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Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

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Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#381

Post by dkdk8283 »

sammm wrote: post #162
dkdk8283 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Apache beam is the underlying engine we use for fraud detection. Based on proprietary heuristics we can provide the application with a confidence score the user is legit. Its up to the sec/product teams to determine when specific actions need additional verification like one time token via email or captcha. Just two examples.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#382

Post by raxxorrax »

ABCLAW wrote: post #276
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".

Ad fraud is a morally loaded term. What's considered ad fraud is not fraud, but labeling it as such lets advertisers point to individuals running bots and scripts as malicious internet abusers. If I used the term fraud like the ad industry uses ad fraud, I'd probably lose my law license or just get buried under unfavourable costs orders in court. So why are they deploying the term? Because it's a great way to deflect…

Don't know why this is downvoted. It is on topic and contains substantial information.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#383

Post by matty22 »

It's funny how a form on a Mozilla website asking you to add your voice to the chorus pushing Apple to move forward with the IDFA privacy changes has a form that asks for your first name, last name, email address, and country. None of which are optional...

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#384

Post by HatchedLake721 »

confiq wrote: post #242
HatchedLake721 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstood Mozilla. Apple is still going ahead with this regardless. My understanding the rollout was delayed because of ongoing financial hardship on everyone in the world because of COVID (and to give more time to advertisers, developers and others to prepare). Mozilla is also asking everyone to publicly support Apple's decision because it's good for consumers, which in result would also force others…

ok, that is one way to look at this... I've just disabled IDFA on my phone now! Thanks for having nice conversation! :)

You too, thanks! Here's what we exactly talked about by the way https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25441986

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#385

Post by forrestthewoods »

wyattpeak wrote: post #372
forrestthewoods wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, gross revenue is larger than net income. Particularly when manufacturing is involved. The $10B Google money is basically pure profit. It costs Apple nothing. Maybe a few million in lawyer time to negotiate the fee each year. Hardware sales generates enormous revenue and also very large profit. I believe more than half of Apple’s profit is still hardware sales. But they’re working very hard to increase their serv…

> The $10B Google money is basically pure profit. It costs Apple nothing. If they didn't spend all that money on producing the phones they'd have nothing to sell to Google. You can't meaningfully divorce the two, all profit centres of a business rely on the cost centres.

I have no idea what point you’re trying to make. You’ve moved the goal posts too many times.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#386

Post by andrekandre »

olliej wrote: post #46
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…

The purpose of IDFA was to provide an identifier that wasn't hardwired to the device - apps were going to absurd lengths to get the UDID, and IDFA gave them something ostensibly sufficient that users could in theory reset at will. I give good odds ad frameworks will again start trying to circumvent the platform security to get a UDID or equivalent.

if i remember correctly they (apple) still dont block access to the devices name (e.g "Johns iPad Pro"), so thats also one easy way to fingerprint* even without idfa

* to say nothing about the fact that apps can easily get my first name without me knowing it being super creepy

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#387

Post by Cogito »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #385
wyattpeak wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The $10B Google money is basically pure profit. It costs Apple nothing. If they didn't spend all that money on producing the phones they'd have nothing to sell to Google. You can't meaningfully divorce the two, all profit centres of a business rely on the cost centres.

I have no idea what point you’re trying to make. You’ve moved the goal posts too many times.

You are claiming the Google money is 'pure profit' while making phones is not.

They are saying that you can't account for the Google money as pure profit, even though the costs aren't as obvious. In particular, their argument says, you have to make and sell the phones before Google will give you money to make their search engine the default.

So the Google money is not pure profit, in the same way the phone sales are not pure profit (even though the underlying costs are not as obvious).

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#388

Post by mark_l_watson »

mqus wrote: post #272
mark_l_watson wrote: post #231

Apple is the best huge corporation when it comes to protecting user rights. I would have gone “all in Linux and alternative phones” if not for Apple’s current policies. They would lose me as a customer if they change, but I don’t expect them to do that.

You mean like the right to repair? Or do you mean the user rights on your iOS device, not allowing you to install stuff from outside the app store?

I think they are awe full for right to repair, but, really pretty good at protecting their customers’ privacy.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#389

Post by forrestthewoods »

Cogito wrote: post #387
forrestthewoods wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea what point you’re trying to make. You’ve moved the goal posts too many times.

You are claiming the Google money is 'pure profit' while making phones is not. They are saying that you can't account for the Google money as pure profit, even though the costs aren't as obvious. In particular, their argument says, you have to make and sell the phones before Google will give you money to make their search engine the default. So the Google money is not pure profit, in the same way the phone sales are…

Apple’s profit is increasingly derived from non-hardware sales. That profit is dependent on them having sold hardware. If they sell no hardware they will generate no services revenue or profit.

Scroll way back to the root of this conversation. Someone said that $20B is not nothing but is a small fraction of their revenue. I think this is a poor characterization because you need to consider the source of both gross and net revenue.

Yes, services revenue is dependent on hardware sales. And yes the margin on services is significantly higher than the margin on hardware. Apple has been working very very very hard to increase services revenue because it is so profitable. Yes that profit is dependent on their ability to continue to sell hardware. Apple’s ability to grow their annual profit is highly dependent on their ability to both maintain hardware sales and increase services revenue. There is a LOT of room to grow services revenue. There is much less room to grow hardware revenue.

I look forward to seeing where the goal post gets moved next.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#390

Post by datagram »

closeparen wrote: post #297
ogre_codes wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fraud prevention for example will get an order of magnitude harder, First Ad Fraud != Fraud. It is low grade hacking. Second. Trading the privacy of every iPhone user so that advertisers can prop up a sketchy/ poor industry is a terrible trade.

This completely changes the game on all kinds of fraud, not just ad fraud. Currently when you get caught, the service you’re abusing bans your device. To keep trying you need new hardware; attacks have a real monetary cost for the attacker. When your iPhone can present itself as infinitely many iPhones, this is neutered, and services will need different (probably more invasive) techniques to keep banned users away.

To add to what others are saying, IDFAs are specifically /not/ device IDs; they were created so that advertising tracking wouldn't carry over between multiple owners of the same phone. You can already reset your IDFA whenever you want: https://osxdaily.com/2013/02/01/reset-advertising-identifier...
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