Live data from Hacker News

Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

foundation.mozilla.org

51–60 of 403 posts

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#52
post #25

Support Free software instead, and stop begging Apple for permission to control what happens on hardware you own.

I don't want to own hardware and OS I don't like, even if I can control it fully.

I'd rather have hardware and OS I like, even if I can't control some aspects of it.

Of course a hardware/OS I like and which I control fully would be the holy grail (if the tradeoffs involved, e.g. it being FOSS, and thus underfunded for example, allowed for such a thing). Absent that, somewhere in between there is a nice balance for each person/business case.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#55
post #37

Looks like Mozilla still ignores the memo that anti-tracking starts with anti DRM in the first place. Apple your new friend. State of the art data protection looks different. Mozilla ain't asking for help for that thought. How unfortunate!

In Firefox desktop, an user has to enable DRM manually per-site.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#56
If this feature is going to be well-known and too easy to discover - it is already doomed. As soon as too many ordinary users start using it, advertisers will invest in workarounds. Ad blocking only worked well as long as the majority of people didn't care to use it. Ad blocking and privacy-enhancing features should be off by default, requiring you to dive deep into config dialogs to turn on so only those who actually worry about being tracked would use them - this way this can have a chance to actually work.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#57

If this feature is going to be well-known and too easy to discover - it is already doomed. As soon as too many ordinary users start using it, advertisers will invest in workarounds. Ad blocking only worked well as long as the majority of people didn't care to use it. Ad blocking and privacy-enhancing features should be off by default, requiring you to dive deep into config dialogs to turn on so only those who actuall…

Apple has a unique power here. They just add a line to their ToS stating that workarounds are a violation and your app will be removed.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#58
post #23
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can test your device browser fingerprint here: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org

One thing I've never understood about fingerprinting is that Firefox is supposed to prevent it by mangling the fingerprint data if you have those settings turned on. However whenever I visit sites like this, they all those the same thing that never changes, which means my fingerprint is quite stable and shared easily.

The problem with all these anti-fingerprinting tools is you show up as a firefox user who went in to the settings and turned on fingerprint protections which no other user did so you are unique again. You need lots of users to have the same setting enabled to blend in.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#59
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been on both sides of the table, I would slightly disagree here. Fraud prevention for example will get an order of magnitude harder, plus this move will further skew the playing field towards FAANG who have the resources to puzzle the scraps back together for decent conversion tracking with the help of logins, IPs, SDKs with First Party IDs and a massive dose of machine learning.

Do you think iPhone users care if it’s harder for Facebook and the like to catch fraud?

I'll flip this one back to you in the same spirit.

Do you think iPhone users care that Apple is implementing anti-tracking?

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#60
post #20
post #6

To what extent are iPhones fingerprinted though? As we’ve seen with websites even no unique id is not necessarily game over

You can test your device browser fingerprint here: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org

It's BS and has been since forever

https://games.greggman.com/game/panopticlick-hyperbole/

TL;DR they don't get enough traffic for the numbers to represent anything useful.

Post reply on HN