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Oh, the Places Your Apple ID Will Go

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Re: Oh, the Places Your Apple ID Will Go

#121

Post by lern_too_spel »

talkingtab wrote: post #106

Leaving behind the discussion of whether this is a problem, it is a problem for me. I paid Apple for a device. I don't want Apple to use devices to track me or target me with ads or anything else. That is my personal take. But what can you do assuming that you want or need a phone? Android is no better. Class action lawsuits enrich law firms and get users a gift card for $0.20 (sarcasm). I just wonder what would happ…

> Android is no better.

You don't have to use an app store that violates your privacy on Android. You don't have to send your location to Google every time you get your GPS location, unlike how iOS sends all your GPS lookups to Apple. Android is far better. The key difference is user control.

Re: Oh, the Places Your Apple ID Will Go

#123

Post by beders »

I really don't get the outrage.

I assumed that by stepping into Apple's walled garden, they would know and store:

- where my devices are

- what I'm doing with them (i.e. apps downloaded and started, which features I use yadda yadda yadda

- any app I download and use will independently log all my taps and interactions within that app

- and since I use iCloud: where all my data is

What would make you think otherwise?

Re: Oh, the Places Your Apple ID Will Go

#124

Post by bryan_w »

lapcat wrote: post #45

Some trivia: the "DS" in DSID is "Directory Services", which is a giant Apple-internal database. Apple employees and contractors have a DSID too. It's basically a database of all people that Apple knows, and it's very old.

Would you say it could contain shadow profiles of anyone who ever used any apple product (e.g. opened iTunes on windows)

Re: Oh, the Places Your Apple ID Will Go

#125

Post by simonh »

_heimdall wrote: post #118
simonh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tracking is about following breadcrumbs across activity in third party apps. So if the Facebook app uses identifiers in common with Uber, and can see what you do in Uber or something, that’s tracking. Recording what you do in a single app, or apps from one company that isn’t strictly necessary for providing the service is telemetry. Apple doesn’t share user data and identifiers with third parties except as necessary…

Agreed that is the technical distinction made today, but for an end user that really is splitting hairs. When Apple is offering first-party services that compete with Netflix, Spotify, etc. my privacy concern is that someone is tracking and aggregating data on what I watch and listen to. As a user I don't really care if that's two separate corporations sharing unique identifiers or two departments in the same umbrell…

You don't think who the data is shared with, whether or not you know or consent to it, and how it is propagated is a significant factor in privacy concerns?

Re: Oh, the Places Your Apple ID Will Go

#126

Post by rthomas6 »

talkingtab wrote: post #106

Leaving behind the discussion of whether this is a problem, it is a problem for me. I paid Apple for a device. I don't want Apple to use devices to track me or target me with ads or anything else. That is my personal take. But what can you do assuming that you want or need a phone? Android is no better. Class action lawsuits enrich law firms and get users a gift card for $0.20 (sarcasm). I just wonder what would happ…

I use GrapheneOS and it works reasonably well for limiting the amount of data I send to Google. I still use the play store, but you don't have to, you can go 100% open source and Google-free. And Play Services is optional and sandboxed so it doesn't get any privileges beyond what a normal app gets, so you can block tracking and it spying on other apps' usage.

Re: Oh, the Places Your Apple ID Will Go

#127

Post by lapcat »

bryan_w wrote: post #124
lapcat wrote: post #45

Some trivia: the "DS" in DSID is "Directory Services", which is a giant Apple-internal database. Apple employees and contractors have a DSID too. It's basically a database of all people that Apple knows, and it's very old.

Would you say it could contain shadow profiles of anyone who ever used any apple product (e.g. opened iTunes on windows)

No, I don't think so. It would contain anyone who ever created an Apple ID though.

Re: Oh, the Places Your Apple ID Will Go

#128

Post by Helmut10001 »

All of these issues with UIDs make me believe that we should maybe transition to Probabilistic Data Structures and group users randomly together, e.g. based on HyperLogLog abstracted UIDs. Only the user device itself would have the full ID, the service would get an abstracted, probabilistic version of it, which can (and will) collide with other abstracted IDs. Thus, the service could never be 100% sure who exactly a single user is - out of a group of (e.g.) 12 people that happen to yield the same probabilistic representation.

(I know there're also many issues with this approach, so take it with a grain of salt)

Re: Oh, the Places Your Apple ID Will Go

#129

Post by smoldesu »

r0m4n0 wrote: post #117
cmeacham98 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me repost what I wrote elsewhere in this thread: The point is not that the App Store isn't an online service (although I would argue that it more "relies on" an online service), but that its role as part of the OS supersedes that. I can't go back and edit my comment now, but to make it more clear I probably should have written something like: > I strongly disagree that the iOS App Store should be treated as ___on…

Ok yea agreed. I think it’s more than one thing, including an internet service

It's certainly multiple things, but some things take precedent. If Apple allowed people to install third-party App Stores, then the freedom would take precedent and nobody would be throwing rocks at them.

Re: Oh, the Places Your Apple ID Will Go

#130

Post by smoldesu »

scarface74 wrote: post #89
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uninstall requires a backend? If uninstall doesn't require a backend then it's not an internet service. It's manipulating things on-device. It's a package manager and tracker designed in such a way that it only talks to Apple's backend. It's still the system package manager though.

Every app can have iCloud associated data that would be deleted when you uninstall the app. Also push notifications go through Apple’s servers and then Apple bundles them for different apps. Apple would need to know not to send push notifications to an app that is no longer installed. Also of course Apple keeps a record of installed apps. If you drop your phone in the ocean and go to the Apple Store to buy a new one,…

iCloud is the problem, here. Apple has no right to predecate my software usage on the existence of an account with them. It's equally as absurd as Windows requiring a Microsoft ID to log in.
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