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Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

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Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#181

Post by jforman »

rndgermandude wrote: post #163
jefftk wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because it makes advertising more expensive, which in turn makes the products and services you use more expensive.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#182

Post by leereeves »

rndgermandude wrote: post #168
amrangaye wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

Identifier for Advertisers was opt-out, and will soon be opt-in [1], so that seems like an example of Apple's privacy protections getting better over time.

1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/09/03/idfa-st...

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#183

Post by rank0 »

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…

Tracking what I do on my device and tracking my physical location are very different things.

It would be nice if there were regulations that protected my information from my telco provider.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#184

Post by gruez »

xoa wrote: post #98
greggman3 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's BS and has been since forever https://games.greggman.com/game/panopticlick-hyperbole/ TL;DR they don't get enough traffic for the numbers to represent anything useful.

It may be BS, but that analysis seems too shallow to be at all convincing either. My big question is how much resolution you can get out of things like canvas finger printing and WebGL (or even sheer JS speed). Those are places where the analog reality underlying everything we develop on may peek through unless explicit (and inherently performance reducing) measures are taken. Even if two CPUs/GPUs/SoCs are fabricate…

>My big question is how much resolution you can get out of things like canvas finger printing and WebGL (or even sheer JS speed). Those are places where the analog reality underlying everything we develop on may peek through unless explicit (and inherently performance reducing) measures are taken.

I'm not sure how the "analog reality" applies here. The CPUs and GPUs generate discrete results, and behave identically two other chips of the same model. You talked about variations in performance, but is there evidence that apple does this with iphones? They could very well running them at lower clocks than what they're capable of, ie. the chips come out of the fab being able to run at 1.6-1.8ghz, but apple runs all of them at 1.6ghz. Finally, even if the performance variation is there, the difference will have to be big enough that it doesn't get drowned out in the noise or other environmental variations. A phone that has been in a pocket would perform worse than one that's been sitting on a desk, because it's probably 10 degrees warmer, which means 10 less degrees of thermal headroom.

>I don't disagree that the relatively small (and undoubtedly skewed from the general population) size of the EFF's overall dataset is a limit for them, but "I have no idea but it seems fishy because my iPhone should be identical because I say so" isn't an analysis.

But the eff site tells you exactly what they're fingerprinting, and they're not fingerprinting performance. What you described might be possible, but is irrelevant to the discussion.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#185

Post by doomslice »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #22

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…

https://www.thetradedesk.com/industry-initiatives/unified-id...

https://www.verizonmedia.com/insights/overcoming-identity-he...

And probably a dozen other ID solutions out there that require you to be logged in and thus have some first party data to match you with.

Honestly I'm not sure what the value proposition is for the user if it's not required to log in, so who knows what the uptake will be.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#186

Post by alisonkisk »

jforman wrote: post #181
rndgermandude wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because it makes advertising more expensive, which in turn makes the products and services you use more expensive.

How is that my problem? I have no interest in advertising more assaulting me with lies.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#188

Post by [deleted] »

Nextgrid wrote: post #81
endymi0n wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#189

Post by dtech »

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?

Strictly more than they care about Facebook and Google's anti-click fraud problems.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#190

Post by pydry »

rndgermandude wrote: post #163
jefftk wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Turning the ad business into a market for lemons actually sounds kind of like a feature to me.
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