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Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

foundation.mozilla.org

71–80 of 403 posts

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#71
post #50

Say what you want about Apple but they are by far the most privacy focused big company. Their income is from selling physical devices. Typical megacorps in 2020 are leveraging economies of scale to sell their users' attention. Apple has a unique value add in that when their users benefit they benefit. Sent from my Thinkpad.

Apple had its own advertising platform called iAd that was abandonded a few years ago. Cynical me thinks that them disabling the IDFA could be a ploy for them to corner the adtech market for themselves.

now you have [Apple Search Ads](https://searchads.apple.com/) instead of iAd

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#72
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if it would be profitable for Visa/Mastercard/Discover/AmEx to sell a verification service where people can authenticate with a $0.01 authorization or approval amount. Obviously, it wouldn't work with gift cards or other accounts not tied to a real person.

And make stolen credit card numbers even more valuable? (I like where your head is at, fraud is just hard)

Combine it with 2FA, such as TOTP or SMS.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#73

> Apple plans to improve privacy on iPhone, but it’s already pushed back the implementation. We need a massive outpouring of support for Apple’s decision to help strengthen its resolve to protect consumer privacy. Tell Apple: I support your efforts to defend our privacy, and encourage you to implement the IDFA changes as soon as possible. Does anyone actually think that Apple cares at all about the few thousand peopl…

Apple probably doesn’t care, but this is necessary to change the press landscape. Right now the narrative is Apple is doing things to hurt Facebook - a million people signing this will change that narrative.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#74
post #50

Say what you want about Apple but they are by far the most privacy focused big company. Their income is from selling physical devices. Typical megacorps in 2020 are leveraging economies of scale to sell their users' attention. Apple has a unique value add in that when their users benefit they benefit. Sent from my Thinkpad.

Technically speaking, their income is from selling services to the people the’ve sold physical devices.

It’s also a good way to combat the push from companies like Google to bring down the prices of devices to allow for better tracking.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#76
post #69
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And make stolen credit card numbers even more valuable? (I like where your head is at, fraud is just hard)

Stolen cards have long since been solved in many parts of the world with 3DS. Not sure why the US is still lagging behind on this.

3D Secure for those like me who didn't know the proper term, referring to an extra verification step from your bank e.g. SMS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-D_Secure

https://stripe.com/docs/payments/3d-secure

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#77
post #42
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see a list of apps that share you activity with facebook here (even if you didn't install any facebook app on your phone or didn't use facebook login feature) : https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/activity_list (click "Manage Your Off-Facebook Activity" on the right if you're on desktop)

This requires a facebook account, though they likely do have data from those not registered.

Look up "shadow profile".

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#78
>"In 2019, Mozilla called on Apple to increase user privacy by automatically resetting the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) on iPhones."

Can anyone provide more context on this event? Is it not odd that Mozilla would call on Apple to "increase user privacy" when one of Mozilla's main(most important?) partners is Google which is the very antithesis of user privacy?

Then further down the post states" >"That’s where you come in: We need a massive outpouring of support for Apple’s decision to help strengthen its resolve to protect consumer privacy."

While I applaud these efforts I'm curious how does Mozilla reconcile taking hundreds of millions of dollars from Google while taking this principled stance on Apple? This seems to be a bit of cognitive dissonance.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#79

In Europe, cross-app, cross-browser & cross-device tracking is on very thin ice legally under the GDPR, so I'm not surprised Apple finally curbs the use of "sticky" identifiers on their devices. Honestly, it's a bit shameful that a device that is marketed as the gold standard in privacy would even support such an identifier in the first place, it has literally no purpose beyond mining peoples' data. Now that the thir…

Having been on both sides of the table, I would slightly disagree here. Fraud prevention for example will get an order of magnitude harder, plus this move will further skew the playing field towards FAANG who have the resources to puzzle the scraps back together for decent conversion tracking with the help of logins, IPs, SDKs with First Party IDs and a massive dose of machine learning.

Fraud prevention? What exactly are you paying the Apple cut for?
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