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Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

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Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#141

Post by shawnz »

qdhqdhqdg wrote: post #123
LC_ALL wrote: 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.

Not hard to be the most privacy focused big company when the competition Google , Facebook or Amazon... I don't understand why we should always have good guys and bad guys and we can't accept that none of those company respect us. Nothing will change if we relay Apple's propaganda about privacy. People will think that the solution is already there and it's Apple. And it's not. Apple has catastrophic Privacy, just a b…

Agreed, we should be careful not to champion them as the saviours of consumer privacy just because they have lately been marketing themselves as an improvement over Google and Microsoft.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#142

Post by eivarv »

cafebabbe wrote: post #107
eivarv wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that the third-party tracking ecosystem is slowly drying out I'm curious what advertisers will come up with to circumvent these new measures. Probably fingerprinting – not to mention the fact that ad-people are lobbying both legislators (including the EU) and standards bodies (like W3C)... and in the latter case they're also directly contributing to the standards.

Most adtech players are legit and don't rely on such practices, illegal in many countries. Of course some smaller one will still try to do it, don't get me wrong.

Well, there's the entire field of databroking (likely completely illegal under GDPR, not to mention unethical from the start) and real time bidding related to this.

Given the sorry state of privacy-compliance in general (whether that's ignorance of the law or consciously taking a risk) I seriously doubt that the field of adtech is much better.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#143

Post by dwighttk »

Twisell wrote: post #16
zpeti wrote: post #5

I genuine question I don’t know the answer to, what’s better, seeing completely random ads that are questionably relevant, and wasting my attention and time (and meaning specialized small businesses can’t compete, ads are for things like detergent that everyone needs), or seeing ads that I might actually be interested at some point (some cool gadget that actually could be relevant to my life, sold by a specialist sma…

If what you describe could be achieved in a privacy respecting fashion and on device (using opt-in instead of opt-out) why not (for instance let the server send 50 add propositions with a one time token and ip obfuscation and let the on device IA choose). What actually happen is that I got vaccum cleaner adds all over youtube & friend for weeks AFTER I ordered one online from a (so far) trusted brick and mortar shop.…

You don’t collect vacuum cleaners? That’s funny, I don’t collect headphones but get put in the “suspected headphone collector” bin every couple years or so when I buy a pair.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#144

Post by swiley »

xondono wrote: post #74
LC_ALL wrote: 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.

They're pivoting to selling services now. That's why iCloud is so integrated into the phone while the free version is so crappy.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#145

Post by superkuh »

Apple can make an anti-tracking computer but nothing they do can make an anti-tracking phone. It is a "cell" phone. The very nature of cell phones means the basestations have to decide where you are and which cell takes your connections. With precise clocks and multi-lateration the position of your handset is known to about 50m. All US telco keep this location data (which is constantly updated) for 2 to 5 years. And they sell it too.

No, there is no privacy oriented, no anti-tracking, cell phone. None of them are capable of this. And no amount of "privacy" functions in the user computer will make up for the intrinsic nature of cell phones. Because cell phones are so incredibly useful people bend over backwards mentally to try to ignore this. They get angry when it's pointed out because it's "irrelevant". But it isn't. This is real tracking of you. Far worse than any "internet" tracking.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#146

Post by HatchedLake721 »

confiq wrote: post #110
HatchedLake721 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "they don't respect anyone's privacy at all". This is so dishonest. Please familiarise yourself with Apple's history in consumer privacy and what they've done so far, including inadvertently forcing others to follow (looking at you Google). https://youtu.be/08IC1AZTxls?t=2941

> https://youtu.be/08IC1AZTxls?t=2941 Yes, apple talking about apple... Lets see the facts, here mozilla is asking apple to commit what apple is advocating for all these years. > "In 2019, Mozilla called on Apple to increase user privacy by automatically resetting the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) on iPhones." It's 2021 very soon

Sorry, did you read Mozilla's blog post or aware of what IDFA is and it's history?

Apple released IDFA to improve consumer privacy, to avoid advertisers being able to fingerprint iOS devices using Unique Device ID (UDID).

Access to UDID was deprecated in iOS 5 (that's 2011).

It has also given control to consumers since then to opt-out of providing IDFA by default.

In 2019, Mozilla asked Apple to take rotate the IDFA every month.

But Apple has taken it even further, which Mozilla publicly applauded https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/applause-for-apples-i...

Apple is now making IDFA disabled by default and requiring users to enable it if they want to.

> Apple went even further than what Mozilla supporters had asked for when it announced that it will give consumers the option to opt-out of tracking in each app, essentially turning off IDFA and giving millions of consumers more privacy online.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#147

Post by jaimex2 »

nojito wrote: post #100
izacus wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure..but they make sure you know about it before you install the app in the first place. https://developer.apple.com/app-store/app-privacy-details/

Same deal with Android. If you really want privacy a root access Android phone is the way to go as it can provide junk data when apps ask for details.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#148

Post by jmull »

superkuh wrote: post #145

Apple can make an anti-tracking computer but nothing they do can make an anti-tracking phone. It is a "cell" phone. The very nature of cell phones means the basestations have to decide where you are and which cell takes your connections. With precise clocks and multi-lateration the position of your handset is known to about 50m. All US telco keep this location data (which is constantly updated) for 2 to 5 years. And…

This is about tracking your internet activity, not physical location/movements.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#149

Post by eganist »

superkuh wrote: post #145

Apple can make an anti-tracking computer but nothing they do can make an anti-tracking phone. It is a "cell" phone. The very nature of cell phones means the basestations have to decide where you are and which cell takes your connections. With precise clocks and multi-lateration the position of your handset is known to about 50m. All US telco keep this location data (which is constantly updated) for 2 to 5 years. And…

Although for what its worth, I wonder if it's possible for a cell to throw telcos off by broadcasting at higher power and connecting randomly between more and less distant antennas.

This is probably one of the dumber ideas I've come up with given that I have no idea how the different protocols for handshakes between cells and towers work. Looking to be educated on it here in the comments.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#150

Post by naringas »

All in all, what they are really accomplishing is making it harder and more techinacally difficult to track individual people. i.e. NOT impossible.

In the end, given enough money (or lacking enough scruples) it will still be possible to track individuals as a service, but it'll be more expensive because it has been made difficult by 'privacy-first' initiatives such as this.

So that finally, only very very large companies and governments can really afford to do this.

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