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Our Approach to Privacy

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Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#111

Post by userbinator »

blfr wrote: post #68
disconnected wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android and its community are sorta schizophrenic towards security. On one hand, users are told that they should never ever, ever install applications from untrusted sources. They should always use the play store because applications are scanned for vulnerabilities and whatnot. On the other hand, we have people telling us that one of the great advantages of Android is that you can sideload apps - bypassing the store…

Root is not that hard to obtain on most devices. The instructions are straight-forward[1] and easy to follow, especially for anyone reading this thread. But lately Google has decided that rooted phones are a security issue. So if you do choose to install some sort of su utility, some functions like Android Pay may cease to work, not because of technical reasons but because Google deliberately disables them on rooted…

Of course, once you're root you can also prevent those apps (which don't run as root) from finding out that you have root, but it's an ongoing cat-and-mouse game.

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#112

Post by chickenfries »

yaseer wrote: post #109
wyc wrote: post #107

Apple sells hardware differentiated by integrated software for premium pricing. They want to build better and more expensive products through superior design and quality control. Collecting and analyzing personal data isn't the most important thing for their business. They might see more benefit by eschewing personal data collection and marketing a privacy-focused message, which they seem to be doing. In contrast, Go…

I agree with this reasoning (although I'm not particularly privacy minded, and prefer Android and most Google products to iOS and iCloud). The older tech companies like Apple and Microsoft have built business models with a different set of incentives around user data. Google, and particularly Facebook's, business models entirely rely on monetising user data. My personal 'ranking' of a companies incentives to respect…

I'm curious why you would say that Microsoft has the most respect for privacy given Windows 10 telemetry. Is there a MacOS or iOS equivalent?

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#113

Post by spsful »

chickenfries wrote: post #112
yaseer wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this reasoning (although I'm not particularly privacy minded, and prefer Android and most Google products to iOS and iCloud). The older tech companies like Apple and Microsoft have built business models with a different set of incentives around user data. Google, and particularly Facebook's, business models entirely rely on monetising user data. My personal 'ranking' of a companies incentives to respect…

I'm curious why you would say that Microsoft has the most respect for privacy given Windows 10 telemetry. Is there a MacOS or iOS equivalent?

Nope, Apple even goes to great lengths to preserve user privacy in the data they collect (See Apple's use of differential privacy)

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#114

Post by et-al »

jacksmith21006 wrote: post #76

Apple chose to let the China government into their China data center and Google chose to leave the country instead. So not so simple on who you trust. Personally I trust Google more as they are just a lot better at keeping things secure, imo. Plus governments getting into data is a bigger deal to me than a targeted ad. But it is a personal decision. "A Local Chinese Government Will Oversee Apple’s New iCloud Data Cen…

Why was this downvoted? It's a relevant point to the discussion.

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#115

Post by spsful »

greggman wrote: post #74

I'm happy Apple is at least trying hard to deal with privacy but honestly I don't think they are doing enough, at least for me. For example, I don't really want to give most apps constant access to my photos, my camera, or my mic but I really don't have a whole lot of choice if I still want to use popular apps and services like Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Hangouts, Line, WhatsApp etc.. I really wish that every ti…

I agree with this but just so you know mic and camera access are two different things and iOS users get two different prompts if an app wants camera AND mic access

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#116

Post by spsful »

I wish the EFF still made those "Who has your back" infographics, they were really helpful if you wanted to find out which companies respected your data both online and in the courts. But IMO Apple is the only large multinational corporation that is actually taking steps to protect my privacy so I'm way more inclined to trust them with my personal information. Can't say the same for Google or others.

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#117

Post by newscracker »

A few things have struck me really strong on Apple's stand and implementation on protecting users' privacy:

1. Though it's understandable that Apple earns money primarily by selling hardware, it's sort of amusing and alarming at the same time that a proprietary almost-closed-source software company is focusing on protecting and preserving privacy whereas partially open source platforms competing with Apple seem to be nowhere close on this aspect. Do any of the Android forks try to do as much as Apple does for privacy right out of the box (something a non-technical lay person could get)?

2. It's abundantly clear that a lot of thought has gone into the foundations of a design focused on protecting privacy and in creating silos of information in/with different SDKs and features.

3. It's a bit unclear to me as to why Health data is stored encrypted in iCloud whereas messages aren't. Is there a distinction here between iCloud sync and iCloud backups? The documentation on messages suggests turning off iCloud backup as a protective measure.

4. To me, the weakest link in the ecosystem seems to be third party apps, where Apple relies more on them adhering to the developer guidelines and on publishing a privacy policy.

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#118

Post by userbinator »

disconnected wrote: post #27
aub3bhat wrote: post #13

On Android you can Sideload VPN apps, iOS on the otherhand banned them in China. Apple mounted the most successful attack on General Computing with it's walled garden. The whole Apple is good for privacy is marketing.

Android and its community are sorta schizophrenic towards security. On one hand, users are told that they should never ever, ever install applications from untrusted sources. They should always use the play store because applications are scanned for vulnerabilities and whatnot. On the other hand, we have people telling us that one of the great advantages of Android is that you can sideload apps - bypassing the store…

but we can't argue that they have a much clearer picture with regards to security, and the results speak for themselves

What they've done could be said to be more authoritarian, and indeed if you do the analogous of throwing everyone in jail by default because they could be guilty, then you will basically have no crime. The question is whether that's actually a good idea... it's the old "freedom vs. security" argument.

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#119

Post by AsyncAwait »

X86BSD wrote: post #45
AsyncAwait wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, the GPL has been absolutely critical in establishing free software as a credible player, so I'd disagree with you on the license being stupid.

No more so than the BSD/MIT/Apache licenses. The BSD license predates the GPL. And has none of the dead weight or baggage.

> The BSD license predates the GPL

And the BSDs predate Linux. Yet Linux distros are the most popular free software OSes out there.

I did not say the GPL invented open-source, but I don't think you can deny that it was the force to move it from obscurity, at least at the beginning.

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#120

Post by chillaxtian »

greggman wrote: post #74

I'm happy Apple is at least trying hard to deal with privacy but honestly I don't think they are doing enough, at least for me. For example, I don't really want to give most apps constant access to my photos, my camera, or my mic but I really don't have a whole lot of choice if I still want to use popular apps and services like Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Hangouts, Line, WhatsApp etc.. I really wish that every ti…

They actually are changing the Photos privacy defaults in iOS 11: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/505/

Apps won’t need to ask for permission to your entire library - the Photo picker will just appear, and only user selected photos will be available to the app.

On the iOS 11 GM at the moment, Facebook still seems to need access to my entire library. So perhaps it is only for apps that link against iOS 11. Guess we’ll see soon.

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