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Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

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Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#301

Post by hparadiz »

burke wrote: post #259
hparadiz wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one example: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.alohasafe.... No idea if it's using the official API or what. I honestly just don't believe that it can work well enough in some places. Especially here in Hawaii where gatherings are on a beach and people leave their cellphones in their car or backpacks or whatever. I was even recently at a camp where people were sharing a blunt and there wasn't a…

What are you even trying to draw attention to here? This appears to be using the EN framework, which suggests it wouldn't have been approved for distribution if it collected any personal data or location information. I get that you have an axe to grind here for some reason but I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make.

I have no axe to grind at all. I'm just saying why I personally don't use it. I don't really have an opinion one way or the other. Please don't be so angry with me.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#302

Post by ViViDboarder »

hparadiz wrote: post #217
azinman2 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it wasn’t hastily built, and the tracking isn’t controlled by a gov agency in the nefarious way that you’re implying.

I've seen all sorts of solutions put together by municipalities big and small from counties to states to countries and everything in between during this whole Covid thing and the thing that struck me is how easy it was for them to essentially track you with perfect precision and tie it back to a phone number. > Except it wasn’t hastily built They were built very hastily with little oversight with iterative beta cycle…

I’m assuming you didn’t read the white paper or anything about the implementation. No location tracking is happening.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#303

Post by simonh »

hparadiz wrote: post #238
JeremyBanks wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your choice to be ignorant about the contact tracing frameworks is your own, but please stop spreading misinformation: https://www.google.com/covid19/exposurenotifications/#exposu... There were many locations who built their own apps that did not follow this privacy model, or used it incorrectly, but for most cases "your location data being put into some database" is not accurate.

> There were many locations who built their own apps that did not follow this privacy model, or used it incorrectly We agree then.

No we don't, because the systems you actually specified are known for a fact not to do the things you alleged that they do.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#304

Post by ankmathur96 »

nothis wrote: post #175
woeirua wrote: post #147

I think this speaks to the power of defaults. 96% of users have not turned this on because they didn't even know that its disabled, and when an app asks you if they can track you, the response is going to be a strong no. The reality is that FB's entire business model has been predicated on the default being that tracking is allowed. If this holds, this will be cataclysmic for FB. You can't have a huge portion of your…

I don't really get how trends like this one (and IMO that's just the tip of the ice berg – this is companies preparing for the inevitable legislation that will make most forms of tracking illegal within the next 10 years) don't affect facebook or google stock. This IMO makes two scenarios likely: 1) The market is currently just dragging along, hoping this will all go away and we're really in a major ad-bubble that's…

Because while FB definitely doesn't like that this is happening, it will certainly cement their position. 3rd party ad services that are less tech/ML-forward are way way more reliant on the ID tracking than Facebook is, and this actually will probably cement them as the only game in town. This is a very complicated situation.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#305

Post by Wowfunhappy »

lurkerasdfh8 wrote: post #270
zibzab wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a huge fan of Google, but have to defend them here. They have a pretty huge privacy section in android settings where you can see exactly what data they have on you and how to opt out and/or delete existing data. When you set up android, it ask you if your want in or out. You can even set up a new android device without a Gmail account and disable all Google services including Gmail and search. I don't belive you…

You are not wrong. But not right either. All those nice settings (for google and everyone else) are only for the minimum they are required by law. That means anything that they can claim to be "anonymized" is fair game and not visible to you in any way.

...are they? In the US?

One thing I really do appreciate about Google products is that I'm able to fully disable personalization. My Youtube homepage is completely depersonalized, because I went through their privacy settings and switched off everything. I can't say whether or not Google is still secretly tracking me, but my biggest concern is actually that algorithmic recommendations put me in a filter bubble. Google lets me turn off the bubble.

Amazon, by contrast, does not let me depersonalize my recommendations. Neither does Netflix. There was a period of several years where I would periodically go through my Amazon history and manually mark everything as a gift. This worked for a time, but abruptly stopped one day. I assume Amazon decided I'd marked too many things as gifts and my selections should be ignored.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#306

Post by swiley »

hparadiz wrote: post #178
woeirua wrote: post #147

I think this speaks to the power of defaults. 96% of users have not turned this on because they didn't even know that its disabled, and when an app asks you if they can track you, the response is going to be a strong no. The reality is that FB's entire business model has been predicated on the default being that tracking is allowed. If this holds, this will be cataclysmic for FB. You can't have a huge portion of your…

> BTW, this is also why the covid exposure notification apps failed miserably. They should have always been opt-out. If Google or Apple remotely installed a hastily built tracker controlled by a government agency on my device I'd be pretty miffed about it.

Unless you're using a pinephone they already have.

And even then the default OS on the newer pinephones uses KDE as a DE which had telemetry built in at one point.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#307

Post by sleepybrett »

hparadiz wrote: post #301
burke wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you even trying to draw attention to here? This appears to be using the EN framework, which suggests it wouldn't have been approved for distribution if it collected any personal data or location information. I get that you have an axe to grind here for some reason but I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make.

I have no axe to grind at all. I'm just saying why I personally don't use it. I don't really have an opinion one way or the other. Please don't be so angry with me.

What you are 'just saying' is FUD. You don't know how the system works yet you keep coming back to this thread to defend your incorrect assumptions.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#308

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

woeirua wrote: post #147

I think this speaks to the power of defaults. 96% of users have not turned this on because they didn't even know that its disabled, and when an app asks you if they can track you, the response is going to be a strong no. The reality is that FB's entire business model has been predicated on the default being that tracking is allowed. If this holds, this will be cataclysmic for FB. You can't have a huge portion of your…

"I think this speaks to the power of defaults."

Even more, it speaks to the power of removing choice. When app tracking is enabled by default it effectively removes choice because most users never touch settings (and may not even know they exist). Therefore users are not choosing anything. Someone else is choosing for them. "Tech" company employees will respond to criticism of their employer's behaviour with something like: "But users can choose to turn this off." That is not relevant if 96% are unaware of this "choice". The question is: why is tracking on by default. That was a choice the user did not make.

Only when faced with a screen asking the user if she chooses to be tracked do we get a chance to find out what a user would choose. And even then, developers will use "dark patterns" to manipulate the decision-making process toward a self-serving outcome.

Perhaps we should ask ourselves whether there should even be a setting to enable tracking. If the majority of users would choose to turn it off, if they were presented with the choice, then why even have it. This is essentially "privacy by design".

This is no different than when developers argue to HN that it is not worth catering to the preferences of privacy-conscious or minimalist users since those users comprise such a small percentage of users overall. By the same token, it should not worth catering to the small percentange of users who want to be tracked.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#309

Post by vnkatesh »

bogwog wrote: post #133

I'm curious about the 4% of users who enabled it. Did they get tricked into doing so? Was it an accident? Or do some people out there really genuinely want to be tracked?

I am one of them - I did it intentionally to see which apps ask to be tracked.

So far it's been Instagram and Sony's Headphones App. I do not have facebook.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#310

Post by distribot »

shmatt wrote: post #187
woeirua wrote: post #147

I think this speaks to the power of defaults. 96% of users have not turned this on because they didn't even know that its disabled, and when an app asks you if they can track you, the response is going to be a strong no. The reality is that FB's entire business model has been predicated on the default being that tracking is allowed. If this holds, this will be cataclysmic for FB. You can't have a huge portion of your…

In Israel, covid exposure notification was can't-ever-opt-out. What happened next was people stopped going out with their phones, because any exposure would result in a Police enforced 14 day quarantine

Is there anything written about this?

I'm extremely skeptical that a big chunk of people in such a highly online country just left their phones at home. Maybe some of the Hardeim but I would guess 95+% of people wouldn't do this.

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