31–40 of 188 posts
Why does Apple have this as the default? Now they've mostly ditched their own advertising platforms, what do they have to gain from having these default settings?
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What are trying to protect against? A screenshot of a screenshot with a filter applied to it isn’t going to help you if your name shows up somewhere in it.
Tracking watermarks / pixels.
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Did you… print out a screenshot of your phone?!
I applied filters and took a screenshot of the screenshot to reduce image fidelity in case it contained any [covertly embedded]* identifying information [in the form of watermarks or hidden pixels] . *added for clarity.
There is so much more to privacy than is made apparent to the user as a few OS knobs to "limit" ad tracking.
The problem is that Apple has always claimed ios provides more privacy (& security) than android, but that's irrelevant if you don't make sure your users are capable of finding the settings. Apple has always marketed to people who are (at least perceived to be) largely tech illiterate (while claiming you have to be extremely tech savvy to use android which is a lie), so if they view their users that way they should m…
The iPhone is a lot better for privacy by default. It's just not as good as it should be, and I do agree it's not as good as their claims suggest.
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Did you… print out a screenshot of your phone?!
I applied filters and took a screenshot of the screenshot to reduce image fidelity in case it contained any [covertly embedded]* identifying information [in the form of watermarks or hidden pixels] . *added for clarity.
Another example; most printers covertly embed an identifier in their prints.
I have a vague memory of a pre-release video game doing it? Or maybe it was just debugging information that they were embedding. shrug
Personally I don't believe Apple is doing what you describe (though maybe they might do it to a prototype iPhone). But it's certainly your right to hold that belief and take measurements to protect yourself. Shame you're getting downvoted for explaining yourself.
EDIT: Fixed a typo; thank you.
One thing I always check when using a new install.
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Tracking watermarks / pixels.
Genuine question: what is a tracking watermark, in the context you're discussing?
A “watermark” is simply a version of that designed to be invisible or imperceptible to the human eye, for example by embedding information in the least significant bits of the pixel colors.
“Digital Watermark Steganography” is a good search term for further investigation. As is the case with many security topics, there is an ongoing arms race between technology used to hide information, and technology used to detect information hiding.
At the end of the day if you truly wanted to share a screenshot of the iOS settings UI and remain anonymous, you should probably consider just drawing it with crayons. Except then someone will come along and process the crayon marks to recover your fingerprints etc. etc.
This tracking is all possible because iOS gives every app on the device the same IDFA (advertising identifier [1]). They can then correlate all your activity and target you for ads.
I'd love if Apple just killed this feature, but barring that, why not change iOS so that it scopes these identifiers at the per-app level. Different apps on the same device see different IDFAs, but an app can still use an IDFA to target you for ads. Apple already has similar per-vendor scoping with identifierForVendor. [2]
[1]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/adsupport/asidenti...
[2]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uidevice/162...