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Our Approach to Privacy

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141–150 of 183 posts

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#141
post #96
post #19

At least one company is "trying" keep my photos private. The other day Google Photo told my wife it had prepared an album for our trip to SFO. We were surprised because she already disabled Geo-tagging but whataya know... Google still figured it out!

Did you book a hotel/airbnb/flight and received a confirmation mail in your Google email account?

That is true as well. I will buy something at Costco and I will see ads related to that. Book a hotel and see ads on Facebook (let alone Google). Problem is not the fact that I am looking for these things but the amount of information they steal without my consent.

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#142
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…

Apple is building the tools needed to better invade people's privacy, and those tools will proliferate, regardless of how responsibly Apple uses those tools themselves.

The pattern has repeated itself so many times throughout history. Technology developed with the best of intentions ends up getting used for bad.

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#143
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an Android user, but I feel the same way. I sometimes wonder what would happen if I were to create a new Google identity and start fresh. Would they try to re-establish my old email's profile and data to the new one without my consent?

I tried this as an exercise when they were pushing Google+. Created a new account, was very cognizant to read through all settings and ensured that nothing from my old account can be traced back to this new one. I'm not joking when I say nothing from my old account and tracking: 1. I timed my move (to different city inside bayarea) 2. Changing ISP to wave from comcast 3. Bought new computer 4. Closed my old phone acc…

That is pretty frightening.... thanks for sharing your story.

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#144
On the subject of privacy, I'm interested in migrating away from Google services, but I have years' worth of data tied up there (email, photos, music, movies, etc). I know Google offers ways to download your data, so it's technically possible to migrate, but it would be tedious and time consuming, to say the least.

Does anyone have suggestions for making that process easier?

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#145

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 don't really follow how that's something that Apple needs to change. You either want to use the apps or you don't. If you don't, just don't download them or don't give them access. If your friends absolutely have to use the apps, then they clearly don't care about the same things you do and you need to convince them to use something else that you are ok with using.

I guess I just don't understand why Apple needs to put things in place to allow you to work with companies you don't want to work with.

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#146

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…

Where are you getting the info about iMessage not being stored in the cloud encrypted? Wasn't that a major feature point of iOS 11?

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#147
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I wasn't ranking the company's practices so much as their incentives, based on their business model. Microsoft derives most of its revenue from enterprise software, the others from consumers. Enterprises are generally more concerned with privacy of their data than consumers. Arguably Apple have shown better practices of late. My ranking is more what one would expect 'in theory'.

Microsoft puts ads into Windows 10. With ads comes tracking.

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They changed this for the iPhone X: you press the lock and one of the volume buttons at the same time.

That's awesome. I wonder if cops could construe that into an "obstruction of justice" (or similar) offense?

Only if they have a warrant for the search at the time you do it. Else, the device is not part of an active investigation.

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#149
post #39
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not. It says "encrypted when sent and, in most cases, when stored on our servers". Even if encrypted at rest that doesn't mean they can't decrypt it. The calls and messages should be end-to-end encrypted but they are in control of the PKI so they could probably eavesdrop if they wanted.

Reread Apple's security papers. Much of what's "encrypted on their servers" is encrypted in ways deliberately designed to make it untenable for Apple to decrypt. For instance, material in iCloud is encrypted with a key derived from your device PIN. So concerned is Apple with maintaining their inability to decrypt, even with a brute-force search on the PIN space, that they've contrived an elaborate quorum scheme of HS…

I definitely take your suggestions and prose seriously Mr. Ptacek. Do you use iCloud? How about macOS computers? Do you have an article or blog on what you do for backup/cloud?

Thank you for this kind of information. Very grateful to have this stuff at hand.

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#150
post #15
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for the silly question. I don't own a mac or an iPhone anymore. My understanding is you can sideload apps on your own iPhone from your own mac running xcode. Are there limitations to what kind of apps you can side load using xcode?

Nothing installed that way can receive push notifications, though not all apps need or use then.

That's not true. You can receive push notifications on side loaded apps.
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