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Safari is sending every search query to Apple

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Re: Safari is sending every search query to Apple

#121

Post by mikeash »

eclipxe wrote: post #114
mikeash wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree. Sending my search terms to Apple is an invasion of privacy. I feel like "don't share your info with other people" is such a basic aspect of privacy that I don't even know how to argue the point. I'm at a loss, as if you had said that trees are made out of meat, or that cars are delivered by storks.

Oh come on.

If you think what I said was so absurd, I'd like to know what you think "privacy" entails, if it's not "don't share my info with other people."

Re: Safari is sending every search query to Apple

#122

Post by [deleted] »

ianlevesque wrote: post #117
cmelbye wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it would make sense to update your Gist to make it clear that Apple isn't trying to force people to funnel their searches through their servers, and that the real issue here is confusing UI?

It's not even that confusing. This is just alarmism for pageviews. Of all the large tech companies right now, Apple has made the most moves to protect user privacy. Disabled 3rd party cookies by default in Safari, randomized WiFi queries, full device ios encryption, opt-in only crash reporting, restricted MAC and UDID access, zero information shared with ApplePay, etc. And yet we're supposed to get out the pitchforks…

[deleted]

Re: Safari is sending every search query to Apple

#123

Post by TheLoneWolfling »

eli wrote: post #30
TheLoneWolfling wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Citation Needed] Mozilla's "Safe browsing", for instance. If you're going to go with something FF based, at least choose something with such things disabled by default. For instance, I run PM.

Mozilla safe browsing does NOT phone home with sites you're visiting.

Quote:

> Before blocking the site, Firefox will request a double-check to ensure that the reported site has not been removed from the list since your last update.

Source: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-m...

Re: Safari is sending every search query to Apple

#124

Post by blinkingled »

ianlevesque wrote: post #117
cmelbye wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it would make sense to update your Gist to make it clear that Apple isn't trying to force people to funnel their searches through their servers, and that the real issue here is confusing UI?

It's not even that confusing. This is just alarmism for pageviews. Of all the large tech companies right now, Apple has made the most moves to protect user privacy. Disabled 3rd party cookies by default in Safari, randomized WiFi queries, full device ios encryption, opt-in only crash reporting, restricted MAC and UDID access, zero information shared with ApplePay, etc. And yet we're supposed to get out the pitchforks…

> randomized WiFi queries

You know that the iOS 8 mac randomization feature doesn't actually work right? From imore.com - http://www.imore.com/closer-look-ios-8s-mac-randomization

Re: Safari is sending every search query to Apple

#125

Post by eli »

TheLoneWolfling wrote: post #123
eli wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla safe browsing does NOT phone home with sites you're visiting.

Quote: > Before blocking the site, Firefox will request a double-check to ensure that the reported site has not been removed from the list since your last update. Source: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-m...

Pretty sure it's still actually sending a hash, not a URL

Re: Safari is sending every search query to Apple

#126

Post by TheLoneWolfling »

eli wrote: post #125
TheLoneWolfling wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quote: > Before blocking the site, Firefox will request a double-check to ensure that the reported site has not been removed from the list since your last update. Source: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-m...

Pretty sure it's still actually sending a hash, not a URL

The entity I'm primarily worried about tracking here is Google.

And, pretty much trivially, if the URL was added to the blacklist, they have the corresponding URL to the hash.

(Not to mention, even if they didn't, their core product is based around crawling webpages. I'd be highly surprised if they didn't have hashes of the URLs they visited.)

And, even beside that, URLs are relatively low-entropy. Especially with the path-splitting that safe-browsing does.

Re: Safari is sending every search query to Apple

#127

Post by [deleted] »

blinkingled wrote: post #124
ianlevesque wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even that confusing. This is just alarmism for pageviews. Of all the large tech companies right now, Apple has made the most moves to protect user privacy. Disabled 3rd party cookies by default in Safari, randomized WiFi queries, full device ios encryption, opt-in only crash reporting, restricted MAC and UDID access, zero information shared with ApplePay, etc. And yet we're supposed to get out the pitchforks…

> randomized WiFi queries You know that the iOS 8 mac randomization feature doesn't actually work right? From imore.com - http://www.imore.com/closer-look-ios-8s-mac-randomization

[deleted]

Re: Safari is sending every search query to Apple

#128

Post by madeofpalk »

ekianjo wrote: post #74

The thing about Apple is the positive bias they always get on HN. In these comments: > Is there ANY evidence that Apple is collecting data. > I'm not sure it's a contradiction either, more of an omission, he doesn't specifically address search data in that interview > Doesn't seem like a data collection initiative. It seems more like a complementary search engine > Do they do autocompletion suggestions like Chrome? T…

I guess this is where the confirmation bias comes in.

As someone who would consider themselves to be a realistic 'Apple apologist' (I like Apple, as a company and their products, and tend to assume the positive for everything they do), I see a large negative bias against Apple on HN.

Re: Safari is sending every search query to Apple

#129

Post by madeofpalk »

zobzu wrote: post #31
TheLoneWolfling wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Citation Needed] Mozilla's "Safe browsing", for instance. If you're going to go with something FF based, at least choose something with such things disabled by default. For instance, I run PM.

Firefox Nightly also has a tracking protection in about:config => privacy.trackingprotection.enabled its off by default seems to also block some adverts when on. (probably because those adverts are also trackers)

Wait. People are upset about how unintuitive Apple's preferences are, but Firefox having config hidden away in the advanced about:config is OK?

Re: Safari is sending every search query to Apple

#130

Post by madeofpalk »

fnord0 wrote: post #21

couldn't one just flood this with false positives? looks like a POST to 'api.smoot.apple.com' in JSON format. I'd suspect random entries would make the overall data collected alot less useful...

I'm going to assume that Apple (well, the engineers there) are at least as smart as you and had previously taken this into consideration.
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