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iPhone apps harvest data when they send you notifications, researchers find

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Re: iPhone apps harvest data when they send you notifications, researchers find

#51
post #21
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconding that I'd love this. At the same time, has App Store's guidelines/rules changed to allow spammy ads notifications? It used to be 100% disallowed and I worked for a company that got an app denied because of it until changed, nowadays it seems to just be completely common. I fucking hate it.

Whats the problem of simply uninstalling the app once it does that?

Because then you'd have no apps left for food delivery or rides, to name a few categories.

Re: iPhone apps harvest data when they send you notifications, researchers find

#52
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Door dash is breaking their website on purpose (pretty clear how they force hiding things when they detect them) for it to not work properly in phone browsers. This should be illegal.

That would be absurd to legislate.

There's tons of legislation on e.g. accessibility that is quite expensive for companies to comply with. At some point in the past, I'm sure quite a few people would have considered these expenses absurd as well.

If there's a clear benefit to society, I don't think it would be an absurd regulation at all, and there's precedent for equally fine-grained/detailed regulations in many industries.

Another one of that category I'd love to see: Mandate at least one secure 2FA method other than SMS-OTP.

Re: iPhone apps harvest data when they send you notifications, researchers find

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android had a good idea that the scumbag MBAs and marketers ruined. Whenever I get a spammy notification from an app I'd prefer to not uninstall, it's always logged under a general category that is mixed in with notifications that I want. Amazon for example has channels for Alexa, account authentication, and then a notifications category.

This tribalism is flat-out childish. A “good idea” that doesn’t stand up to adversarial actors isn’t a “good idea”. And I assure you that your developer buddies were just as complicit as the evil business-people and marketers in ruining it.

This is a poor argument. Don't murder is a good idea for a law even if it doesn't stop everyone. Most apps do implement channels correctly, because if they don't they get uninstalled.

I've also been happy with my career. I've only had one scummy feature handed to me my first week at a job. I called out the product manager for it during a full engineering team meeting, asking him if he thought our customers were stupid, and earned a lot of good will with the other engineers for calling him on his shit. He was fired within the year, I'm still on the team, and that implementation is now gone.

Re: iPhone apps harvest data when they send you notifications, researchers find

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guideline has been revised in 2020. > Apple updated its App Store guidelines today with a change to its traditionally strict restrictions around push notifications. Apple has long banned apps from using notifications for “advertising, promotions, or direct marketing purposes,” but that changes today. Apps can now send marketing notifications when “customers have explicitly opted in to receive them.” Users must a…

And yet, I’m constantly getting advertisements from Uber and Instacart

I bet Uber and instacart have proof of you 'explicitly' opting in /s. The world we live in is such a joke.

Re: iPhone apps harvest data when they send you notifications, researchers find

#55
The even more significant bit is that governments can track users this way without standard warrants: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/06/push-no...

It's unclear what data the government tracks, but it's annoying that Apple allows such a trivial security hole when they keep bragging about "privacy".

Re: iPhone apps harvest data when they send you notifications, researchers find

#56
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does iOS not have anything akin to the concept of Android's notification channels? Using Doordash as the example, at the OS level I can independently disable "General" notifications, which cuts out all the advertising spam, Delivery Status, and Payment Status. Long-pressing on an offending notification displays a button that takes you directly to the channel which that notification went through, potentially so you ca…

Android had a good idea that the scumbag MBAs and marketers ruined. Whenever I get a spammy notification from an app I'd prefer to not uninstall, it's always logged under a general category that is mixed in with notifications that I want. Amazon for example has channels for Alexa, account authentication, and then a notifications category.

Do you have first hand knowledge of who initiated this change?

Re: iPhone apps harvest data when they send you notifications, researchers find

#57
post #55

The even more significant bit is that governments can track users this way without standard warrants: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/06/push-no... It's unclear what data the government tracks, but it's annoying that Apple allows such a trivial security hole when they keep bragging about "privacy".

The “privacy” brag is just a successful marketing campaign.

Re: iPhone apps harvest data when they send you notifications, researchers find

#58
post #55

The even more significant bit is that governments can track users this way without standard warrants: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/06/push-no... It's unclear what data the government tracks, but it's annoying that Apple allows such a trivial security hole when they keep bragging about "privacy".

I think it is also worth noting that Apple goes out of their way to prevent developers--both technologically and contractually/procedurally--from building alternatives even for privacy-focused applications.

Re: iPhone apps harvest data when they send you notifications, researchers find

#59
post #49

This whole article is kinda weird. These are apps that already are installed, the user chose to get notifications ... yes so when the notification runs the app runs and some telemetry is collected. Cat is out of the bag already. I'm concerned about this whole topic too but man that article is hard to read and really just kinda states the obvious. Why it is focused on notifications is sort of beyond me. There's nothin…

The problem is, people who care about their privacy do not want to be tracked when they’re not using the app.

But if an institution wants to find out what devices subscribe to certain groups or pages

They could correspond the times that a pages media posts, with the times a range of devices received a notification from specific apps.

It’s that easy

Re: iPhone apps harvest data when they send you notifications, researchers find

#60
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does iOS not have anything akin to the concept of Android's notification channels? Using Doordash as the example, at the OS level I can independently disable "General" notifications, which cuts out all the advertising spam, Delivery Status, and Payment Status. Long-pressing on an offending notification displays a button that takes you directly to the channel which that notification went through, potentially so you ca…

Android had a good idea that the scumbag MBAs and marketers ruined. Whenever I get a spammy notification from an app I'd prefer to not uninstall, it's always logged under a general category that is mixed in with notifications that I want. Amazon for example has channels for Alexa, account authentication, and then a notifications category.

Best app I've bought for android in years is buzz kill which lets you auto dismiss notifications that match certain terms or icons, or cool down apps so they can only notify you once in x mins etc. it's really tidied up my notifications queue
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