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TikTok wants to keep tracking iPhone users with state-backed workaround

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Re: TikTok wants to keep tracking iPhone users with state-backed workaround

#91

Post by macintux »

ng12 wrote: post #83
schiang wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China doesn't just provide supply chain anymore. They are also a huge market now because of its growing middle class. China has money to spend and US companies need to tap into that market.

Is there a good reason why we shouldn't sanction China like we do Russia, NK, and Iran? There's plenty of money to be made in those countries too.

One reason, good or not depending on your views, is that China’s GDP is 10x Russia’s, 20x Iran’s, and 1000x North Korea’s (and I have to suspect that’s generous towards NK).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

Re: TikTok wants to keep tracking iPhone users with state-backed workaround

#92

Post by anon9001 »

tinus_hn wrote: post #88
anon9001 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very helpful and adds a lot of clarity. You can tell from the code that the "exploit" here is abusing keychain sharing. iOS has a feature where you can pack a surprising amount of generic data into keychain storage, intended for passwords or auth credentials. iOS also lets app developers opt-in to shared credential storage, so that if you have multiple apps, the user only needs to login once. Here's a blog pos…

Credential sharing only works between apps registered to the same developer. So no, this does not allow an tracking ID usable by all apps. And remember, any trick abused to create tracking IDs stands the risk of being detected and blocked by Apple in the next iOS update. It has been announced, it has happened, it will keep happening.

> Credential sharing only works between apps registered to the same developer.

That's right, but it does allow persisting an id through reinstalls of the same app, and sharing that id between apps of the same developer.

> So no, this does not allow an tracking ID usable by all apps.

It effectively does though. For example, imagine a mobile game company with 10 games. With this technique, you can track that user across app re-installs in each of those games.

Now imagine another game company doing the same trick. If both companies send up their independent tracking IDs to a central server along with any other info they can get about the user (email, screen name, IP, whatever), then you can strongly correlate users across multiple tracking IDs. The user has no way to reset these IDs even if they delete and reinstall the apps using them.

Re: TikTok wants to keep tracking iPhone users with state-backed workaround

#93

Post by schiang »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #85
schiang wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China doesn't just provide supply chain anymore. They are also a huge market now because of its growing middle class. China has money to spend and US companies need to tap into that market.

Apple has a $2T market cap. Do they truly "need" China? I know, I know, they have a responsibility to their shareholders, blah blah. But Two Trillion Dollars.

How do you think they got to $2T market cap in the first place?

Re: TikTok wants to keep tracking iPhone users with state-backed workaround

#94

Post by smoldesu »

tediousdemise wrote: post #28

As much as I like Apple products, it looks like the privacy buck stops at China. The western world needs to desperately work on making their supply chains independent of the CCP, lest they'd like their supply chains to be poisoned at some point in the future. I'm a big fan of Purism and everything that they are doing. I hope their software and hardware matures with the same level of polish we've come to know and expe…

This is what made me stop using Apple products altogether. Their privacy and security bit is all smoke and mirrors, and I'd much rather just directly understand what my privacy model looks like instead of trying to surmise what's going on through the other side of the frosted glass. Their compliance with China's Uighur roundup is despicable, and I don't trust them in the slightest to defend tech in the long-term. They're out to make money, which is why they're the most profitable business in the world.

Re: TikTok wants to keep tracking iPhone users with state-backed workaround

#95

Post by lotsofpulp »

reaperducer wrote: post #64
schiang wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China doesn't just provide supply chain anymore. They are also a huge market now because of its growing middle class. China has money to spend and US companies need to tap into that market.

China has money to spend and US companies need to tap into that market. "Choose to" tap into that market. No company "needs" to be in China. Just like there are thousands of companies in Europe that do not do business in the United States, and thousands of companies in Brazil that do not do business in Russia.

It is conceivable in a winner take all business, or a top 2 take all business, you either tap into the world’s largest market or you don’t survive.

For example, Apple being able to lock up all the supply of higher end chips and smaller companies not being able to compete.

Re: TikTok wants to keep tracking iPhone users with state-backed workaround

#96

Post by SiempreViernes »

ng12 wrote: post #83
schiang wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China doesn't just provide supply chain anymore. They are also a huge market now because of its growing middle class. China has money to spend and US companies need to tap into that market.

Is there a good reason why we shouldn't sanction China like we do Russia, NK, and Iran? There's plenty of money to be made in those countries too.

There are US sanctions on China.

There is however a huge problem with sanctions: you need to have a realistic plan for what you want to accomplish with your sanctions, or else it does little more than adding some friction to trade.

That means that if you want to actually change the behaviour of a nation using sanctions, you need to have modest goals, an acceptance of compromise, and a readiness to let the other side come out looking like a respectable partner. These are basically things the US cannot muster in the relationship with Iran and North Korea, and the American violation of the JCPOA has significantly eroded US ability to persuade other countries to impose their own sanction.

For China and Russia, the US alone cannot impose any important amount of sanctions and have them be upheld by third parties, the USA trying to block all imports from China would just mean the rest of the world needs to switch to using Yuan or Euros because that volume of trade simply cannot be replaced.

Re: TikTok wants to keep tracking iPhone users with state-backed workaround

#97

Post by mgreg »

jhayward wrote: post #67
dylan604 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how has that planning been going in those 18 months?

https://www.gsmarena.com/apple_to_move_production_from_china... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-foxconn-vietnam-apple-exc...

Apple will soon start flagship iPhone 12 production on Indian soil for local customers, the company said on Tuesday

Apple supplier Wistron recently began trial production of the iPhone 12 at a new facility near Bengaluru, with full production set to begin soon. The iPhone 12 will be the seventh iPhone model to be manufactured in India, but the first high-end device to do so.

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/03/09/apple-iphone-12-product...

Re: TikTok wants to keep tracking iPhone users with state-backed workaround

#98

Post by jeofken »

tediousdemise wrote: post #28

As much as I like Apple products, it looks like the privacy buck stops at China. The western world needs to desperately work on making their supply chains independent of the CCP, lest they'd like their supply chains to be poisoned at some point in the future. I'm a big fan of Purism and everything that they are doing. I hope their software and hardware matures with the same level of polish we've come to know and expe…

The pine phone is afaik built around a pretty off-the-shelves system-on-a-chip and made in China, exported with a Hong Kong company. Sadly a SOC far from what you’d get in a smartphone by Samsung or Apple, as they can swing with much larger wallets. If anyone knows the specific SOC version I’d appreciate the product ID

Re: TikTok wants to keep tracking iPhone users with state-backed workaround

#99

Post by freeflight »

CountSessine wrote: post #81
topspin wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The western world needs to desperately work on making their supply chains independent of the CCP The western world can't. The world is only so big and the remaining sites of refuge for cheap, exploitable labor and Potemkin regulatory regimes are few. Almost any alternative place you might cite is either already beholden to China (the viable parts of Africa) or too unstable (due to endemic corruption, external threa…

Yes - because manufacturing in the West is ultimately self-defeating. Success breeds complacency and labor unrest. This isn't just a China-thing (I have no idea what your Potemkin regulation is or why you would mix those metaphors). When Westerners see an absurdly profitable company, they think, "why aren't they paying their employees more??!" and start a union to parasitize earnings. When Asians (including the Japan…

> Yes - because manufacturing in the West is ultimately self-defeating.

It's much more to do with the steadily increasing complexity of products due to humanity having become very much a global species with heavy interdependence.

Look around the room you are sitting in: There will be items in it manufactured all over the world, from components also coming from all over the world.

That's not only how we manage to make these things so affordable, that's how we got them at this scale and complexity in the very first place.

The idea that a single country could emulate that, in complete isolation, is bluntly said childish. Isolationism like that doesn't lead to progress or innovation, it leads to North Korea style impoverished hermit kingdoms.

It's mind-boggling how few people seem to understand this reality in the year 2021, we are so interconnected that we can instantly communicate with somebody on the other side of the planet by just pulling a small device out of our pocket, it's considered the most normal thing in the world.

Instead we get shortsighted and small-minded nationalist blowback in the form of Brexit and "America first!" politics.

Even with the EU showing that economic cooperation and integration is one of the best and most constructive ways to ensure peace, stability and prosperity, particularly vs the alternative of alienation and vilification of whole nation states and their people as "enemies" that need to be fought in every way possible.

Re: TikTok wants to keep tracking iPhone users with state-backed workaround

#100

Post by dalbasal »

reaperducer wrote: post #64
schiang wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China doesn't just provide supply chain anymore. They are also a huge market now because of its growing middle class. China has money to spend and US companies need to tap into that market.

China has money to spend and US companies need to tap into that market. "Choose to" tap into that market. No company "needs" to be in China. Just like there are thousands of companies in Europe that do not do business in the United States, and thousands of companies in Brazil that do not do business in Russia.

You're getting kind of semantic. Theoretically, No company "needs" to be in business at all.

If Chinese consumer market growth continues as it has been, it may the biggest market for Apple. Hard to be the largest luxury goods company in the world without the largest luxury goods market...

OP is right. This gives China influence. Supply chain influence is a minor thing, relative to "I'm your biggest customer" influence.

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