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Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

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Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#201

Post by tenacious_tuna »

swiley wrote: post #128
javajosh wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't move money around or even have private messaging. If the stakes are high enough, users need the service provider to be skeptical of all client processes, because the risk of being impersonated is born, right or wrong, by the user.

If you move money around then the legal system already exists to deal with fraud. As someone who doesn't use an iphone it's really frustrating that online services are starting to expect one for this reason when it hasn't been necessary in the past.

There's a cost-benefit balance at play: is using the cost of the legal system (lawyers, evidence, courts, long tail on case times) better than developing a system to prevent fraudulent users?

I also wouldn't be surprised if there was a burden of "good faith effort" required to show that you've taken measures to prevent frauds.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#202

Post by rndgermandude »

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.

I honestly want to see evidence for this claim. Sounds to me it makes running an ad network harder and therefore probably more expensive, but it is far from a certainty that this translates into advertisers' willingness to pay more (and pass it on to consumers).

Personally, I use ads as a signal to avoid buying certain products. If the ads are too prominent and omnipresent, it's an indication for me that I would be paying quite a premium on their marketing. But that's just me.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#203

Post by gord288 »

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.

Products/services are typically priced according to what the market can bear. If advertising costs become cheaper for a given company, for whatever reason, who's to say this decreased expense is going to be passed down to consumers in the form of lower prices?

Living in an advertising-saturated and/or privacy-deprived world is also a "cost" borne by members of society.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#204

Post by jefftk »

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?

> How exactly is this my problem as a consumer?

When you use a service that is funded by advertising, the service only gets that funding because the advertisers trust that they are getting their ads in front of real users. Some advertisers are able to precisely measure the quality of their traffic, for example by seeing whether the traffic they get buys things, but most are in businesses where that's not possible (no one clicks on an ad for Coca-Cola and then places an order for Coke). Ad fraud means that advertisers are less willing to pay to be shown on the service, so the service's funding decreases.

Very likely, less funding for the service hurts you as a consumer: they are probably spending their funding in support of the site. For example, I believe that the ads here fund the moderators.

> why should you be allowed to spy on me - who never defrauded any advertisers - to fix your problem?

See my response to wil421: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25430453 I think that fix here is some thing like https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-supports-privacy-pass... or https://web.dev/trust-tokens/ that allows detecting and preventing fraud in a privacy preserving manner.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#205

Post by fbelzile »

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.

> Their income is from selling physical devices.

Not entirely true anymore:

1) About $8-12 billion paid by Google to have their search engine default. [1]

2) About $20 billion from their 15-30% cut of third party app developers. Where the App Store is protected from competition. [2]

3) Apple services (like Apple TV+), which collects usage data for itself and third parties. [3]

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2020/10/25/google-apple-search-def...

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/15/21292203/apple-app-store-...

[3] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208511

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#206

Post by shawnz »

HatchedLake721 wrote: post #177
shawnz wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They haven't just "lately been marketing themselves as an improvement over Google and Microsoft". Anyone aware of Apple's history knows that Apple has always pushed consumer privacy forward, forcing others in the industry to follow. I don't know any other consumer electronics company other than Apple that has been championing consumer privacy so much over the last 12-15 years. If you learned about Apple's stance on p…

What are they doing that other vendors aren't? From what I can tell their privacy-forward marketing began with the rollout of the Secure Enclave in the 5S, but Android vendors were already using hardware key stores and full disk encryption at that time.

I will admit that this action to change the advertising ID to default-off is a promising one though.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#207

Post by dralley »

coolspot wrote: post #55
hakre wrote: post #37

Looks like Mozilla still ignores the memo that anti-tracking starts with anti DRM in the first place. Apple your new friend. State of the art data protection looks different. Mozilla ain't asking for help for that thought. How unfortunate!

In Firefox desktop, an user has to enable DRM manually per-site.

And the DRM decryption blob isn't downloaded until the user goes to a site that uses DRM and agrees to installing it.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#208

Post by leereeves »

rndgermandude wrote: post #193
leereeves wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Yes, but "better" is a qualitative term not a quantitative. That this thing even exists in the first place and was either mandatory or opt-out is still concerning to me. This change moved Apple a little closer to the "good guys" column, but not really into it.

If by "good guys" you mean champions of privacy, I don't think Apple will ever be that. They're a giant business and that means they're primarily motivated by profit.

It's up to the people to be the champions of privacy and help Apple realize that our interests (privacy) are aligned with their interests (profit).

(And I say this as someone who's rather anti-Apple for other reasons. Life is complicated and full of compromises.)

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#210

Post by superkuh »

alisonkisk wrote: post #197
superkuh wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Add lag and randomize timing.

This isn't over the internet. This is a radio signal over the air.

First, your phone sends out a radio signal omnidirectionally. Then many basestations that know their own position and time very accurately receive it at slightly different times. They compare and use multi-lateration to determine where the broadcast had to come from.

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