Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 385 posts

Re: New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

#131

Post by ocdtrekkie »

nsl73 wrote: post #110
rasz wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a TV/print ad campaign with >$10mil budget, not some random YT videos.

They bought Nokia, and had a presence in every Att/Verizon/Sprint/T-Mobile store. Microsoft tried hard, and kept trying long after it was clear to most of the market that they didn’t have traction. The owners of Windows phones were some of the most vocal champions at the time too. They legitimately made good but unpopular products at the time.

It's ironic, but Google's monopoly was already well in abuse when Windows Phone was around, and being used to block Google's competitors. Gmail required you enable "less secure apps" to let a Windows Phone connect to it and they continually blocked Windows Phone from having any access to YouTube as well. Even when Microsoft invested their own development resources in building support for Google's already monopoly-scale platforms, Google would just find excuses to block them.

Re: New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

#132

Post by kube-system »

Yetanfou wrote: post #122
kube-system wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upgrading your OS is only part of your software security footprint. The unlocked bootloaders/firmware running on many old devices are full of unpatched security holes and are often susceptible to attacks where physical access is available. These security holes are a common method to install third-party ROMs on some devices.

Yes, that is after all what makes it possible to jailbreak nearly all iPhone models using something like Checkra1n.

The vast majority of vulnerabilities used for jailbreaks and for Android unlocks are not attacks on code running in ROM and can be fixed OTA.

Re: New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

#133

Post by Wowfunhappy »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #131
nsl73 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They bought Nokia, and had a presence in every Att/Verizon/Sprint/T-Mobile store. Microsoft tried hard, and kept trying long after it was clear to most of the market that they didn’t have traction. The owners of Windows phones were some of the most vocal champions at the time too. They legitimately made good but unpopular products at the time.

It's ironic, but Google's monopoly was already well in abuse when Windows Phone was around, and being used to block Google's competitors. Gmail required you enable "less secure apps" to let a Windows Phone connect to it and they continually blocked Windows Phone from having any access to YouTube as well. Even when Microsoft invested their own development resources in building support for Google's already monopoly-sca…

> Gmail required you enable "less secure apps" to let a Windows Phone connect to it

Wait, what was that about? Microsoft was incapable of building a Windows Phone email client that used OAUTH?

Re: New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

#134

Post by GekkePrutser »

This won't be the end of it. It's just one of the many battles.

And iOS isn't for everyone. Yes it's great for protecting privacy but it's also extremely restrictive for the users. The fact that they don't even allow real third-party browsers is baffling in this day and age. I also can't use my Yubikey in OpenPGP mode which I really need for my password manager and SSH access. I know it supports U2F now but that's not enough (and was way too late as well).

But I agree the advertising industry has to die. I don't believe in the 'working together' approach of the EFF with their plugins that stop blocking cookies when they see the privacy policy file. I mean, if you're not tracking me, then why need third party cookies in the first place?

It'll never happen though. They'll always find a way to track us.

Re: New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

#135

Post by halostatue »

tinus_hn wrote: post #92
kohtatsu wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside is not having personalized ads. They will still see ads. I'm vehemently against invasive tracking for personalized ads, but more than happy to see clearly marked, clean context-based ads.

Most people don’t really care for the stupid ‘I bought a bike so next month I will be bombarded with bike ads’ context based ads because that is both annoyingly useless and a constant reminder an invisible spy is watching over their shoulder.

Retargeting is the worst.

Re: New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

#136

Post by nerdjon »

omnifischer wrote: post #23
raxxorrax wrote: post #9

Maybe the open source promise of Android was indeed a lie. To me this industry has no value to society at all. Not a fan of Apple, but they seem to be serious about privacy showing other companies how it is done. Microsoft could have really established itself as an alternative to Google on the same front, but they utterly failed by mirroring the worst aspects of the disastrous landscape we see on mobile devices. I ho…

At the end of the day, 1. Apple users are the ones that cannot browse without adblocker. Safari is not as good as ublock-origin 2. Most Apple users use google maps. > Not a fan of Apple, but they seem to be serious about privacy If they are honest then they can remove the default search engine from Google to DDG or whatever. They get billions from Google for default search engine. https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/1/21…

In regards to maps...

I would like to actually see number on that. I personally use Apple Maps almost exclusively and don't look back. It does everything I need.

Apple Maps had a very shaky start, but its just fine compared to google maps (with the added benefit of not being a privacy nightmare)

Re: New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

#137

Post by halostatue »

erklik wrote: post #50
d--b wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is for in-apps tracking, not the web.

If you wanted to, although it is more effort, and more niche, you can install a pi-hole on your network blocking all sorts tracking, ads etc across all devices. Although, for Android, there do exist apps that will do system-level ad/tracker blocking.

How do you install pi-hole for the cellular modem on a smartphone?

Re: New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

#138

Post by jeffhuys »

t0mas88 wrote: post #58
d--b wrote: post #2

At long last! And now I'll know why I pay more for an iPhone.

That's not a reason to pay more for an iPhone. Android allows you to install any browser you want (as opposed to Apple still not allowing real third party browsers), including Firefox with uBlock, which is much much better at privacy than Safari on Apple and as a bonus makes the internet 3x faster by blocking ads.

Eh, I use Wipr. Exact same thing. PiHole if you want system-wide.

Re: New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

#139

Post by ocdtrekkie »

AstralStorm wrote: post #3

Some industries need to die. This one is akin to making horse carriages nowadays, except more evil.

Pretty much. It's incredible the mental gymnastics the adtech industry has gone through to believe it's important, or even fundamentally important to the world.

Re: New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

#140

Post by Wowfunhappy »

b112 wrote: post #89
raxxorrax wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, Android itself doesn't have to be horrible, but most distributions are full of adware. Wouldn't want to minimize the work going into the core of the OS, I meant the critique to be directed against Android + gapps. I love Lineage, but you are dependent on other maintainers for your device or you have serious work ahead of you. It is quite simple to install for experienced users, but way too complicated for most…

How about the elephant in the room? Radio firmwares. It is meaningless if you install firewalls, if you compile android on your own, only to have to turn around and use proprietary, closed source libs to access proprotary, closed source radio firmwares. Radio firmwares which often have full RAM access, parallel CPU control, GPS and full hardware access, and make intel's management engine, and closed source bioses loo…

Do you really think the adtech industry is using radio firmware backdoors to track users? It's theoretically possible I suppose, but several steps too far into conspiracy theory territory for me to worry about. Governments spying on dissidents is another story.
Post reply on HN