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Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

cdn.smoot.apple.com

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Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#171

Post by JoeyBananas »

varenc wrote: post #159
blenderdt wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, maybe I am missing something here. The link points to a list Apple is hosting without any context. Does anyone know why this list is hosted and what it is used for? Is it even used? Edit: some 7 year old posts suggest it was used by Spotlight. I also am a little amazed it loaded and scrolls smooth on Firefox mobile...

For context, see my buried comment explaining how I found this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30906482 In summary: I don't have any indication it's in current use. I saw this URL in intercepted traffic from an iOS 13 device. I suspect it was used at some point but not anymore. I bet iOS 15 still uses something similar but doesn't use this particular URL (perhaps one with more obscurity/protection). p.s. I…

The link https://cdn.smoot.apple.com/static/spotlight_suggestions_sto... is interesting.

It's a binary file, but if you look at the hex dump there's a list of vaguely "bad" words near the end including "whorehouse," "Zipperheads," "unabomber". I have no idea what format it is, though.

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#172

Post by gilgoomesh »

vulcan01 wrote: post #170
gilgoomesh wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doubtless named for The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act which raised or lowered taxes? Anyone? Anyone?

Raised tariffs , not taxes. It's an important difference, doubly so with regards to Smoot-Hawley because the whole point was to protect American companies (and therefore jobs) from foreign competition (of course, it did not work...).

(It was a Ferris Bueller's Day Off reference. Blame Ben Stein.)

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#173

Post by harry8 »

aaaaaaaaata wrote: post #108
harry8 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think apple are above censorship at the behest of politicians?

Considering most of us didn't know about this list either, there simply wasn't anyone to ask for the censorship.

Various politicians have made their feelings known beyond any doubt. Note the lack of, say, pornhub etc in this list. Someone has sanitized it somehow and didn't pre-emptively censor wikileaks. That's a good thing, I guess?

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#174

Post by onion2k »

KerrAvon wrote: post #137
onion2k wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Killed flash because it's insecure and drains battery. 2. Crippled and never let PWAs fully work because security and battery. Your hypothesis raises two slightly ugly questions - "Why could't Apple make those things work on their platform in the past?" and "What's changed in the security and battery aspects of PWAs that means Apple are now moving to support them?" If you look at the changes for iOS 15.4 there are…

We don’t need to make stuff up about Apple’s reasoning on Flash — Steve Jobs was quite clear and quite public about it: https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple...

Steve's sixth and most important reason in that essay is "We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform."

That's Steve saying he wants to 'protect' the app store, and justify the 30% fee. If people could pump out Flash games it would have put Apple users off buying apps...

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#176

Post by BlueTemplar »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #136
BlueTemplar wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make a curated list, you become responsible for it ?

So I guess the question is, what is the alternative? The only realistic option I can think of is some combination of: • Make autocomplete operate on a blacklist instead of whitelist, with a more limited goal of only removing e.g. known porn sites. • Make the list of potential matches machine-generated, without human intervention. (Aside, are we sure the current list isn't just the 250K most-visited sites on the inter…

There's no such thing as "machine-generated, without human intervention". Even something as seemingly simple as "most-visited websites" involves measuring choices. (Fundamentally, this is indeed about responsibility. Until a non-human gets some form of citizenship, they have none.)

Furthermore, we now know that in practice "machine-generated" seems to be even worse, because too many people are fooled by the "the machine did it" 'excuse'. (Like you seem to be doing here ?)

For instance : https://thedataist.com/book-review-automating-inequality/

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#177

Post by saagarjha »

varenc wrote: post #163
saagarjha wrote: post #28

Related list: https://cdn.smoot.apple.com/static/autofill_corrections_url

hah I see we both discovered the same lists! Did you get these from traffic interception too? I didn't find any hits for these on Google but not surprised you beat me to it of course. I'm a long time fan of your apple-hacking blog posts. For others, here's the other ones found: - "correction_dict_url": " https://cdn.smoot.apple.com/static/static_corrections_dict/2... " - "crowdsourcing_blacklist_url": " https://cdn.s…

I pulled it from running strings on SafariServices.

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#178

Post by goodpoint »

kome wrote: post #33
thyrox wrote: post #30

Quoted post unavailable.

> The more I learn about open source the more i see their point.. Stallman is consistently mocked and diminished, but he is also consistently right.

I never heard people mocking Stallman for his warnings about surveillance and curtailing user's freedoms.

But his behavior in public and the way he communicates is a completely different topic and a can of worms...

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#179

Post by CamperBob2 »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #169
thesuitonym wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1: Whois every site on the list. 2: Did the owner information change since last time? 2n: No action required. Maybe select some sites randomly to have a human compare, but it's probably fine. 2y: Have a human check the site. Did it simply get purchased by another (similar) organization, or is it no longer relevant to its original purpose? 3: Do the needful.

Oh, using whois seems reasonable!

It's been a long time since whois returned any useful information about the ownership of most domains, unfortunately.

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#180

Post by vulcan01 »

gilgoomesh wrote: post #172
vulcan01 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raised tariffs , not taxes. It's an important difference, doubly so with regards to Smoot-Hawley because the whole point was to protect American companies (and therefore jobs) from foreign competition (of course, it did not work...).

(It was a Ferris Bueller's Day Off reference. Blame Ben Stein.)

... and I have not yet seen Ferris Bueller, so I didn't get the reference. Consider us even ;)
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