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

361–370 of 385 posts

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

#361

Post by b112 »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #140
b112 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know Samsung snarfs everything it can from my phone. I know it wants more. I know money is key, and even pulling some info... GPS, sensors, etc is helpful.

And with full control of the OS, of where kernel modules memory space is assigned, you'd only have to scan certain buffer regions of memory, to snarf contents of buffers, etc.

The problem is, I don't know, and can't. It's not open source. It is not under my control. I personally don't care about paying, but I do about seeing.

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

#362

Post by encom »

ogre_codes wrote: post #354
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.

I think people who talk up Microsoft's phone efforts must have been wearing blinders. I won't argue that Microsoft's phone was decent at one point, maybe even "Great" for a short while. But by the time they had a decent phone, they'd already burned out all the good will people had towards them on Mobile. Microsoft had... 4? Different mobile operating systems over the 15 years or so they were selling mobile OSs. I hon…

They fucked people over further than that. A whole bunch of Win8 devices were promised an upgrade to Win10, and then weeks before release, Microsoft were like "nevermind LOL" and people were furious.

Also, for quite some time before they officially pulled the plug on mobile, core MS apps would come out for Android first.

Microsoft really despised their customers.

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

#363

Post by Yetanfou »

Akronymus wrote: post #62
Yetanfou wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is open source Android a lie? I never used any other version, I do not have a Google account, nor do I have any Google-proprietary software on my devices yet they still run all software - including the Swedish "BankID" electronic ID app which is needed for just about any interaction with anything official nowadays. That "BankID" is, together with Firefox Preview, the only software which I got from the pla…

I think you could be interested in ~~riot~~ element. https://element.io/ Specifically works well as a discord replacement IMO. (Also has integration for stuff like jitsi)

I looked at Matrix (which is what riot.im/element is based on) but have thus far not seen its advantage over XMPP+OMEMO. When you install Jitsi Meet you already have an XMPP server (Prosody, used for signalling and interprocess communication) so it is trivial to add a configuration for 'regular' use. XMPP is more open than Matrix and there are far more clients (albeit not all of them useable with OMEMO, alas). On an earlier installation I used eJabberd since Prosody had some problems with OMEMO back then but this is no longer the case.

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

#364

Post by dingaling »

dylan604 wrote: post #360
lern_too_spel wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get an iPhone, you will get Apple's compulsory apps. The difference is that on Android, you can replace Google's apps with other apps.

don't you just exchange that with apps your carrier forces on you?

Not if you buy the phone from a retailer.

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

#365

Post by lern_too_spel »

dylan604 wrote: post #360
lern_too_spel wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get an iPhone, you will get Apple's compulsory apps. The difference is that on Android, you can replace Google's apps with other apps.

don't you just exchange that with apps your carrier forces on you?

You can replace those with apps that you like as well. Android doesn't care who installed the default apps.

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

#366

Post by cwhiz »

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…

Android is literally a spyware operating system. It fits every definition of spyware. The same is true of most Google apps and services.

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

#367

Post by AnonC »

sparker72678 wrote: post #336

Worth noting that you can already get some of these benefits today by going to Settings -> Privacy -> Advertising and turning on "Limit Ad Tracking". This sends an all-zeros IDFA to all APIs that request it^1. iOS 14 begins the new prompts, lets you toggle this on a per-app basis, and, by being in front of users is just about guaranteed to dramatically increase the number of users who are opted-in. [^1] https://suppo…

> Settings -> Privacy -> Advertising and turning on "Limit Ad Tracking". This sends an all-zeros IDFA to all APIs that request it.

Could you please clarify, even when “Limit Ad Tracking” is on, why the “Reset Advertising Identifier“ option below it is still there and asks if the identifier needs to be reset (on tapping it)?

What does “Reset Advertising Identifier” do when “Limit Ad Tracking” is already on?

Side note: The link you provided throws an error for me saying “could not connect to server”. Not sure if it’s a temporary issue.

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

#368

Post by intopieces »

Yetanfou wrote: post #53
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…

In what way is open source Android a lie? I never used any other version, I do not have a Google account, nor do I have any Google-proprietary software on my devices yet they still run all software - including the Swedish "BankID" electronic ID app which is needed for just about any interaction with anything official nowadays. That "BankID" is, together with Firefox Preview, the only software which I got from the pla…

It’s important to consider not your specific implementation, but the common implementation that is Android. And that implementation is chock full of spyware/adware/malware.

Android is open, and therefore exhibits the classic tension of liberty: free to do what you want, including harm yourself.

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

#369

Post by t0mas88 »

scarface74 wrote: post #315
t0mas88 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If it's open source and people can check that it doesn't anything hidden, yes

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

#370

Post by scarface74 »

t0mas88 wrote: post #369
scarface74 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If it's open source and people can check that it doesn't anything hidden, yes

Are you compiling it and putting it on your phone yourself or are you trusting that the same version that they posted on GitHub is the same version on Google Play.
Post reply on HN