Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

App Store on iOS 14.6 sends every tap you make in the app to Apple

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 205 posts

Re: App Store on iOS 14.6 sends every tap you make in the app to Apple

#101

Post by cmeacham98 »

krono wrote: post #98
cmeacham98 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not convinced. By your logic, an nginx log with your IP in it is a similarly egregious and unethical privacy violation. If you're going to commit to "all forms of tracking are bad no matter what" I'm going to need stronger evidence than a link a page on the UN's website.

Saving that IP to the webserver's log is rather necessary for it to function, whereas these detailed records of user behaviour can almost never be. Just because someone uses an application, does not mean you "own" them and have a moral right to freely collect and do whatever you want with records of their behaviour. Also it's just weird.

Please explain how webserver logging is "necessary for it to function".

Re: App Store on iOS 14.6 sends every tap you make in the app to Apple

#102

Post by tyfon »

tyfon wrote: post #97
recursive wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Websites can still track everywhere you're tapping though. Wasn't that the original scare?

Yeah I know they do, but websites can collect much less data than native apps. I just try to minimize it.

I don't seem to be able to reply to your post, but to the sibling;

I'm not an app developer so I don't know specific, but by the amount of websites begging you to use their native apps it is quite obvious that there is something they get from the native apps they can't get from the website that they are very interested in.

Just try to go to the reddit website on a mobile (not old.) and see how fast they spam you with the app prompt.

Re: App Store on iOS 14.6 sends every tap you make in the app to Apple

#103

Post by krono »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #101
krono wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saving that IP to the webserver's log is rather necessary for it to function, whereas these detailed records of user behaviour can almost never be. Just because someone uses an application, does not mean you "own" them and have a moral right to freely collect and do whatever you want with records of their behaviour. Also it's just weird.

Please explain how webserver logging is "necessary for it to function".

No post body was provided.

Re: App Store on iOS 14.6 sends every tap you make in the app to Apple

#104

Post by threeseed »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #21
tinus_hn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Apple doesn’t have any incentive to ‘fingerprint’ App Store users because they are either logged in or using a unique identifier.

Sure they do. What if they switch accounts, usernames, phones, etc. More data is better.

I remember credit cards being only usable by one AppleID.

So switching accounts would not only mean you lose all of your App Store purchases, iCloud data etc. It would mean having to get a new credit card.

That would make the likelihood of this scenario happening being pretty slim.

Re: App Store on iOS 14.6 sends every tap you make in the app to Apple

#105

Post by cmeacham98 »

krono wrote: post #103
cmeacham98 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain how webserver logging is "necessary for it to function".

Quoted post unavailable.

So I'll take that as you can't demonstrate it?

Interestingly, I started up an Nginx server and piped the logs to /dev/null and it worked just fine!!

Wow, turns out those logs weren't necessary at all. And by your standard, where tracking that isn't necessary for the website to function is unethical, that makes every single person running Nginx in its default configuration bad and participating in unethical tracking of users!

Re: App Store on iOS 14.6 sends every tap you make in the app to Apple

#107

Post by dibt »

scarface74 wrote: post #99
tyfon wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This attitude is why I hardly have any native apps on my phone and use a browser with ublock origin for it. You can see how valuable this tracking is by the amount of websites begging you to install their native apps. No thanks!

So you don’t use native apps because they can track everything you do in the app so you use websites that can track everything you do on their site?

They said "...a browser with ublock origin.." uBlock Origin is a content blocker that would help prevent tracking.

Re: App Store on iOS 14.6 sends every tap you make in the app to Apple

#108

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #72
iLoveOncall wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That it's on your own app where you anyway know exactly which backend endpoint has been called by the user does. I really don't get the outrage about that, it's something that has existed for 15 or 20 years at least and is used a lot on most websites you go on. What private information do you think is sent to the vendor that would not be otherwise?

> That it's on your own app where you anyway know exactly which backend endpoint has been called by the user does. If it only exposed information the user was already sending, the vendor wouldn't bother with the spyware. > What private information do you think is sent to the vendor that would not be otherwise? Depends on the app; I expect, for instance, market apps (Amazon, Walmart, etc.) to watch the user's every mo…

> Depends on the app; I expect, for instance, market apps (Amazon, Walmart, etc.) to watch the user's every move to try and better model the user's mental state in an effort to get them to buy stuff that they wouldn't have done otherwise.

Not being funny but I think you’re vastly overestimating the capabilities of most engineering teams.

Re: App Store on iOS 14.6 sends every tap you make in the app to Apple

#109

Post by cmeacham98 »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #105
krono wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

So I'll take that as you can't demonstrate it? Interestingly, I started up an Nginx server and piped the logs to /dev/null and it worked just fine!! Wow, turns out those logs weren't necessary at all. And by your standard, where tracking that isn't necessary for the website to function is unethical, that makes every single person running Nginx in its default configuration bad and participating in unethical tracking o…

Because it doesn't seem like I'm going to get a response to this, I'll walk down the rest of the logic for completeness's sake.

I think we can both agree that "all unnecessary tracking is unethical" doesn't make sense and leads to insane conclusions like "all Nginx users with IP addresses in their logs are participating in unethical tracking".

So we're back to square one, where someone needs to demonstrate this type of tracking is actually unethical. So far we've got "all tracking ever is unethical" and "all tracking not necessary for function is unethical", but both of those seem to be dead ends.

Re: App Store on iOS 14.6 sends every tap you make in the app to Apple

#110

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

krono wrote: post #82
cmeacham98 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That also doesn't make it inherently unethical, and so far nobody has provided evidence of that claim.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says something about arbitrary interference in a person's privacy not being okay, so there's that. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...

I think the argument here is that tracking how users interact with an app isn’t necessarily private information
Post reply on HN