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Loupe – A iOS app that raises awareness about what native apps can see

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21–30 of 263 posts

Re: Loupe – A iOS app that raises awareness about what native apps can see

#21
post #8

Damn. The "iPhone last setup or erased on ..." is really nasty. What can a user really do about that? I feel like this should be fudged somehow by the OS.

Seems like in general the iPhone was not designed to avoid fingerprinting from installed apps. Only protection would be avoid installing apps and use the web browser when possible.

The intended “protection” is the ToS, which requires apps to disclose what they are tracking and whether they perform cross-premise tracking.

Re: Loupe – A iOS app that raises awareness about what native apps can see

#22

Volume creation date is pretty egregious. I don't see any reason that and Pasteboard changeCount should be so granular. The "Installed Apps Probe" leak also surprised me. It is better than the current state of Android, though.

Pasteboard counter exists to help apps to not ask again about the same item in the buffer.

And nothing stops from using reset it every day.

Re: Loupe – A iOS app that raises awareness about what native apps can see

#23
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like in general the iPhone was not designed to avoid fingerprinting from installed apps. Only protection would be avoid installing apps and use the web browser when possible.

The intended “protection” is the ToS, which requires apps to disclose what they are tracking and whether they perform cross-premise tracking.

Often it's not the app itself doing tracking or cross-premise tracking, but data is passed to installed third party SDKs that do.

Re: Loupe – A iOS app that raises awareness about what native apps can see

#25
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like in general the iPhone was not designed to avoid fingerprinting from installed apps. Only protection would be avoid installing apps and use the web browser when possible.

The intended “protection” is the ToS, which requires apps to disclose what they are tracking and whether they perform cross-premise tracking.

Ah, that’s funny. Too bad those privacy nutrition labels are only honor system.

They give that one completely up to businesses, then, to devs. They also thought they should let an app maker prohibit screen recording, which might promote development since it protects revenue of e.g. subtitling apps as one example. But end result is you even end up with a black screen when recording the iPhone Mirroring app from a Mac.

Apple owes us a better balance here. iCloud Private Relay for all apps (why only Safari?! and Mail and HTTP) as a start, and plugging some of the privacy holes Loupe exposes. They don’t want us abusing free trials I suppose.

Re: Loupe – A iOS app that raises awareness about what native apps can see

#26
Apps like TikTok can know which username we logged in with, even if we uninstall and reinstall the app. This is egregious, as many companies like Facebook have SDKs embedded in many apps, allowing them to accurately interconnect user activity.

Apple should be ashamed that they aren't putting effort to randomize these fingerprints....

Re: Loupe – A iOS app that raises awareness about what native apps can see

#27
post #8

Damn. The "iPhone last setup or erased on ..." is really nasty. What can a user really do about that? I feel like this should be fudged somehow by the OS.

Seems like in general the iPhone was not designed to avoid fingerprinting from installed apps. Only protection would be avoid installing apps and use the web browser when possible.

These days many things don't work on browser. Even reddit is very difficult as we get constant nagging.

Re: Loupe – A iOS app that raises awareness about what native apps can see

#28
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the threat model tracking across multiple apps to correlate what you're doing? In that case, a single app wouldn't show you the fudging.

```Based on a binomial/Poisson distribution and a baseline of 21 million U.S. device sales per release, a fingerprint relying on "seconds since setup" fails to uniquely identify individuals. In the high-density Early Adopter phase, you will share your exact setup second with an average of 1.01 other people (a total matching pool of ~2 people). Six months into the cycle, you will still share that second with an averag…

Just using IP address, device storage, device name, and similar signals, we can identify a user. It isn’t difficult to correlate these data points. Apps like Facebook also force developers to use their SDKs for even small features.

Re: Loupe – A iOS app that raises awareness about what native apps can see

#30
post #22

Volume creation date is pretty egregious. I don't see any reason that and Pasteboard changeCount should be so granular. The "Installed Apps Probe" leak also surprised me. It is better than the current state of Android, though.

Pasteboard counter exists to help apps to not ask again about the same item in the buffer. And nothing stops from using reset it every day.

Would you elaborate on both points?

Any way to reset it as an end user? (Not enough awareness of the issue for search engines to find much.)

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