Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

foundation.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 403 posts

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#161

Post by superkuh »

eganist wrote: post #149
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.

The client handset's location is not determined by the power. It's determined by timing. Higher power would only give more basestations ability to receive your signal and add greater resolution to their position solution.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#162

Post by sammm »

dkdk8283 wrote: post #97
bartread wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what the GP is saying. They're saying that only Facebook and the like have the resources to catch fraud, and smaller players won't. Yes, it's harder, but that hardness is almost an irrelevance to Facebook and other FAANG-alikes, whereas it could be much more of a problem for smaller businesses who will struggle to bear the costs both of fraud, and to develop anti-fraud solutions (or pay for anti-fraud serv…

Market will catch up. I used Apache beam and we got really creative. As with all things it’s an arms race.

Did not expect to see Apache Beam mentioned as part of this conversation. Mind me asking what you mean?

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#163

Post by rndgermandude »

jefftk wrote: post #160
eznzt wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you use a big word such as "fraud" when you mean "we want to be able to know which accounts are owned by the same person".

That isn't what "fraud" means in this context. Ad fraud is when you have something other than a real user loading or clicking on ads. For example, I could stand up a headless browser to click on the ads on my site. This would get me more of a payout from my advertisers, but would also be fraud. A stable identifier makes identifying this sort of behavior much easier. (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only…

Ad fraud... How exactly is this my problem as a consumer? This sounds pretty much like a "you" (ad networks and advertisers) problem... So why should you be allowed to spy on me - who never defrauded any advertisers - to fix your problem?

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#164

Post by elliekelly »

TruthSHIFT wrote: post #132
tchalla wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

One important implication of not using full encryption is that it protects users from themselves. If a user forgets their password, Apple can still unlock their data. From a security perspective, this obviously isn't ideal. But, from the perspective of the average user who has lost all of their data, this is great.

I should be given the choice to turn it on though. I understand Apple not wanting to deal with the annoying customer who forgets their password, loses everything, and blames Apple. I’ve seen enough forgotten password people while waiting at the Genius Bar to sympathize with Apple. But just because some of their customers can’t handle the responsibility doesn’t mean none of their customers should have the option. I encrypt my hard drive despite Apple’s warnings about FireVault. I understand the risk, have weighed the pros and cons, and have taken steps to mitigate the risk.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#165

Post by avianlyric »

littlestymaar wrote: post #127
objclxt wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Well, less than a month ago all Mac apps worldwide refused to open because the listening service at Apple failed to respond, so you don't even have to look at the network to know that Apple is spying… Apple has access to all apps you open, your position, the content of your iCloud, etc. etc.

Yeah you might want to do a little more research on that topic as you clearly have no idea what your talking about.

Incidentally did you know that web browsers tell certificate authorities about every website you visit that uses TLS with support for OCSP stapling.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#166

Post by jasonlotito »

Cipater wrote: post #59
wil421 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think iPhone users care if it’s harder for Facebook and the like to catch fraud?

I'll flip this one back to you in the same spirit. Do you think iPhone users care that Apple is implementing anti-tracking?

Consider that up until they implemented it, they allowed it, and people still bought phones. I don’t think people care. I think people will be happy, but I don’t think it matters one way or another for actual purchases.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#167

Post by thrwn_frthr_awy »

suprfsat wrote: post #139
sradman wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it has literally no purpose beyond mining peoples' data Its main purpose is targeted ads while repurposing or reselling peoples’ data is a nefarious secondary use. Multi-sided markets are important revenue models that are tailored to user preferences and behavior. We are trying to strike a balance; we don’t need to demonize all advertising centric business models to win the argument for better privacy options. I th…

How do you propose to target ads without mining peoples' data?

If companies can’t target ads without data mining that isn’t an argument for data mining—it’s an argument against targeted ads.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#168

Post by rndgermandude »

amrangaye wrote: post #158
qdhqdhqdg wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

“Catastrophic privacy” is quite a huge claim - do you have any actual examples? My perspective is that iphone privacy protections have actually gotten better and more sophisticated over time, and I’m much more comfortable having older non-techie relatives on iOS for that reason. When it comes to providing them tech support ios has always been less finicky than android.

>Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) on iPhones

Nuff said.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#169

Post by lotsofpulp »

ratherbefuddled wrote: post #126
lotsofpulp wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not referring to verification for card fraud, I'm saying the card networks could sell it to anyone that wants to verify a human is on the other end. Like an alternative to Captcha.

Strong Customer Authentication should be sufficient to prove that the payment request is authorised by the card holder, given this I'm not sure why a business would pay to be sure there's a human there?

I’m not referring to payments at all. I’m talking about using the card networks to serve as an alternative to Captcha for things like forums or any other situation besieged by bots and whatnot.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#170

Post by kop316 »

jefftk wrote: post #160
eznzt wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you use a big word such as "fraud" when you mean "we want to be able to know which accounts are owned by the same person".

That isn't what "fraud" means in this context. Ad fraud is when you have something other than a real user loading or clicking on ads. For example, I could stand up a headless browser to click on the ads on my site. This would get me more of a payout from my advertisers, but would also be fraud. A stable identifier makes identifying this sort of behavior much easier. (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only…

This reads like how it would make the police jobs easier to solve crime just to install an always on GPS on everybody.

Ad fraud really isn't my problem. So why should I be mercilessly tracked by everyone just to make your job easier?

Post reply on HN