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

Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

mobile.reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 249 posts

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#71

Post by iainmerrick »

dudus wrote: post #46
firloop wrote: post #2

Apple's blog post about their plans: "We are committed to ensuring users can choose whether or not they allow an app to track them. To give developers time to make necessary changes, apps will be required to obtain permission to track users starting early next year. More information, including an update to the App Store Review Guidelines, will follow this fall." https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=hx9s63c5

This reads as just another popup you'll need to click before you can use any app. Just like cookies.

Except there will be an option to deny tracking. Hopefully Apple will require and enforce a genuine free choice and opt-in.

With GDPR cookie warnings, you’re required to opt in, but everybody uses dark UI patterns to make you “opt in” (like forcing you to uncheck each tracker individually, and claiming it takes several minutes to “update your preferences”)

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#72

Post by untog »

gowld wrote: post #64
AnonHP wrote: post #6

(Re-posting on this thread) What a bummer! As an iOS user, I was eagerly looking forward to this feature, wanting to tell others about it and how the upgrade to iOS 14 would be worth it just to clearly expose apps that want to track users. I already have ad tracking limited in my settings (Settings->Privacy->Limit Ad Tracking), but that was something I had to explicitly turn on, and there’s no notice on which apps us…

The only reason you are so desperate for this feature is that Apple refuses to let you install a firewall on the phone you supposedly own. Otherwise you could be running pihole today.

Not really. Pi Hole is great but it comes much later in the process and is an inexact process trying to filter out internet requests. The filter Apple has stops apps from being able to get the identifying data in the first place. It's a lot better.

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#73

Post by ocdtrekkie »

samfisher83 wrote: post #69
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #4

This is unfortunate. Adtech is a cancer. We don't need to give it time to adapt, we need to shut it down.

It's a large reason why software engineers are making a lot of money.

Money made by taking advantage of others is unethical money. If your salary is propped up by adtech, you shouldn't be making that money.

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#74

Post by read_if_gay_ »

sujinge9 wrote: post #47
b1476 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of free alternatives to Google that don’t rely on ads and respect your privacy.

What are some free products that don't rely on ads?

Most OSS I suppose.

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#75

Post by amadeuspagel »

sosborn wrote: post #48
baby wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you realize the number of free services that one uses thanks to ads? Not everyone can afford to pay for these. I for one use gmail, google maps, google calendar, google docs, etc. Every day

Do you realize that you can have ads subsidizing free services without any tracking or using any third-party services?

Obviously, companies generally make more money with tracking, otherwise they wouldn't do it, and that means more investment in free services.

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#76

Post by iainmerrick »

gowld wrote: post #64
AnonHP wrote: post #6

(Re-posting on this thread) What a bummer! As an iOS user, I was eagerly looking forward to this feature, wanting to tell others about it and how the upgrade to iOS 14 would be worth it just to clearly expose apps that want to track users. I already have ad tracking limited in my settings (Settings->Privacy->Limit Ad Tracking), but that was something I had to explicitly turn on, and there’s no notice on which apps us…

The only reason you are so desperate for this feature is that Apple refuses to let you install a firewall on the phone you supposedly own. Otherwise you could be running pihole today.

You could do that, maybe, but the typical non-technical user could not.

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#77

Post by kjakm »

dudus wrote: post #46
firloop wrote: post #2

Apple's blog post about their plans: "We are committed to ensuring users can choose whether or not they allow an app to track them. To give developers time to make necessary changes, apps will be required to obtain permission to track users starting early next year. More information, including an update to the App Store Review Guidelines, will follow this fall." https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=hx9s63c5

This reads as just another popup you'll need to click before you can use any app. Just like cookies.

This will be more similar to giving location or push permissions that a cookie warning. You have to actively opt-in to allowing an app access to your IDFA on an app-by-app basis. They can ask you to do this one time and if you say no the only way that setting will ever change is if you go to the iOS settings app and enable tracking for that app. Currently you can opt out on a system level. The change will make it opt in on an app level.

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#78

Post by b1476 »

sujinge9 wrote: post #47
b1476 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of free alternatives to Google that don’t rely on ads and respect your privacy.

What are some free products that don't rely on ads?

Gmail -> ProtonMail free tier Google Maps -> Open Street Maps (although I personally use Ordnance Survey Maps) Google Docs -> I use LibreOffice because I don’t need the cloud functionality Google Calendar -> I currently use a Synology NAS to host my own but I’m eagerly awaiting the release of Proton Calendar

As a disclaimer to this I actually pay for ProtonMail and OSMaps because they’re products I use daily and feel that they deserve the money, however they do have free tiers and there are free alternatives to most Google software. I’d strongly suggest looking into de-Googling, there’s an entire subreddit dedicated to it.

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#79

Post by bacondude3 »

gowld wrote: post #64
AnonHP wrote: post #6

(Re-posting on this thread) What a bummer! As an iOS user, I was eagerly looking forward to this feature, wanting to tell others about it and how the upgrade to iOS 14 would be worth it just to clearly expose apps that want to track users. I already have ad tracking limited in my settings (Settings->Privacy->Limit Ad Tracking), but that was something I had to explicitly turn on, and there’s no notice on which apps us…

The only reason you are so desperate for this feature is that Apple refuses to let you install a firewall on the phone you supposedly own. Otherwise you could be running pihole today.

iPhones can easily have a Pi-Hole equivalent: https://nextdns.io/

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#80

Post by mmacvicarprett »

AnonHP wrote: post #6

(Re-posting on this thread) What a bummer! As an iOS user, I was eagerly looking forward to this feature, wanting to tell others about it and how the upgrade to iOS 14 would be worth it just to clearly expose apps that want to track users. I already have ad tracking limited in my settings (Settings->Privacy->Limit Ad Tracking), but that was something I had to explicitly turn on, and there’s no notice on which apps us…

It does not expose anything, in the way it was designed every single app needs it.
Post reply on HN