If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry • Hacker News Board

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#61

Post by helsinkiandrew » Mon, May 24, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

jay_kyburz wrote: post #39

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure - if they were arms dealers or a drug company they would be doing other bad things, but their business model doesn’t need targeted ads.

People and companies should be judged on their actions not on what you think they would do if they were in some other business.

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#62

Post by gordon_freeman » Mon, May 24, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

A lot of folks are aligning Apple's motive to somehow gain advantage in ads business as if they'd able to compete with Google, Amazon or Facebook someday in ads biz. I don't think that is their real motive. I believe Apple's real motive with all these privacy centric features such as ATT, Sign in with Apple, Apple card data not being tracked for targeting etc. is to create a privacy centric moat and platform/ecosystem that is simply missing from the market right now and they know that they have real advantages of keeping people in their ecosystem with this moat. I'm actually happy that they are doing this.

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#63

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 24, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #53

landryraccoon wrote: post #25

I 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…

>I'm willing to pay a premium of probably hundreds of dollars on a phone because I want privacy, and nobody else will even consider selling me one? how much of a premium are most of the target market willing to pay however. Google, Facebook, and Amazon don't sell privacy because privacy goes directly against what their business strategy is. Samsung has based their stuff on Android an OS that, heavily influenced by Go…

[deleted]

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#64

Post by igornadj » Mon, May 24, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

landryraccoon wrote: post #25

I 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…

I completely agree, and would love to see a competitor to Apple in terms of privacy focus.

I think the reason we don't see it from competitors is that Apple is years ahead of everyone else in terms of customer experience, and privacy is part of that experience, so they focus on it.

You just have to look at how many different models of phones Samsung sell vs how many Apple sell to see how unfocused Apple's biggest competitor is. They will throw anything and everything at the wall to see what sticks. There's no focus on privacy because there's no focus on anything.

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#65

Post by supernova87a » Mon, May 24, 2021, 5:33 AM UTC

Synaesthesia wrote: post #17

There'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.

Look, if you're worried about that, I don't know how you get through life without being totally paralyzed.

You live in the USA. All persons and companies are subject to whatever intelligence activities that we got a glimpse of which are happening.

You adjust your life accordingly and live on. Because I don't know where else you can go that has the similar benefits of being a US citizen and the environment we enjoy.

Or if you do, it's probably time to put your money where your mouth is and move there. There's not a lot of good in raising these impractical concerns when there's no good alternative or change you can effect.

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#66

Post by dheera » Mon, May 24, 2021, 5:33 AM UTC

slver wrote: post #34

dheera wrote: post #2

I 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)

MITM proxies don't work when apps use certificate pinning. Many popular apps do this.

> everyone who wants to manually inspect the bytes coming out of their phone

== everyone who actually gives a damn about their privacy

Do you even know what your phone apps are sending about you? I know what my apps are sending about me. Some of it is pretty scary, honestly.

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#67

Post by theshrike79 » Mon, May 24, 2021, 5:33 AM UTC

trapped wrote: post #49

theshrike79 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Signal still leaks phone numbers to people, that's why I refuse use it for group chats. For encrypted 1-1 with people I already know it's fine though.

Better than Zynga, right? Corporation which has leaked kids data. Clones games, manipulates kids and adults in spending thousands of $$$ on virtual things, screwed employees from stock compensation. It's easy to criticize, right? Signal and Apple are at-least doing better than Zynga.

Are you OK? Everything good at home?

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#68

Post by ashneo76 » Mon, May 24, 2021, 5:33 AM UTC

landryraccoon wrote: post #25

I 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…

If that is the case, the please stop glorifying every single apple IPhone or product release like it is a gift from god and that Steve jobs and Tim cook can do no wrong.

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#69

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 24, 2021, 5:33 AM UTC

gordon_freeman wrote: post #62

A lot of folks are aligning Apple's motive to somehow gain advantage in ads business as if they'd able to compete with Google, Amazon or Facebook someday in ads biz. I don't think that is their real motive. I believe Apple's real motive with all these privacy centric features such as ATT, Sign in with Apple, Apple card data not being tracked for targeting etc. is to create a privacy centric moat and platform/ecosyste…

[deleted]

Re: If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

#70

Post by actuator » Mon, May 24, 2021, 5:36 AM UTC

Gaelan wrote: post #56

actuator wrote: post #41

This is not true. As I have submitted on HN earlier, Apple is using the purchases data to customise ads. https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT208477 You can make a case that the ad targeting is just on App Store, News and Stocks but that is just for now, Apple used to have an ad platform iAd which wasn't that successful, so it was discontinued. Once they milk other revenue streams and are more of a monopolistic power in…

That tweet's been deleted, so it's hard to judge it exactly, but my recollection is that someone else pointed out "payment data" here is just App Store, iTunes, etc purchases. "Apple targets ads on the app store based on previous app store purchases" is, IMO, much less of a privacy invasion than "Facebook targets ads based on your friends list, messages, browsing history, real-life purchases, and other things I can't…

I updated the link above.

I am not sure how much information Apple gets but if with an in app purchase of say a eBook, they get to know which eBook it was, it is creepy.

Apple really doesn't have to do any ad personalisation but still they are doing it as it is just more money for them. My fear is, eventually when they monetize more of their web properties, the data collection will increase.

While they might not allow others to sniff your data, they are in too much of a dominant position to not use it for themselves like the purchases data.

For me, this fight will always be, who will watch the watchmen? Regulatory hammer seems to be the only long term solution I can think of. As Apple's integration of hardware + software + software gateway + services, is just too scary and eventually will give them too much power.