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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

#21

Post by dheera »

null_object wrote: post #8
dheera wrote: post #2

I know HN will downvote the hell out of people who doubt Apple, but Apple is most certainly not defending any privacy with their closed-source OS. For one, it takes quite a bit more on an iOS device to jailbreak it and use an MITM proxy to inspect what apps are doing under the hood than it does for an Android device to do the same. I feel much more peace of mind that I know exactly what apps are sending to their serv…

> just denying them permissions, which in many cases just cause apps to refuse to function. Factual question: which apps in your experience "refuse to function" when you deny them permission to track you?

At one point WeChat wouldn't permit logging in without location permissions. RoboRock vacuum cleaners also must be set up using an app that requires GPS permissions, and they send your GPS and Wi-Fi passwords and things to their server. It's sad, but they make one of best actual vacuums.

I'm not sure if that's the case still but I've run into several other apps that do similar things. It's pretty widespread.

In any case, it's awesome to have an OS that can make apps think they got permissions and just shove fake data at them.

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

#22

Post by zelon88 »

gordon_freeman wrote: post #13
zelon88 wrote: post #10

The author gives Apple credit for solving a problem Apple created. Apple doesn't care about protecting you. They care about protecting their own advertising market share. They don't want to stop tracking your iPhone. They want competitors like Google to stop tracking your iPhone (for free). Apple wants to get paid for that. If Apple cared about you then tracking functionality would not exist.

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.

I believe it is you who has a misunderstanding. Let's word this differently.

Apple gives apps the ability to track and users the option to disable that feature, but they built it with dark patterns.

Now they've removed the dark patterns, but you can still have this awful feature that nobody wants. Why?

And why is Apple getting credit for removing dark patterns that they created earlier? Why does this feature exist if 99.999% of people don't want it in the first place?

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

#23

Post by asiachick »

gordon_freeman wrote: post #13
zelon88 wrote: post #10

The author gives Apple credit for solving a problem Apple created. Apple doesn't care about protecting you. They care about protecting their own advertising market share. They don't want to stop tracking your iPhone. They want competitors like Google to stop tracking your iPhone (for free). Apple wants to get paid for that. If Apple cared about you then tracking functionality would not exist.

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 turn off all tracking, not just Apple's tracking.

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

#24

Post by helsinkiandrew »

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.

With all due respect that is nonsense. How would they come close to competing with Facebooks ad system which is built into the FB product?

The overwhelming majority of Apple revenue and profit is still hardware, app store and music etc. Whatever Tim Cook et al truly think about their customers privacy they can take the "moral high ground" when it comes to privacy because they are in a different business and it doesn't hurt their revenue (and perhaps helps it).

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202074

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

#25

Post by landryraccoon »

I see a bunch of comments talking about how Apple is being self serving and not at all altruistic when they defend our privacy.

And my response is - well duh. And this is supposed to be a problem how? Apple wants my money and nothing else. They aren't motivated to protect my privacy out of the goodness of their hearts. I am happy to pay money for more privacy.

The fact that they only do this because they want my money isn't really the interesting question to me. The interesting question to me is, why is it that they are literally the ONLY large tech company that is willing to offer me this tradeoff? I'm willing to pay a premium of probably hundreds of dollars on a phone because I want privacy, and nobody else will even consider selling me one? How much is my data really worth to advertisers? Like, a hundred bucks a year? Ok sure, where do I pay to get ownership of my data back?

Samsung, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft don't sell privacy, or if they do, they're sure doing a bang up job hiding it. None of them have any altruistic motives either, so I can only conclude that they either don't want my money or they're really bad at what they do?

Is there really no other company that wants to get in on this privacy game? Because the people who really care about this are probably affluent and willing to pay a lot for it.

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

#26

Post by gordon_freeman »

landryraccoon wrote: post #25

I see a bunch of comments talking about how Apple is being self serving and not at all altruistic when they defend our privacy. And my response is - well duh. And this is supposed to be a problem how? Apple wants my money and nothing else. They aren't motivated to protect my privacy out of the goodness of their hearts. I am happy to pay money for more privacy. The fact that they only do this because they want my mone…

The only other company I could think of that is playing in this privacy game is: Signal. And well they are a nonprofit and they prove that privacy is not only made affordable for the rich and affluent and anyone can have private communication whether they donate to Signal or not.

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

#28

Post by theshrike79 »

gordon_freeman wrote: post #26
landryraccoon wrote: post #25

I see a bunch of comments talking about how Apple is being self serving and not at all altruistic when they defend our privacy. And my response is - well duh. And this is supposed to be a problem how? Apple wants my money and nothing else. They aren't motivated to protect my privacy out of the goodness of their hearts. I am happy to pay money for more privacy. The fact that they only do this because they want my mone…

The only other company I could think of that is playing in this privacy game is: Signal. And well they are a nonprofit and they prove that privacy is not only made affordable for the rich and affluent and anyone can have private communication whether they donate to Signal or not.

And Signal still leaks phone numbers to people, that's why I refuse use it for group chats. For encrypted 1-1 with people I already know it's fine though.

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

#29

Post by Judgmentality »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #17

There's still a huge elephant in the room. How are we supposed to trust Apple, Microsoft or any other tech company when it emerged that they fully cooperated with the NSA and their PRISM program. We have to just assume that's still running. Businesses could keep a lot of secrets from us and they're not transparent or accountable to the public.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

Of course they'd have to want to do this.

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

#30

Post by BuyMyBitcoins »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #17

There's still a huge elephant in the room. How are we supposed to trust Apple, Microsoft or any other tech company when it emerged that they fully cooperated with the NSA and their PRISM program. We have to just assume that's still running. Businesses could keep a lot of secrets from us and they're not transparent or accountable to the public.

I feel despair because my government is supposed to be upholding my fundamental right to privacy but, clearly, the Fourth Amendment is something that can be selectively upheld or discarded. So what’s left? For me to hope that some company will respect my “rights”?
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