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

Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

arxiv.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 155 posts

Re: Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

#51

Post by wintermutestwin »

Any conversation about privacy needs to be centered around the threat model:

Worried about state actors? More power to you, but good luck with that. Most people don't have the time, energy or paranoia (justified or not) to figure that out and keep on top of it.

Worried about stalker capitalism? Google is eagerly selling your data to the highest bidder = I have zero faith that their OS isn't snarfing up everything it can to sell to anyone who will pay. Apple has a different business model = I have some faith that they aren't selling my data.

Re: Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

#52

Post by croes »

ikurei wrote: post #34
croes wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If both are bad, does it matter which is less bad?

Well, yes, of course it does. I'm willing to limit what apps I use and carefully consider what I install. I'm not yet willing to abandon my smartphone. Choosing the lesser of N evils is a pretty common and often rational choice, in life and in engineering. May be not in this case, and it's good to be unsatisfied, but disregarding the debate just because neither option is great makes no sense.

Choosing the lesser of N evils only makes sense if one is acceptable. If neither is, a choice is useless. Both sides have an unacceptable amount of tracking and your choice doesn't really have any consequences.

Re: Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

#53

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

wtallis wrote: post #41
spansoa wrote: post #21

One thing you have to consider when debating i0S versus Android in the context of privacy is: you can have the best of both worlds and own an Android phone and an i0S device (if you can afford that, and I'm aware many citizens in third world countries don't have the luxury of owning two phones). It's like the old Chrome versus Firefox debates that happen every other month now on Hackernews & Reddit. I own a Chromeboo…

> i0S Slightly OT, but: is there a reason why you're spelling that with a numeral zero?

O & 0 are adjacent on US keyboards because they're interchangeable.

Re: Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

#54

Post by judge2020 »

tyingq wrote: post #14

It seems like privacy isn't popular enough to enable a third player in the market. I wonder if "cheap" would be popular enough to make a dent. Like someone churning out de-googled AOSP phones cheap enough to attract market share.

I can imagine almost everyone targeted by your marketing are also interested in benefiting from the immensely valuable, free* services provided by Google.

*: obviously paid with privacy, but that does mean less money leaves the user's bank account

Re: Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

#55

Post by croes »

joconde wrote: post #12
croes wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If both are bad, does it matter which is less bad?

Yes definitely. There are a lot of nuances in privacy. As an example, take the approach to ML and assistants, where Google collects most of everything to train models on their servers, while Apple tries to anonymize things a bit (e.g. their “differential privacy” techniques).

Anonymize things a bit sounds like a bit dead and a bit pregnant.

Re: Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

#56

Post by viktorcode »

imchillyb wrote: post #44

Look how we selectively choose information and how that is bad for consumers! iOS 14 released anti-tracking features in April of 2021. This article is released at the end of september, almost october, of 2021. Yet, the authors choose to specifically use a version of iOS that was prior to these changes. This is proof enough for me that the authors purposely skewed the data. This skewed data does not reflect reality, a…

it is somewhat irrelevant. Privacy conscious users could disable that tracking in iPhone settings for years.

Re: Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

#57

Post by jondwillis »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #53
wtallis wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i0S Slightly OT, but: is there a reason why you're spelling that with a numeral zero?

O & 0 are adjacent on US keyboards because they're interchangeable.

that logic holds the same with p and o, right?

Re: Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

#58

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

shawnz wrote: post #19
smoldesu wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're welcome to say whatever you want, but if you genuinely believe that the NSA gives preferential treatment to anyone from FAANG you're living a fever dream.

On the other hand, who else besides FAANG has the resources to resist the NSA, at least in small ways?

> On the other hand, who else besides FAANG has the resources to resist the NSA, at least in small ways?

US news orgs have a duty (implied by their extra-Constitutional protections) to ferret out NSA misdeeds but editors/journalists find celebs so much more intriguing.

Re: Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

#59

Post by legulere »

Jeaye wrote: post #29

It's tough to diff the privacy between Android and iOS, as an OS. However, as an app ecosystem, it's not tough at all. For example, there is not a single open source email app on iOS which supports GPG email. In the iOS app ecosystem, privacy and FLOSS is an afterthought, since iOS users are more likely to pay for proprietary software. On Android, there are a lot more options, including things like F-Droid which are…

The included email client already supports S/MIME though

Re: Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

#60

Post by teddyh »

aomobile wrote: post #45
Jeaye wrote: post #29

It's tough to diff the privacy between Android and iOS, as an OS. However, as an app ecosystem, it's not tough at all. For example, there is not a single open source email app on iOS which supports GPG email. In the iOS app ecosystem, privacy and FLOSS is an afterthought, since iOS users are more likely to pay for proprietary software. On Android, there are a lot more options, including things like F-Droid which are…

Feels safer though to pay than to get something for free.

I prefer free friends to those that charge me money to be my friend.
Post reply on HN