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iOS14 reveals that TikTok may snoop clipboard contents every few keystrokes

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Re: iOS14 reveals that TikTok may snoop clipboard contents every few keystrokes

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy in a classic sense has died the moment when we replaced paper with electronics.

A picture on a TV screen didn’t use to spy on you...

That's not exactly true. Assuming you didn't mean TVs completely without any internet connection whatsoever then you'll find that pretty much since that ability was added there have been attempts by the very manufacturers to do just that.

Vizio isn't the only one but here's an example: https://www.tomsguide.com/amp/us/vizio-ftc-smart-tv-spying-p...

How-to disable additional snooping: https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/how-to-turn-off-smar...

Mind you this goes above what most consumers would consider acceptable and can be blatantly sold to advertisers.

This is just what manufacturers have done but then there's just the attempts we know of by the CIA dump: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20206536

Re: iOS14 reveals that TikTok may snoop clipboard contents every few keystrokes

#212

It seems like a ton of apps are abusing this feature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRSWdtoUAjo I categorize this as another reason why "just trust us," just isn't acceptable enough when it comes to data privacy and ownership. Companies just cannot be trusted to treat their users' data with respect given the option of: profit or privacy. (sourced from reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/hejb9i/ios14_cat…

People love to hate on Apple but the fact is, they continue to release features to better showcase or restrict developers that abuse your privacy. The "walled garden" also ensures they apply a ton of checks to apps to better restrict abuses. Sometimes it's overly sensitive and bad things happen, but in general it's awesome that over time it becomes harder and harder to get away with apps blatantly spying on you.

Apples walled garden approach is not necessary for any of this though (nor does it even make it easier). You can introduce sandboxing, fine grained permissions etc without locking devs and consumers into a controlled app store - these are OS features, not app store features.

Re: iOS14 reveals that TikTok may snoop clipboard contents every few keystrokes

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a legitimate, non-nefarious reason for an app to do that?

The maker of the Apollo Reddit app chimed in on the reddit thread that his app would check to see if a reddit URL was in the clipboard and offer to take you to that page. Chrome uses it so the URL appears when you select the address bar.

Sounds like Chrome doesn't do it in background.

Re: iOS14 reveals that TikTok may snoop clipboard contents every few keystrokes

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Updates are still pushed by the manufacturer. I have the Xiaomi Mi A2 Lite (with Android One) and only got Android 10 last week. Biggest advantage is that it's a pure Android with no bloatware from the manufacturer. Also you get a guarantee IIRC to have at least two versions upgrades for the phone (my Xiaomi came with Android 8, so 10 should be the last one), and most of all security updates.

I mean, the fact that you need to say “pure android” kinda says it all, though. All iOS is pure iOS. That’s the selling point for me, at least.

So if you can choose between pure and not pure, locked vs unlocked, is worse? Interesting selling point

Re: iOS14 reveals that TikTok may snoop clipboard contents every few keystrokes

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People love to hate on Apple but the fact is, they continue to release features to better showcase or restrict developers that abuse your privacy. The "walled garden" also ensures they apply a ton of checks to apps to better restrict abuses. Sometimes it's overly sensitive and bad things happen, but in general it's awesome that over time it becomes harder and harder to get away with apps blatantly spying on you.

Apples walled garden approach is not necessary for any of this though (nor does it even make it easier). You can introduce sandboxing, fine grained permissions etc without locking devs and consumers into a controlled app store - these are OS features, not app store features.

Fine-grained permissions aren’t useful if an application is going to request access to everything anyway - and non-technical or non-privacy-conscious users will click-through any and all permission prompts so [they can see the dancing bunnies](https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-dancing-bunnies-problem/).

In the case of very popular, aggressively-marketed, apps like TikTok and Facebook’s: the lack of easy side-loading or alternative app-stores (with looser auditing) means they’re forced to comply with Apple’s regs against unnecessary permission prompts, and this means they simply can’t take advantage of users’ ignorance (or overriding desire to see the dancing bunnies) to get them to grant unnecessary permissions.

Re: iOS14 reveals that TikTok may snoop clipboard contents every few keystrokes

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be pedantic, version 1 and 2 of iPhone OS did not have a clipboard at all …

Was it called iPhone OS then? At some point I remember Apple saying it was basically OS X running on the phone. Weird how that went.

The first iPhone used iPhone OS. It was never called OSX in production. In June 2010 it was renamed iOS.

Re: iOS14 reveals that TikTok may snoop clipboard contents every few keystrokes

#218
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android is a spyware operating system filled with first party spyware apps developed by Google.

As opposed to apple which isn't because... apple says so.

Use any application that lets you view your network traffic and you'll see that Apple doesn't phone home anything it doesn't need to. Google phones home for everything.

Re: iOS14 reveals that TikTok may snoop clipboard contents every few keystrokes

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to know what OS you're using that requires permissions for foreground app access to the system clipboard.

Other OSes aren't tooting the privacy horn from the top of a mountain.

So you're okay with "massive security holes" as long as their creators aren't "tooting the privacy horn"? Interesting indeed.

Re: iOS14 reveals that TikTok may snoop clipboard contents every few keystrokes

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apples walled garden approach is not necessary for any of this though (nor does it even make it easier). You can introduce sandboxing, fine grained permissions etc without locking devs and consumers into a controlled app store - these are OS features, not app store features.

Fine-grained permissions aren’t useful if an application is going to request access to everything anyway - and non-technical or non-privacy-conscious users will click-through any and all permission prompts so [they can see the dancing bunnies]( https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-dancing-bunnies-problem/ ). In the case of very popular, aggressively-marketed, apps like TikTok and Facebook’s: the lack of easy side-loadin…

At least in Android (not familiar with iOS) you can deny apps access to any and all permissions, the features just won't work. I.e. if you deny Snapchat access to the camera you can still browse the app, read messages etc - you just won't be able to take any photos.
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