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If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

theguardian.com

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Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#141

Post by pabs3 »

willis936 wrote: post #96
NalNezumi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another comment pointed out Signal as one software, we also have Purism[0] for privacy-minded hardware [0] https://puri.sm/

Neat that there's a competitor to system 76. I'll have to look into them later. I use a T500 I plucked from the trash for secure libre street cred. No blobs anywhere afaik.

T500 has blobs at minimum: CPU microcode, UEFI boot firmware, EC firmware, GPU firmware, HDD/SSD firmware, Ethernet/WiFi firmware, battery controller firmware, display firmware etc.

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#142

Post by joemi »

theturtletalks wrote: post #129
jhanschoo wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The relevance of criticism on Apple's privacy stance is in pointing out the limits of Apple's commitment to privacy. Companies like Signal are founded on privacy and encryption, but with Apple, privacy is a nice-to-have, limited to its other business objectives (like how Apple is "committed" to reducing waste to the extent it can sell dongles, chargers, and earbuds separately, but not in terms of repairability). You…

Apple's marketing is quite genius. They spun iOS being a closed system into a plus. You can't install your own apps. Safari is not fit for PWAs. Repairability is not encouraged. All of this is for your own benefit and privacy. Want those things? Go to Android and sacrifice your privacy. With this approach, Apple comes out looking privacy-focused, justified for their App Store fees, and their stance on right to repair…

There are positive and negative aspects to it being a closed system, just as there are positive and negative aspects of Android's open system. Marketing just chose to emphasize the positive aspects. Not really a genius play, IMO, that's just what any marketing team does.

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#143

Post by SilverRed »

dheera wrote: post #117
techrat wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I deny functions to apps in Android all the time. I've yet to run into an app that will refuse to run unless that denied function is explicitly needed for that app to do what it was designed to do: eg, location for maps.

There are plenty. Try getting a Roborock vacuum cleaner and getting it to vacuum your floor without giving away GPS permissions on your phone, it's impossible unless you take the damn thing apart and solder some wires to the RX/TX and root it with its dev serial port. Wechat also for a while didn't even allow logging in without location permissions. They may have changed that but there are lots and lots of offending…

This is a complex one. I'm almost certain the reason is they want to scan for bluetooth devices to pick up the vacuum cleaner in the app.

The problem is that scanning for bluetooth devices basically is GPS because marketers started putting beacons all over the place and using their tracking toolkits in apps to pick up these beacons.

So android changed the permissions so you had to ask for location access to scan for bluetooth.

So as an app dev, you get the option to ask for location access and make setup easy, or you can direct the user to go to the bluetooth settings and pair with the vacuum and come back to the app to continue.

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#144

Post by procombo »

asiachick wrote: post #23
gordon_freeman wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't get it. Apple is not making any decisions on whether to allow apps to track or not. They are simply delegating that choice to their users (and rightly so). The user has power to chose which advertisers he or she can trust showing them the useful ads and allow those apps to track. If ads are not useful or are exploitative of their data then they can chose not to allow tracking. As simple as that.

You don't get it. Apple doesn't allow you to opt out of THEM tracking you. You have 2 options 1. zero tracking (not even sure you can do this) 2. apple tracking, and the ability to chose others who track you To be equal Apple would have to allow blocking Apple's own tracking while still allowing user selected 3rd parties to track. Apple doesn't give this option. If you don't want them to track you you're required to…

Apple provides core services that forces all 3rd party apps to run "on top" of. I don't see how the toggling of options could work better considering this.

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#145

Post by littlestymaar »

Reminder: while it's true that Apple protects your privacy in the context of third party app data collection on your devices, it doesn't make it an “organization defending our privacy either”. They collect tons of data about you, and share them with third parties as they wish and their privacy policy is pretty explicit about it:

> Personal Data Apple Collects from You

> Usage Data. Data about your activity on and use of our offerings, such as app launches within our services, including browsing history; search history; product interaction; crash data, performance and other diagnostic data; and other usage data

> Location Information. Precise location only to support Find My, and coarse location

> Health Information. Data relating to the health status of an individual, including data related to one’s physical or mental health or condition. Personal health data also includes data that can be used to make inferences about or detect the health status of an individual. If you participate in a study using an Apple Health Research Study app, the policy governing the privacy of your personal data is described in the Apple Health Study Apps Privacy Policy.

> Fitness Information. Details relating to your fitness and exercise information where you choose to share them Financial Information. Details including salary, income, and assets information where collected, and information related to

> Apple’s Sharing of Personal Data

> Apple may share personal data with service providers who act on our behalf, our partners, or others at your direction. Further, Apple does not share personal data with third parties for their own marketing purposes.

> Partners. At times, Apple may partner with third parties to provide services or other offerings. For example, Apple financial offerings like Apple Card and Apple Cash are offered by Apple and our partners. Apple requires its partners to protect your personal data.

source: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#146

Post by okamiueru »

theturtletalks wrote: post #129
jhanschoo wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The relevance of criticism on Apple's privacy stance is in pointing out the limits of Apple's commitment to privacy. Companies like Signal are founded on privacy and encryption, but with Apple, privacy is a nice-to-have, limited to its other business objectives (like how Apple is "committed" to reducing waste to the extent it can sell dongles, chargers, and earbuds separately, but not in terms of repairability). You…

Apple's marketing is quite genius. They spun iOS being a closed system into a plus. You can't install your own apps. Safari is not fit for PWAs. Repairability is not encouraged. All of this is for your own benefit and privacy. Want those things? Go to Android and sacrifice your privacy. With this approach, Apple comes out looking privacy-focused, justified for their App Store fees, and their stance on right to repair…

And at the same time, MacOS phones home every time you run anything, and logs exactly what you ran, on what you ran it, and where you ran it. Inb4: "This isn't a privacy issue, it's a security feature".

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#147

Post by theturtletalks »

joemi wrote: post #142
theturtletalks wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's marketing is quite genius. They spun iOS being a closed system into a plus. You can't install your own apps. Safari is not fit for PWAs. Repairability is not encouraged. All of this is for your own benefit and privacy. Want those things? Go to Android and sacrifice your privacy. With this approach, Apple comes out looking privacy-focused, justified for their App Store fees, and their stance on right to repair…

There are positive and negative aspects to it being a closed system, just as there are positive and negative aspects of Android's open system. Marketing just chose to emphasize the positive aspects. Not really a genius play, IMO, that's just what any marketing team does.

Good point, but iOS was a closed system from the get-go and this was seen a drawback of iOS back then. The privacy focused marketing started 3-4 years ago.

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#148

Post by procombo »

theshrike79 wrote: post #33
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #3

The only reason behind the iOS changes is because Apple failed to compete with Facebook ads. If Apple didn't sell ads using the same data I could maybe believe there privacy bullshit.

Apple is a hardware company, they make most of their revenue from selling actual physical stuff. I think the second one is the cut they take for selling software to said physical devices. Ads are a sliver in the earnings pie chart. FB and Google though are advertising companies with services and hardware sales to support their core business.

>Apple is a hardware company

They definitely consider themselves more than that. They pride themselves in being the farm, to hen, to egg, to plate "lifestyle" service.

Maybe one day they'll start making decent software though.

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#149

Post by joemi »

imposterr wrote: post #71
spoonjim wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s basically impossible for an American company to defy the American government. They can try in court but ultimately the government has F-22s and nuclear weapons and Apple does not.

Thanks, now I'm imagining a dystopia where large tech companies have their own militaries.

If you want to watch a fictional version, the scifi shows Continuum and Dark Matter both portrayed a future where corporations ran the governments or were the governments.

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#150

Post by 0xPIT »

I truly wonder why people still believe they have any privacy, any right to privacy, or, that they could do anything about it.

Sun Microsystems‘ Scott McNealy was vocal about this already in the late 1990s: „you have no privacy, get over it“

Look, even if you were able to get FAANG et al. to honor privacy, there will always be the one player that does not. Then, the people who write privacy laws have no clue what they are doing. Plus, I’ve seen software professionals copy/pasting encryption algorithms that contain errors from stackoverflow into production code.

It’s time to face reality, this ship has sailed, stop whining, finally start adapting to an environment without privacy: Treat all your data as if they would become public one day.

Use your energy to teach others to be tech literate to understand what this means, how to deal with this and how to behave.

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