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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

#351
post #349
post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly don’t understand my point. It becomes location data as soon as it’s triggered.

It doesn’t. I don’t know what to tell you. You should go back and re-read how it works.

Sure, let’s see: https://www.blog.google/documents/57/Overview_of_COVID-19_Co...

Right away I notice the glaring omission of “the surveillance state” in the wording of certain sentences like “People who test positive are not identified to other users, Google or Apple“.

“With Bob’s consent, his phone uploads the last 14 days of keys for his broadcast beacons to the cloud”, also giving away his geolocation in the process. My read of the “doesn’t collect location data” is “doesn’t explicitly collect location data”, like just because it doesn’t send a field ‘geolocation’ they can technically say that and not be lying. You should check out one of my very favorite blog posts of all time: https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...

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

#352
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not ignorant just because I don’t want to be tracked, and slinging insults like this just reaffirms my beliefs :)

You are ignorant though. The whole point of EN is that you CAN'T be tracked.

Yeah, that’s the claim, but it conveniently ignores all the metadata that ties a particular device to certain places/times/events based on the other rotating IDs they’ve seen. It’s like Nintendo 3DS StreetPass but bad.

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

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You’re assumption about that and the full software implementation might be far apart. You can’t trust anybody with stuff like this as it will always be misused and abused until the perps are caught. The value of source code access is honesty.

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

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say Apple or Google installed, I assume you’re talking about exposure notifications that they built. I work at Apple and witnessed it. Nothing about it was slapdash and privacy was #1. In this system, it’s not easy at all for government agencies to track you. That was very explicitly part of the design, as is shown in all the public docs. It’s not like how it works is a secret [1]. Your location isn’t being…

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…

[deleted]

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

#355
post #351
post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t. I don’t know what to tell you. You should go back and re-read how it works.

Sure, let’s see: https://www.blog.google/documents/57/Overview_of_COVID-19_Co... Right away I notice the glaring omission of “the surveillance state” in the wording of certain sentences like “People who test positive are not identified to other users, Google or Apple“. “With Bob’s consent, his phone uploads the last 14 days of keys for his broadcast beacons to the cloud”, also giving away his geolocation in the proce…

This is literally an open specification. There is no geolocation involved here. You're talking out of your ass. Don't you think if geolocation was tracked people would have kicked up about this? It collects randomised Bluetooth IDs, that is it.

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

#356
post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are ignorant though. The whole point of EN is that you CAN'T be tracked.

Yeah, that’s the claim, but it conveniently ignores all the metadata that ties a particular device to certain places/times/events based on the other rotating IDs they’ve seen. It’s like Nintendo 3DS StreetPass but bad.

How do you ensure you're not tracked? That your location history is not sold to every bidder?

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

#357
post #355
post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, let’s see: https://www.blog.google/documents/57/Overview_of_COVID-19_Co... Right away I notice the glaring omission of “the surveillance state” in the wording of certain sentences like “People who test positive are not identified to other users, Google or Apple“. “With Bob’s consent, his phone uploads the last 14 days of keys for his broadcast beacons to the cloud”, also giving away his geolocation in the proce…

This is literally an open specification. There is no geolocation involved here. You're talking out of your ass. Don't you think if geolocation was tracked people would have kicked up about this? It collects randomised Bluetooth IDs, that is it.

It’s impossible to know what metadata is stored, so I have to assume all of it is. Really weird how many people in this community are willing to defend surveillance now. As a former NSA director said, they want to “collect it all”. Why would this be any different? The crux of the NSA story in one phrase: 'collect it all' | Glenn Greenwald | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/15/crux-n...

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

#358

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 somethin…

Depends on the tracking, IMO. Selling data to advertisers is a hard no, but as an independent developer, having access to crash logs and usage statistics is vital. Not only is it valuable to me, it provides legitimate value to my customers because it allows me to fix problems that they are experiencing or enhance the features they use the most.

Still shouldn't be on by default, but asking up-front seems perfectly reasonable.

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

#359
post #277

Why would you enable it? What possible benefit is there in doing so? The ads won't get better regardless of the data they have on you. They aren't exactly using ML or AI to help you get better ads. Its really just boring data queries in SQL or some graph language. That's the sum total of most advertising intelligence. Its not 21st century high tech. Its mostly relational databases with some NoSQL to make that table l…

> They aren't exactly using ML or AI to help you get better ads. They most certainly are, and this is not a secret.

To what end?

While there is complexity, diversity, and numbers on the end-user side, there aren’t enough advertisers to warrant such hair splitting data crunching.

There are only so many jogging pant brands out there.

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

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You’re assumption about that and the full software implementation might be far apart. You can’t trust anybody with stuff like this as it will always be misused and abused until the perps are caught. The value of source code access is honesty.

If you have an iPhone and don’t trust Apple, you’re already compromised. Why would they wait for AirTags or Exposure Notifications to track your location when their entire OS is a black box?

That just doesn’t make sense to me.

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