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

Shutting Down a Service with 500M Requests per Month

danielamitay.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 63 posts

Re: Shutting Down a Service with 500M Requests per Month

#21

Post by smtddr »

throwaway34234 wrote: post #3

You are an unethical person. I'm pleasantly surprised Apple shut this down.

I don't even think you should be surprised. I don't see how anyone could condone the privacy violation this app commits.

Of course this app should be banned, should have never made it to the appstore to begin with. And the developer should be ashamed of himself. With all the discussions around the NSA & privacy these days, it's tone-deafness & insensitive for a developer not to see the obvious problems iHasApp creates.

Re: Shutting Down a Service with 500M Requests per Month

#22

Post by nostrebored »

542458 wrote: post #9
tokenizerrr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From https://github.com/danielamitay/iHasApp : > The iHasApp iOS Framework allows you to detect installed apps on a user's device. Detection results can be in the form of an array of detected appIds, or an array of appDictionaries from the iTunes Search API.

I'd also bet you a coffee that you could pretty reliably uniquely fingerprint devices this way. I don't bear OP any ill will for writing iHazApp, but I can certainly see why many would be uncomfortable with it.

Very, very skeptical of this. Apps that people have installed tend to be similar apps.

Re: Shutting Down a Service with 500M Requests per Month

#25

Post by function_seven »

nostrebored wrote: post #22
542458 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd also bet you a coffee that you could pretty reliably uniquely fingerprint devices this way. I don't bear OP any ill will for writing iHazApp, but I can certainly see why many would be uncomfortable with it.

Very, very skeptical of this. Apps that people have installed tend to be similar apps.

For some subset maybe. But I guarantee you that there is not one other person on Earth that has the same set of apps installed on their phone that I do. The chances of that are astronomically tiny.

Re: Shutting Down a Service with 500M Requests per Month

#27

Post by obstinate »

strommen wrote: post #15

> your app uses public APIs in a manner not prescribed by Apple What an enraging way to phrase this. I understand Apple's desire to shut this down, but they make their contempt for app developers obvious at every possible turn.

Only devs seeking private information about users will be harmed by this. It's OK for Apple to have contempt for devs like that.

Re: Shutting Down a Service with 500M Requests per Month

#28

Post by wlesieutre »

killface wrote: post #18
strommen wrote: post #15

> your app uses public APIs in a manner not prescribed by Apple What an enraging way to phrase this. I understand Apple's desire to shut this down, but they make their contempt for app developers obvious at every possible turn.

That seems like an incredibly petty way to view it. Apple's not out to get you. In fact, I'm glad they did this. That iHasApp looks creepy as hell, and it pisses me off that other devs were using it to basically spy on me. It reduces my trust in all apps.

Yeah, this reminds me of the recent(ish) realization that a javascript could check a link's applied style to determine if it had :visitied, letting advertisers trivially run test a very large list of links to fingerprint and profile anybody who visits a webpage.

Mozilla patched that information leak. I don't remember anyone accusing them of "contempt for web developers."

I'm no longer using iOS regularly, but the fact that Apple can and does police apps that violate a user's expectation of privacy is one of the strong points of the platform.

Re: Shutting Down a Service with 500M Requests per Month

#29

Post by ploxiln »

killface wrote: post #18
strommen wrote: post #15

> your app uses public APIs in a manner not prescribed by Apple What an enraging way to phrase this. I understand Apple's desire to shut this down, but they make their contempt for app developers obvious at every possible turn.

That seems like an incredibly petty way to view it. Apple's not out to get you. In fact, I'm glad they did this. That iHasApp looks creepy as hell, and it pisses me off that other devs were using it to basically spy on me. It reduces my trust in all apps.

Technical people are accustomed to looking at the technical limitations of a problem space and then coming up with a solution. If the person managing the game then says "rule violation: you can't do stuff I don't like" it seems unfair.

The better way is to design the API in such a way that it can't be "abused". It's Apple's fault that iHasApp was able to do what it did, and it's Apple's fault that Facebook continues to do what iHasApp did.

Re: Shutting Down a Service with 500M Requests per Month

#30

Post by ploxiln »

wlesieutre wrote: post #28
killface wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like an incredibly petty way to view it. Apple's not out to get you. In fact, I'm glad they did this. That iHasApp looks creepy as hell, and it pisses me off that other devs were using it to basically spy on me. It reduces my trust in all apps.

Yeah, this reminds me of the recent(ish) realization that a javascript could check a link's applied style to determine if it had :visitied, letting advertisers trivially run test a very large list of links to fingerprint and profile anybody who visits a webpage. Mozilla patched that information leak. I don't remember anyone accusing them of "contempt for web developers." I'm no longer using iOS regularly, but the fac…

Mozilla didn't start white-listing web sites which it determined didn't snoop on the :visited property, and black list all other sites. Instead, it fixed the API.
Post reply on HN