Apple is in it for themselves too. Stop falling for this.
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If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry
31–40 of 205 posts
Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry
#32There'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.
A good stack of Apple's ecosystem is fully encrypted, so that Apple can't give anything to the authorities.
For example: Apple Maps retrieves routes in segments, with changing identifiers. Apple can't figure out where you navigated to.
Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry
#33The 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.
Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry
#34I 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…
OK, how about that: everyone who wants to manually inspect the bytes coming out of their phone 24/7 can use Android, while everyone else can use iOS.
(also, iOS supports proxies)
Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry
#35There'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.
How do you suggest any corporation to not cooperate with government agencies? For US based businesses it's illegal, right?
And, how's this Apple's problem or fault? Vote and elect your interest. If you live in democratic country then vote and elect sensible smart honest representatives who will protect your interest.
Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry
#36There'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.
A good stack of Apple's ecosystem is fully encrypted, so that Apple can't give anything to the authorities. For example: Apple Maps retrieves routes in segments, with changing identifiers. Apple can't figure out where you navigated to.
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Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry
#37Apple should not have to lead the charge for user privacy. The government (particularly Congress, in some cases State Legislatures) needs to step up and create modern rules for a modern society. While you can’t “cook up” new laws as quickly as an engineer can a prototype, trusting a private entity - with only the power to regulate its own devices and activity - is foolish, if just merely in scope. The interests of a…
EU has GDPR and California has CCPA.
Y'all just need to get your elected officials to copy & paste CCPA to a federal level.
Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m a bit lost here. If all you want is to do MITM, what stops you from installing a certificate and a “VPN profile” on the iOS device and proxying the communication for analysis with appropriate apps? You don’t need to jailbreak to do any of this, as Charles Proxy for iOS (paid app) [1] shows. Of course, if you need to do more than intercepting network traffic, then it gets a bit more cumbersome on iOS. [1]: https:/…
Most apps now use certificate pinning, i.e. they have the root certificate included in the app and signed as part of the app, so that method won't work. On Android it's much easier to intercept and modify the behavior of apps and tell the system to disregard signatures and things of the sort.
> On Android it's much easier to intercept and modify the behavior of apps and tell the system to disregard signatures and things of the sort.
This really doesn't increase my confidence in Android as an OS. I'd rather prefer it to be really hard to intercept and modify the behavior of apps and to make the system disregard signatures.
Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry
#39The 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'…
I don't think its nonsense, I think you didn't read what he is saying. I also believe that if Apple had been successful at building its ad business when it tried to, they would not be talking about privacy now.
Apple sees all your data before it is ever sent to Facebook.
Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry
#40I 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…
Microsoft definitely sells privacy to business customers. For consumers they are probably just trying to lead gen for business sales.