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New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

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

#311

Post by artificial »

ardy42 wrote: post #268
artificial wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not fond of the current display of ads on websites and I block them mercilessly. If I'm looking for shoes, I'm shown more shoes in ads (this is my reality right now.) How is that trickery? Unless you're considering any advertisement manipulation. The part where the current model falls down is it doesn't stop (since there's no means to really show that one isn't interested) and a big ticket item like a toilet beco…

> Unless you're considering any advertisement manipulation. Any advertisement is manipulation. Think about it: the purpose of an ad is to influence your decisions primarily for the benefit the self-interest of the party that paid for the ad (otherwise they wouldn't have paid for it). Any benefit you derive from your decision is secondary, and doesn't typically factor into the decision to take out the ad. That's prett…

I'm looking at this more from a product standpoint. When someone shows an ad for a vehicle that's priced lower than before and I'm in the market for a car, I'd like to know about it. What do you consider an advertisement? Is a business sign an advertisement? I consider a lunch special saving me the time of thumbing through a menu, I don't consider it manipulation which has negative connotations as well and seems pretty binary, any interaction you have with someone would seem to fall under manipulation. I appreciate the food for thought though.

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

#312

Post by dwighttk »

jchook wrote: post #295
deeblering4 wrote: post #266

This is a big reason why I continue to use apple devices. They seem to be one of the few large tech companies that aligns themselves with users rights to privacy. Apple isn’t perfect. But they build very good privacy and security into their products. And they structure their UI and defaults in such a way that the average user benefits with no effort or specialized knowledge.

I definitely see some questionable privacy practices by Apple... - While "10x less", iPhone still sends your private information (such as location) to Apple on a regular basis[1]. - Apple encrypts iCloud backups with a key they control, not end-to-end[2]. This means that Apple can decrypt and inspect your phone and computer backups. - According to the article, iOS developers can use their "new privacy-focused ad fram…

iCloud backups are end to end encrypted if 2 factor authentication is turned on according to your link.

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

#313

Post by scarface74 »

pantaloony wrote: post #142
GekkePrutser wrote: post #134

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 no…

Much like Flash, not allowing third-party browsers could be explained as a cynical control mechanism on Apple’s part... or as their not wanting to see tech support volume shoot up as Chrome and Firefox users complain their battery life is terrible. Or some combination of the two.

In the case of Flash, there is no world where Adobe could get Flash working well on an iPhone in 2007 with 128MB RAM/400Mhz CPU when it could barely run on a 1GB RAM/1Ghz CPU Android in 2010.

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

#314

Post by scarface74 »

m12k wrote: post #224
dylan604 wrote: post #217

>But being the most popular mobile ecosystem I keep seeing quote similar to this about Apple's iOS being so popular, yet the numbers clearly show that Android devices/users out number iOS. Are they saying that even with those numbers, Android is unpopular and people would rather be an iOS user? Is the price point whats preventing them?

Yeah, calling it the most popular requires defining popular in a rather unconventional manner... That said, as a data point, a handful of years ago I saw a report that the average iOS user generally had a quite a bit more purchasing power than the average Android user, so despite making up quite a bit less than 50% of the mobile market, iOS users actually come closer to making up 50% of the market that most advertise…

There is a reason that Google pays Apple 8 Billion+ a year to be the default search engine....

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

#315

Post by scarface74 »

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.

An ad blocker that intercepts all of your traffic is better for privacy than one that doesn’t?

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

#316

Post by threeseed »

jchook wrote: post #295
deeblering4 wrote: post #266

This is a big reason why I continue to use apple devices. They seem to be one of the few large tech companies that aligns themselves with users rights to privacy. Apple isn’t perfect. But they build very good privacy and security into their products. And they structure their UI and defaults in such a way that the average user benefits with no effort or specialized knowledge.

I definitely see some questionable privacy practices by Apple... - While "10x less", iPhone still sends your private information (such as location) to Apple on a regular basis[1]. - Apple encrypts iCloud backups with a key they control, not end-to-end[2]. This means that Apple can decrypt and inspect your phone and computer backups. - According to the article, iOS developers can use their "new privacy-focused ad fram…

1) The article never clarifies why Apple is sending location data. It could just be for the Find my Phone feature in which case users should just switch that off.

2) Apple doesn't have computer backups. But agreed that it isn't great that backups are not encrypted with my key.

3) It means Apple will provide information to advertisers about users but not in way that identifies them. Look into Differential Privacy. And I don't think you understand advertising if you think Apple can ever compete with the micro-targeting capabilities of Facebook/Google's advertising platforms.

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

#317

Post by lifeisstillgood »

lilyball wrote: post #280
Silhouette wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they build very good privacy and security into their products. And they structure their UI and defaults in such a way that the average user benefits with no effort or specialized knowledge. Sometimes they do, and I agree that they're much better than a lot of big tech companies. Still, their insistence on tying almost everything to iCloud and then not encrypting iCloud properly is a major black mark against them,…

On the other hand, tying everything to iCloud and then losing all your data because you replaced your sole device and forgot your password would be disastrous. This is the scenario that requires Apple to retain the keys to your iCloud, and as long as they have those keys, they can be compelled to decrypt it under lawful government order.

These days I have enough other apple devices tied in (family settings etc) that i could lose one device and still be authenticated via another

I think the secure enclave is the winning technology - whilst not everyone has to have a smartphone in the brave new digital world,everyone will have to have at least one secure enclave (HSM probably tied to biometrics)

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

#318

Post by threeseed »

s1k3s wrote: post #304
jchook wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely see some questionable privacy practices by Apple... - While "10x less", iPhone still sends your private information (such as location) to Apple on a regular basis[1]. - Apple encrypts iCloud backups with a key they control, not end-to-end[2]. This means that Apple can decrypt and inspect your phone and computer backups. - According to the article, iOS developers can use their "new privacy-focused ad fram…

Isn’t point 2 a consequence of the law that they have to follow? Don’t know about rest of the world but I think in EU they are forced to disclose your personal information to the government if asked to do so. This is also in their privacy policy.

I think this is definitely the case.

And as iCloud is a global service they really have to cater for the lowest common denominator.

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

#319

Post by dwighttk »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #149
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I believe Gmail switched at that time to pushing you to use effectively a Gmail-proprietary method to authorize access to a Gmail account. Nobody else was doing it at the time, I think official OAuth scopes actually came later. And bear in mind, OAuth to authorize mail access is weird . Generally speaking, mail clients use IMAP or POP3 and SMTP. One of the more popular open source Android mail clients, K-9 mail, stil…

Hmm I’ve been using gmail via IMAP almost exclusively for about 10 years

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

#320

Post by Yetanfou »

kube-system wrote: post #182
Yetanfou wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, although some can not, the vulnerability which Checkra1n [1] exploits being an example of such. In this case I consider this to be a good thing since it makes it possible to circumvent vendor-imposed restrictions. I like to be the one who gets to decide what runs on my hardware, I see no need to hand off this responsibility to any vendor no matter how virtuous they portray themselves (or are portrayed as such by…

It doesn’t really need to be a serious opponent. If you randomly drop a phone in a cab, chances are, it will end up in the hands of someone running one of these exploits on it. Doing network security on-device is antipattern. Doing it at the network layer is easier and more portable. Not only do I block ads on my iPhone, I even run an IDS/IPS on all of the traffic, no exploits or jailbreak required. Although, if you…

> Although, if you still prefer to block-ads on device, those solutions also exist for iOS.

Of course I run content blockers on my devices, this is not 'antipattern' at all. I also run them on the local network into which I, when needed (e.g. when using public wifi) connect through a VPN (used to be OpenVPN, now using Wireguard).

While Apple is slowly opening up the content blocking possibilities I have been doing this for about 9 years now, including egress blocking (using a whitelist, only those programs explicitly allowed are able to transmit data). Android being built on top of the Linux kernel made it possible to use most of the existing tools (iptables etc) more or less right from the start - which for me was with Android "Donut" (1.6) on an HTC Prophet (which was sold with Windows Mobile).

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