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If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

theguardian.com

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Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#91

Post by kart23 »

theshrike79 wrote: post #32
Synaesthesia wrote: post #17

There's still a huge elephant in the room. How are we supposed to trust Apple, Microsoft or any other tech company when it emerged that they fully cooperated with the NSA and their PRISM program. We have to just assume that's still running. Businesses could keep a lot of secrets from us and they're not transparent or accountable to the public.

A good stack of Apple's ecosystem is fully encrypted, so that Apple can't give anything to the authorities. For example: Apple Maps retrieves routes in segments, with changing identifiers. Apple can't figure out where you navigated to.

This is laughable. Your icloud data is in the cloud, your imessage (if you choose to backup) is in the cloud, they have the keys, and they give that data to the authorities. And why should apple even BE storing my navigation history on their servers? You can even read their policies for yourself.

https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/law-enforcement-guidelin...

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#92

Post by jay_kyburz »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #61
jay_kyburz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think its nonsense, I think you didn't read what he is saying. I also believe that if Apple had been successful at building its ad business when it tried to, they would not be talking about privacy now. Apple sees all your data before it is ever sent to Facebook.

Sure - if they were arms dealers or a drug company they would be doing other bad things, but their business model doesn’t need targeted ads. People and companies should be judged on their actions not on what you think they would do if they were in some other business.

Sure, but what we are saying is that Apple _is_ a bad company, and that we don't believe they are on our side. (or that they are trying to protect us.)

They are not on our side when it comes to repairing our devices. They are not on our side when it comes to running software we want to on the hardware we own. They are not on our side when it comes to walled gardens. They are not on our side when it comes to how quickly they stop supporting the hardware they sold us.

If they _were_ in the business of selling data, they would not be on our side there either.

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#93

Post by kodah »

landryraccoon wrote: post #25

I see a bunch of comments talking about how Apple is being self serving and not at all altruistic when they defend our privacy. And my response is - well duh. And this is supposed to be a problem how? Apple wants my money and nothing else. They aren't motivated to protect my privacy out of the goodness of their hearts. I am happy to pay money for more privacy. The fact that they only do this because they want my mone…

Privacy as a product or feature is generally considered a regression, mainly because people see it as a value, not a value add.

The line of thought goes, what's privacy worth to you? What's security worth to you? The price, likely, will fly upwards until it is saturated to nil.

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#94

Post by oefrha »

dheera wrote: post #19
newscracker wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a bit lost here. If all you want is to do MITM, what stops you from installing a certificate and a “VPN profile” on the iOS device and proxying the communication for analysis with appropriate apps? You don’t need to jailbreak to do any of this, as Charles Proxy for iOS (paid app) [1] shows. Of course, if you need to do more than intercepting network traffic, then it gets a bit more cumbersome on iOS. [1]: https:/…

Most apps now use certificate pinning, i.e. they have the root certificate included in the app and signed as part of the app, so that method won't work. On Android it's much easier to intercept and modify the behavior of apps and tell the system to disregard signatures and things of the sort.

Maybe you live in an alternate reality, but in this reality most apps aren’t remotely sensitive enough to use cert pinning.

Also, since Android 7, even non-cert-pinned apps simply ignore user/admin-installed certificates; you can’t do anything without (1) rooting and injecting cert into root trust store; or (2) binary patching. Neither is easy, whereas installing a certificate as a profile on iOS is a trivial process.

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#95

Post by elygre »

fartcannon wrote: post #88
spoonjim wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft definitely sells privacy to business customers. For consumers they are probably just trying to lead gen for business sales.

Microsoft's privacy policy for sharepoint says thst Microsoft employees have accesss to all data in sharepoint. So Microsoft's privacy is worth as much as its poorest paid employee with access.

Do you have a reference for that?

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#96

Post by willis936 »

NalNezumi wrote: post #42
landryraccoon wrote: post #25

I see a bunch of comments talking about how Apple is being self serving and not at all altruistic when they defend our privacy. And my response is - well duh. And this is supposed to be a problem how? Apple wants my money and nothing else. They aren't motivated to protect my privacy out of the goodness of their hearts. I am happy to pay money for more privacy. The fact that they only do this because they want my mone…

As another comment pointed out Signal as one software, we also have Purism[0] for privacy-minded hardware [0] https://puri.sm/

Neat that there's a competitor to system 76. I'll have to look into them later.

I use a T500 I plucked from the trash for secure libre street cred. No blobs anywhere afaik.

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#97

Post by nonesuchluck »

landryraccoon wrote: post #25

I see a bunch of comments talking about how Apple is being self serving and not at all altruistic when they defend our privacy. And my response is - well duh. And this is supposed to be a problem how? Apple wants my money and nothing else. They aren't motivated to protect my privacy out of the goodness of their hearts. I am happy to pay money for more privacy. The fact that they only do this because they want my mone…

> I see a bunch of comments talking about how Apple is being self serving and not at all altruistic when they defend our privacy.

Right, I don't want Apple to help safeguard my privacy out of a sense of altruism. That company would be highly vulnerable to ambitious managers moving up the ranks.

And besides, nothing's a zero-sum game. Securing a better outcome for yourself doesn't require self-flagellation from your trading partner.

The better outcome is the one we have, where the company's motives are genuinely aligned with their customers' motives. Where there is bankable incentive to do the right thing.

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#98

Post by yosito »

supernova87a wrote: post #65
Synaesthesia wrote: post #17

There's still a huge elephant in the room. How are we supposed to trust Apple, Microsoft or any other tech company when it emerged that they fully cooperated with the NSA and their PRISM program. We have to just assume that's still running. Businesses could keep a lot of secrets from us and they're not transparent or accountable to the public.

Look, if you're worried about that, I don't know how you get through life without being totally paralyzed. You live in the USA. All persons and companies are subject to whatever intelligence activities that we got a glimpse of which are happening. You adjust your life accordingly and live on. Because I don't know where else you can go that has the similar benefits of being a US citizen and the environment we enjoy. O…

> I don't know where else you can go that has the similar benefits of being a US citizen and the environment we enjoy

I'm honesty surprised that in 2021 people still believe the US is the only good place to live/be a citizen.

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#99

Post by hesarenu »

actuator wrote: post #41

This is not true. As I have submitted on HN earlier, Apple is using the purchases data to customise ads. https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT208477 You can make a case that the ad targeting is just on App Store, News and Stocks but that is just for now, Apple used to have an ad platform iAd which wasn't that successful, so it was discontinued. Once they milk other revenue streams and are more of a monopolistic power in…

Its also mentioned "We are obligated to provide some non-personal information to strategic partners that work with Apple to provide our products and services, help Apple market to customers, and sell ads on Apple’s behalf to display in the App Store and Apple News and Stocks."

Why a privacy focused company is into Advertising?

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#100

Post by jhanschoo »

landryraccoon wrote: post #25

I see a bunch of comments talking about how Apple is being self serving and not at all altruistic when they defend our privacy. And my response is - well duh. And this is supposed to be a problem how? Apple wants my money and nothing else. They aren't motivated to protect my privacy out of the goodness of their hearts. I am happy to pay money for more privacy. The fact that they only do this because they want my mone…

The relevance of criticism on Apple's privacy stance is in pointing out the limits of Apple's commitment to privacy.

Companies like Signal are founded on privacy and encryption, but with Apple, privacy is a nice-to-have, limited to its other business objectives (like how Apple is "committed" to reducing waste to the extent it can sell dongles, chargers, and earbuds separately, but not in terms of repairability). You can count on Apple to value the appearance of privacy, and in protecting information from third parties without user consent, but not so much being private from Apple itself.

For example, here's an article on Apple and privacy from a couple months ago https://www.politico.eu/article/apple-privacy-problem/ .

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