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Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

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Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#81

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.

> 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

Those are not exempt from the GDPR either. Granted, at the moment there’s very little enforcement around these (especially IP addresses despite their huge tracking potential) but once enforcement is stepped up there shouldn’t be any difference whether it’s a FAANG or a small company doing it).

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#82

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…

> shameful that a device that is marketed as the gold standard in privacy

It's being marketed this way, that's it. It doesn't mean Apple care about privacy, and they prove every once in a while that they don't respect anyone's privacy at all. They spy on their users as much as anyone else (and overall, they have access to much more information than everybody else except Google).

All they want to do is prevent third-party tracking on their devices, so they have a monopoly on their users' data.

But they do collect those data and they share them with third party “partners”. Don't trust me, just look at their privacy policy, it's explicitly written there: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#83
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.

Why don't they fully encrypt the icloud backups? Sent from my Huawei.

What do you think are the possible issues for full encryption of iCloud backups?

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What free software phones are there that actually take steps to prevent tracking? Most free software OSes I know about generally give apps lots of access to the system they are running on, which makes tracking a lot easier.

PinePhone, Libre phone to name two. I’m guessing there are some android ROMs that could do this as well but not positive

> Libre phone

Librem 5 phone: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5

Pinephone: https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PinePhone, Libre phone to name two. I’m guessing there are some android ROMs that could do this as well but not positive

What specific steps do they take to stop tracking?

https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#87

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…

> shameful that a device that is marketed as the gold standard in privacy It's being marketed this way, that's it. It doesn't mean Apple care about privacy, and they prove every once in a while that they don't respect anyone's privacy at all. They spy on their users as much as anyone else (and overall, they have access to much more information than everybody else except Google). All they want to do is prevent third-p…

> They spy on their users as much as anyone else (and overall, they have access to much more information than everybody else except Google).

This is easily disproven by making a GDPR access request to see what various companies have retained on you, or if you’re extra paranoid inspecting what the device is sending back over the network.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#88

As a reminder, most popular Android apps send data to Facebook : https://9to5google.com/2018/12/31/android-apps-facebook/

As a reminder (from first hand experience with mobile development for major companies), the iOS versions of those apps do the same. Even more so, all of those tracking SDKs are targeting iOS first, Android second.

Please don't feel safe on iOS just because Apple marketing is blasting misleading claims at you.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#89

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…

> shameful that a device that is marketed as the gold standard in privacy It's being marketed this way, that's it. It doesn't mean Apple care about privacy, and they prove every once in a while that they don't respect anyone's privacy at all. They spy on their users as much as anyone else (and overall, they have access to much more information than everybody else except Google). All they want to do is prevent third-p…

You can't say things like that, can you imagine how Apple device owners (which are plenty here) would feel about their purchases? I've seen the argument of 'using Apple if you are privacy conscious and rest is subpar' here a thousand times as a main justification for the higher price.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#90
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.

Their walled garden leads to users vulnerable to every Apple's decision.

Sent from my Pinephone.

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