have-been-a-single-web-page apps, such as this one, usually won't bother with any of that, and neither do many tracking libraries.
Of course, malicious apps can detect when someone is using an altered certificate and choose not to send traffic until the MitM is over.
Yes, it is _a lot_ easier to set up mitmproxy on iOS vs Android. But once you encounter an app with certificate pinning, being on a more open platform that lets you install your own apps can help get around that.
Installing the CA requires jumping through some hoops, but yes, intercepting traffic for apps that don’t use cert pinning isn’t that difficult on iOS.
Apps that do use cert pinning is a whole other matter, I’ve tried unsuccessfully a few times to inspect things like banking apps. Needs a rooted device at the minimum.
Regardless, it highlights the importance of having control of our own devices, including the ability to easily inspect network traffic. We have the right to know where our data is being sent, and what data is being sent.
Meanwhile I've always found it amusing that there's a loud, probably corporate-owned/Big-Tech-brainwashed subset of the "security" crowd who complains about MITM proxies.
> I recall during COVID it was discovered that Zoom was sending traffic to China.
Yes it was. Imagine, all those (lower) governments holding crisis meetings and sending the video and audio to China. What are the chances that all that stuff was recorded. Nice training data for some deepfakes.
I filter the vast majority of adware such as doubleclick.net right at the DNS level. Not that I would use the app anyway...
It's shocking how many third party connections an average website opens. It's particularly true for news websites. Interestingly, atomic.computer also attempts to load Cloudflareinsights and some Google fonts, both of which are denied on my network. This is precisely the kind of requests that make it trivially possible for Google to follow people around the Internet, and the vast majority of webmasters are complicit of this.
Government apps should absolutely be held to a higher standard than consumer B2C apps. Loading Google Fonts is one thing — sending telemetry to OneSignal and Facebook from an official government app is a different conversation entirely.
In Australia, apps handling government data must comply with the PSPF (Protective Security Policy Framework) and the ISM, which explicitly restrict data flows to untrusted third parties. A government app routing 77% of requests externally would fail an IRAP assessment on day one.
The fix is straightforward: self-host fonts, use first-party analytics, and treat every external request as a data exfiltration vector. Government digital teams know how to do this — the question is whether anyone is actually reviewing the network behavior post-deployment
Despite all the sneed on display, it's currently #4 in the App Store (ahead of Threads, Gmail, and Google Maps) and #1 in News so they did something right.
Personally, I want the most stringent CORS settings to read about his gold Sharpie pens.
Don't get me wrong, the government requires a high level of scrutiny.
I would be interested to see how this compares to industry standard though, 77% doesn't seem outrageous to me given all the trackers and advertising code I've seen over the years. It wouldn't surprise me if this is inline with many apps people install and don't think twice about.
So like... most b2c apps out there? I checked app privacy report for a few such apps I have installed and also got a very high proportion of third party domains. Maybe not as high as 77% but definitely above 50% (ie. more domains are third party than first party). The most surprising part here is them refusing to put correct info in the "data collected" section of the app store listing.
edit: they seemed to have updated the store listing, so the "data collected" section is correct.
No one put words in your mouth, they asked you a question. You are the one who made the initial comparison to B2C apps, so it seems like a fair question to me. Your comment implies that its standard and the app isn't doing anything out of the ordinary when I think most people would except an official government app to be held to a higher standard than the average B2C app.
>You are the one who made the initial comparison to B2C apps, so it seems like a fair question to me.
The relevant part of B2C is the 2C part, not the B. Mass market apps are generally ridden with telemetry and SDKs. Moreover I'm not sure how you think it's a "fair question" to go from a remark about how other apps are equally bad, to thinking I want the US government to operate as a business. It's like doing:
A: "I called the IRS and was put on hold for 2 hours, can you believe that?"
B: "To be fair that's the experience calling into most businesses, like banks or the cable company"
A: "Wow so you think we should be running the IRS like a bank?"
>I think most people would except an official government app to be held to a higher standard than the average B2C app.
Is this a "yes, in an ideal world that's how things should be" type of statement, or are you claiming "yes, government agencies have a track record of delivering technical excellence on software projects, and this particular project was especially bad"? The former is basically a meaningless platitude, and I don't think anyone seriously thinks the latter is true.
It's a classic deflection tactic - when they can't refute you by merit, they answer something with a question that is completely different about what was said - BOOM, the discussion is now about something else, completely different from the original issue. I honestly can't tell if it's bots or humans these days doing this a lot, but they're getting pretty good at it.
It is sarcasm. I always get screwed by Poe's law, since dry sarcastic parodies of extremist views is one of my favorite methodologies for producing humor.
I'm sure that HN's preferred app would be <5MB, and has zero third party SDKs or telemetry, but half a dozen SDKs and third party domains is basically most mass market apps these days. Is it bad? Yes, but the whitehouse isn't being egregiously bad, but "whitehouse app is bad, just like most other apps" isn't going to get clicks.
If only. It would be a far better state of of affairs if the US government sucks like every other first world country. No other first country are waging war in the middle east, having paramilitary forces terrorize residents, or are undergoing a partial government shutdown.
Right, the White House is collecting data and sending it to Huawei, and overall collection rate is worse than any other app you’ve seen by a wide margin.
That makes me net more surprised after reading your comment.
You're not surprised the white house is worse than any other app you've seen by 20%?
43% (of the 158 3rd-party requests) is... google. youtube, fonts, and analytics. 55% if you include facebook and twitter.
a government app shouldnt have crazy analytics and tracking and whatever. but i dont think loading google fonts or embedding youtube videos is really all that wild in the grand scheme of things.
given the title, i was half expecting some sort of egregious list with, like, palantir and some ICE domains or something. i dont like the app, but google? facebook? that is pretty boring.
the title probably should focus on nature/severity of the requests. titling it with a % of all requests feels bait-y if google/facebook/twitter isnt off in its own category. they have all sorts of dumb little requests to all sorts of domains that really inflate the numbers.
(as a note, atomic.computer also loads analytics and google fonts. which is whatever. but if they are going to imply 3rd-party requests are inherently bad just by nature of being 3rd-party, they may want to clean their own house a little bit.)
edit: original title at the time of my comment was "We intercepted the White House app's traffic. 77% of requests go to 3rd parties"
> given the title, i was half expecting some sort of egregious list with, like, palantir and some ICE domains or something. i dont like the app, but google? facebook? that is pretty boring.
Current government tries to steer the ship that is the US in the direction of an autocratic state as can be seen by most of their actions. But it's a huge ship and it takes time, no matter how hard you try (luckily).
People will excuse anything when it suits them
>People will excuse anything when it suits them
i am not sure what you are intending to imply. what suits me and how?
i called it boring. flip on a news channel, click any other link on the front page here, or look outside and you will find something more interesting than "app sends a lot of requests to google".
that doesnt mean i think it is good or that i am making an excuse. it means that it is boring. this site is supposed to "optimize for curiosity" or however dang phrases it.
> We installed mitmproxy on a Mac, configured an iPhone to route traffic through it, and installed the mitmproxy CA certificate on the device.
> All HTTPS traffic was decrypted and logged. No modifications were made to the traffic. The app was used as any normal user would use it.
Is it really that simple to inspect network traffic on an iPhone, namely to get it to trust the user-installed cert? I do quite a bit of network inspection on Android and I find it to be painful, even if the apps don't use certificate pinning.
Regardless, it highlights the importance of having control of our own devices, including the ability to easily inspect network traffic. We have the right to know where our data is being sent, and what data is being sent.
I recall during COVID it was discovered that Zoom was sending traffic to China. There was also the recent case of Facebook tracking private mobile browsing activity and sending it to their servers via the FB app. Imagine how much questionable traffic goes unnoticed due to the difficulty in configuring network inspection for apps.
> Is it really that simple to inspect network traffic on an iPhone, namely to get it to trust the user-installed cert?
iOS still trusts user-installed certs by default, unlike Android's opt-in model.
However, this only applies to apps using the OS TLS stack. Apps packaging their open openssl may use their own set of certificate authorities. Also, most big apps use certificate pinning for most of their domains.
Apps from Twitter or Facebook probably won't work due to pinning. Quick and dirty could-have-been-a-single-web-page apps, such as this one, usually won't bother with any of that, and neither do many tracking libraries.
Of course, malicious apps can detect when someone is using an altered certificate and choose not to send traffic until the MitM is over.
Yes, it is _a lot_ easier to set up mitmproxy on iOS vs Android. But once you encounter an app with certificate pinning, being on a more open platform that lets you install your own apps can help get around that.
that said, mitming stuff even on Android can be a pain, so I use a rooted Android emulator with Frida. Even that can be a hassle sometimes.
https://www.trickster.dev/post/setting-up-rooted-android-emu...
Installing the CA requires jumping through some hoops, but yes, intercepting traffic for apps that don’t use cert pinning isn’t that difficult on iOS.
Apps that do use cert pinning is a whole other matter, I’ve tried unsuccessfully a few times to inspect things like banking apps. Needs a rooted device at the minimum.
So I assume the white house app doesn’t do cert pinning
Also looked into this a long time ago… could someone tell me how to do this with cert pinned apps ?
Regardless, it highlights the importance of having control of our own devices, including the ability to easily inspect network traffic. We have the right to know where our data is being sent, and what data is being sent.
Meanwhile I've always found it amusing that there's a loud, probably corporate-owned/Big-Tech-brainwashed subset of the "security" crowd who complains about MITM proxies.
Are the MitM proxies the braindead ones that are hampering the evolution of SSL? Because those are terrible, no corporate shilling required.
> I recall during COVID it was discovered that Zoom was sending traffic to China.
Yes it was. Imagine, all those (lower) governments holding crisis meetings and sending the video and audio to China. What are the chances that all that stuff was recorded. Nice training data for some deepfakes.
Some previous discussion. I think this one is worth a read as well, though.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47555556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47577761
I filter the vast majority of adware such as doubleclick.net right at the DNS level. Not that I would use the app anyway...
It's shocking how many third party connections an average website opens. It's particularly true for news websites. Interestingly, atomic.computer also attempts to load Cloudflareinsights and some Google fonts, both of which are denied on my network. This is precisely the kind of requests that make it trivially possible for Google to follow people around the Internet, and the vast majority of webmasters are complicit of this.
Government apps should absolutely be held to a higher standard than consumer B2C apps. Loading Google Fonts is one thing — sending telemetry to OneSignal and Facebook from an official government app is a different conversation entirely.
In Australia, apps handling government data must comply with the PSPF (Protective Security Policy Framework) and the ISM, which explicitly restrict data flows to untrusted third parties. A government app routing 77% of requests externally would fail an IRAP assessment on day one.
The fix is straightforward: self-host fonts, use first-party analytics, and treat every external request as a data exfiltration vector. Government digital teams know how to do this — the question is whether anyone is actually reviewing the network behavior post-deployment
> Government apps should absolutely be held to a higher standard than consumer B2C apps
Honestly—why? What is in this traffic that mandates heightened scrutiny? It strikes me as simply about brand.
Despite all the sneed on display, it's currently #4 in the App Store (ahead of Threads, Gmail, and Google Maps) and #1 in News so they did something right.
Personally, I want the most stringent CORS settings to read about his gold Sharpie pens.
Don't get me wrong, the government requires a high level of scrutiny.
I would be interested to see how this compares to industry standard though, 77% doesn't seem outrageous to me given all the trackers and advertising code I've seen over the years. It wouldn't surprise me if this is inline with many apps people install and don't think twice about.
Browse the SDKs it's using as well:
https://appgoblin.info/apps/gov.whitehouse.app/sdks
So like... most b2c apps out there? I checked app privacy report for a few such apps I have installed and also got a very high proportion of third party domains. Maybe not as high as 77% but definitely above 50% (ie. more domains are third party than first party). The most surprising part here is them refusing to put correct info in the "data collected" section of the app store listing.
edit: they seemed to have updated the store listing, so the "data collected" section is correct.
[flagged]
No. Stop putting words in my mouth.
No one put words in your mouth, they asked you a question. You are the one who made the initial comparison to B2C apps, so it seems like a fair question to me. Your comment implies that its standard and the app isn't doing anything out of the ordinary when I think most people would except an official government app to be held to a higher standard than the average B2C app.
>You are the one who made the initial comparison to B2C apps, so it seems like a fair question to me.
The relevant part of B2C is the 2C part, not the B. Mass market apps are generally ridden with telemetry and SDKs. Moreover I'm not sure how you think it's a "fair question" to go from a remark about how other apps are equally bad, to thinking I want the US government to operate as a business. It's like doing:
A: "I called the IRS and was put on hold for 2 hours, can you believe that?"
B: "To be fair that's the experience calling into most businesses, like banks or the cable company"
A: "Wow so you think we should be running the IRS like a bank?"
>I think most people would except an official government app to be held to a higher standard than the average B2C app.
Is this a "yes, in an ideal world that's how things should be" type of statement, or are you claiming "yes, government agencies have a track record of delivering technical excellence on software projects, and this particular project was especially bad"? The former is basically a meaningless platitude, and I don't think anyone seriously thinks the latter is true.
It's a classic deflection tactic - when they can't refute you by merit, they answer something with a question that is completely different about what was said - BOOM, the discussion is now about something else, completely different from the original issue. I honestly can't tell if it's bots or humans these days doing this a lot, but they're getting pretty good at it.
The government should outsource way more of their traffic to third parties than a business should, since the government is inefficient, right?
Poe's Law strikes again. I legitimately can't tell if this is sarcasm.
It is sarcasm. I always get screwed by Poe's law, since dry sarcastic parodies of extremist views is one of my favorite methodologies for producing humor.
I'm happy to be against both the white houses' 3rd party telemetry as well as other apps. I can multitask.
A government app being built like b2c is exactly the problem
I'm sure that HN's preferred app would be <5MB, and has zero third party SDKs or telemetry, but half a dozen SDKs and third party domains is basically most mass market apps these days. Is it bad? Yes, but the whitehouse isn't being egregiously bad, but "whitehouse app is bad, just like most other apps" isn't going to get clicks.
"everything else sucks too" is not a great defense for the US govt.
If only. It would be a far better state of of affairs if the US government sucks like every other first world country. No other first country are waging war in the middle east, having paramilitary forces terrorize residents, or are undergoing a partial government shutdown.
Just because an app embeds YouTube instead of creating their own video hosting solution that does not mean that does not mean that the app sucks.
I didn't mention anything about YouTube.
See gov.uk for a good example
Oh, sorry you missed Exlir and WASM, and rust and programming socks of course. Half credit.
Right, the White House is collecting data and sending it to Huawei, and overall collection rate is worse than any other app you’ve seen by a wide margin.
That makes me net more surprised after reading your comment.
You're not surprised the white house is worse than any other app you've seen by 20%?
>to Huawei
???
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47581532
Ads are coming next.
is location tracking part of OneSignal ? no mention of the other location services in this writeup ?