Wait, Apple is Sending URLs to Google ?
I think a lot of browsers do for the "Safe Browsing" checks
Apple Is Sending URLs to Tencent?
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Re: Apple Is Sending URLs to Tencent?
#12Re: Apple Is Sending URLs to Tencent?
#13(edit: the source in question has removed the tweet, so I have too)
More details on how this works, for Google at least, here: https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/v4/update-api#ch...
This is only one of the APIs. Full doc at:
Re: Apple Is Sending URLs to Tencent?
#14Wait, Apple is Sending URLs to Google ?
I think a lot of browsers do for the "Safe Browsing" checks
The Safe Browsing API is deliberately designed to avoid leaking the contents of URLs to Google. You can read about how it works here: https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/v4/update-api
Re: Apple Is Sending URLs to Tencent?
#15This is really a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of situation.
They can either use Tencent's Safe Browsing API as a drop-in replacement for Google's API, relying on k-anonymity to leak as little information as possible. That leaves them open to accusations that they allow Tencent (or, for that matter, Google) to track the browsing history of Safari users.
Or they can essentially turn off Safe Browsing in China. (Google's API is collateral damage of the Great Firewall.) That leaves their users unprotected against all kinds of malware and scams.
I think they made the right call here by protecting users against the most common threat (most people are not dissidents), while giving advanced users with a different threat model the opportunity to opt out.
Re: Apple Is Sending URLs to Tencent?
#16This is really a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of situation. They can either use Tencent's Safe Browsing API as a drop-in replacement for Google's API, relying on k-anonymity to leak as little information as possible. That leaves them open to accusations that they allow Tencent (or, for that matter, Google) to track the browsing history of Safari users. Or they can essentially turn off Safe Browsing in…
Alternatively, they could purchase the data from Tencent or another company, and operate their own version of the service. That may even be what they’re doing —- but we don’t know, since they launched the service with no details or publicity.
Re: Apple Is Sending URLs to Tencent?
#17Remarkable when people become upset when it is explicitly stated your mobile tracking device sends information to third party servers, but deep down we all know the dangers are in what is not explicitly stated.
Re: Apple Is Sending URLs to Tencent?
#18every form of software phone-home is sleazy
we should be linting code to say whether it phones home or not, and what it uploads when it does. plain language privacy policies and ever-changing browser settings are leaving huge gaps.
when the US government bought chinese drones they hired a consultant to prove that the drones never call home.
Re: Apple Is Sending URLs to Tencent?
#19This is really a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of situation. They can either use Tencent's Safe Browsing API as a drop-in replacement for Google's API, relying on k-anonymity to leak as little information as possible. That leaves them open to accusations that they allow Tencent (or, for that matter, Google) to track the browsing history of Safari users. Or they can essentially turn off Safe Browsing in…
"Or they can essentially turn off Safe Browsing in China."
The OP as well as the associated blog post[1] as well as the Apple-provided fine-print language do not make it clear to me that this "feature" is exclusively enabled for Chinese users (or, perhaps Chinese IPs).
Could someone point to a source that confirms a US person, in the US, with a US-purchased iphone, would not have their browsing history transformed and sent away for analysis to tencent ?
[1] https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2019/10/13/dear-app...
Re: Apple Is Sending URLs to Tencent?
#20This is really a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of situation. They can either use Tencent's Safe Browsing API as a drop-in replacement for Google's API, relying on k-anonymity to leak as little information as possible. That leaves them open to accusations that they allow Tencent (or, for that matter, Google) to track the browsing history of Safari users. Or they can essentially turn off Safe Browsing in…
Alternatively, they could purchase the data from Tencent or another company, and operate their own version of the service. That may even be what they’re doing —- but we don’t know, since they launched the service with no details or publicity.
Yet another approach is to send the entire list of all malware URLs to each client and let the client do all the processing on their end.
This way no data (hashed, anonymized, truncated, or otherwise) would need to be sent to Tencent, Apple, or Google, or anyone else.