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Privacy: Is That iPhone?

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Re: Privacy: Is That iPhone?

#91

Post by mariojv »

oil25 wrote: post #34

Anyone disillusioned by the thought that Apple values privacy would be well served by reading iOS, The Future Of macOS, Freedom, Security And Privacy In An Increasingly Hostile Global Environment - https://gist.github.com/iosecure/357e724811fe04167332ef54e73... There is so much more to privacy than is made apparent to the user as a few OS knobs to "limit" ad tracking.

Saved this writeup for future reference, thanks. Agreed that privacy needs more analysis than trusting a few rather opaque OS knobs.

I am a little skeptical about some of the claims in that gist, though. One example is when they claim that APNS pushes require app access to a globally unique iOS activation identifier. That seems false. According to Apple’s dev docs at least, those tokens are device-and-app specific and have to be re-requested at app start time since they can be regenerated for a variety of reasons: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ne...

Seems to have nothing to do with an activation UUID from a quick glance.

I appreciate a lot of the reference material in there, but this seeming mistake of conflating 2 different UUIDs makes me a little skeptical of some of the conclusions.

Edit for correction: I think I misread this part of the gist. They never directly say that the activation UUID is given directly to the app developer, just that Apple can track your social networking app pseudonym over APNS, "and possibly the social networking service" will be able to, as well.

This to me implied that the social networking service had the activation UUID, but the author never directly said that. If the notification has your pseudonym in it and Apple's storing that when a notification goes to APNS, it does seem like Apple would be able to tie that to your device if they're peeking inside the notification payload. The solution to this would be for the app developer to not include sensitive info in notifications or for the user to disable push notifications, but an E2E encrypted trustless notification solution provided by Apple would be much nicer.

Re: Privacy: Is That iPhone?

#92

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

toxik wrote: post #28
manderley wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they have this as the default setting if they have nothing to gain from it?

Hilariously, this tracking id is the replacement of device id. To give the user more privacy. But Mozilla has an axe to grind. Baking up the wrong tree

It's still not the correct tree, either.

Re: Privacy: Is That iPhone?

#93

Post by baddox »

gorgoiler wrote: post #5

Finding the settings mentioned in the article is the sole dark pattern I can think of in iOS — when you find them it’s like finding a secret level in Super Mario Land. They are under Settings...Privacy...Advertising https://imgur.com/a/EOvUzCS The Advertising and Analytics options are only visible below the fold, if one scrolls down the privacy page. The fold itself is disguised as the bottom of the page to put you o…

IMO the much bigger dark pattern is how insanely difficult it is to find subscriptions and cancel them. Even when the location is fresh in your head it’s difficult to find.

Re: Privacy: Is That iPhone?

#94

Post by kalleboo »

exabrial wrote: post #50

It would be really nice if we could modify our OSes (remove the stupid IDFA completely, or send garbage) This is coming to laptops and other computers soon though, sadly.

iOS already has an option to just give out zeroes as the IDFA. Mozilla wants to change the default behavior for all the users who don't realize they can already do this.

Re: Privacy: Is That iPhone?

#95

Post by kevinh »

jessaustin wrote: post #80
mobjack wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need an IDFA to track someone in the same app. You can generate your own UUID to use. The value of the IDFA comes from coordinating user behavior across apps. Targeting ads is one use case, but it is also used in conversion tracking, which is very valuable to advertisers. They can know if ads in one app resulted in people buying things in another app. Edit: fixed typo

How many users would care about this distinction you're attempting to draw between "targeting ads" and "conversion tracking"?

How many users care about either of those at all?

Re: Privacy: Is That iPhone?

#96

Post by cstuder »

baddox wrote: post #93
gorgoiler wrote: post #5

Finding the settings mentioned in the article is the sole dark pattern I can think of in iOS — when you find them it’s like finding a secret level in Super Mario Land. They are under Settings...Privacy...Advertising https://imgur.com/a/EOvUzCS The Advertising and Analytics options are only visible below the fold, if one scrolls down the privacy page. The fold itself is disguised as the bottom of the page to put you o…

IMO the much bigger dark pattern is how insanely difficult it is to find subscriptions and cancel them. Even when the location is fresh in your head it’s difficult to find.

I find that location to be easily findable, there are even two logical paths to the subscriptions page (One through Settings, one through the AppStore).

Where would you put it?

Re: Privacy: Is That iPhone?

#97

Post by topmonk »

gorgoiler wrote: post #5

Finding the settings mentioned in the article is the sole dark pattern I can think of in iOS — when you find them it’s like finding a secret level in Super Mario Land. They are under Settings...Privacy...Advertising https://imgur.com/a/EOvUzCS The Advertising and Analytics options are only visible below the fold, if one scrolls down the privacy page. The fold itself is disguised as the bottom of the page to put you o…

> Finding the settings mentioned in the article is the sole dark pattern I can think of in iOS

How about not being able to simply copy music to or from it without having its paired PC with iTunes on it? How about Apple's cat and mouse game of obfuscating their usb protocol to keep people from using Linux to copy music to and from the device? How about slowing down the OS when the device gets older to “save battery life”?

Apple makes me puke, and their brainwashed delusional followers are worse then the Jonestown cult.

Re: Privacy: Is That iPhone?

#98

Post by tempay »

topmonk wrote: post #97
gorgoiler wrote: post #5

Finding the settings mentioned in the article is the sole dark pattern I can think of in iOS — when you find them it’s like finding a secret level in Super Mario Land. They are under Settings...Privacy...Advertising https://imgur.com/a/EOvUzCS The Advertising and Analytics options are only visible below the fold, if one scrolls down the privacy page. The fold itself is disguised as the bottom of the page to put you o…

> Finding the settings mentioned in the article is the sole dark pattern I can think of in iOS How about not being able to simply copy music to or from it without having its paired PC with iTunes on it? How about Apple's cat and mouse game of obfuscating their usb protocol to keep people from using Linux to copy music to and from the device? How about slowing down the OS when the device gets older to “save battery li…

> How about slowing down the OS when the device gets older to “save battery life”?

This is false, it was to avoid situations where the battery couldn’t provide enough current and would likely cut out causing the phone to switch off. It seems the intentions were reasonable to keep older phones usable for longer and they fairly quickly rolled out a large discount on the cost of battery replacement when the public outrage started.

Re: Privacy: Is That iPhone?

#99

Post by yoz-y »

pault wrote: post #84
varenc wrote: post #2

To disable: Settings > Privacy > Advertising > Limit Ad Tracking You can also disable Location-Based Ads: Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services (at the bottom) > Location-Based Apple Ads Apple's ad tracking help doc: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205223 (Apparently they derive your gender based on your first name or the salutation on your iTunes account)

I just looked at the location tracking preferences and the default setting for Google maps is "always", as in "whenever your phone is on". O_o

The phone will periodically ask you if you want to keep this setting.

Re: Privacy: Is That iPhone?

#100

Post by baddox »

cstuder wrote: post #96
baddox wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the much bigger dark pattern is how insanely difficult it is to find subscriptions and cancel them. Even when the location is fresh in your head it’s difficult to find.

I find that location to be easily findable, there are even two logical paths to the subscriptions page (One through Settings, one through the AppStore). Where would you put it?

In iOS, the trick is that you have to tap your name at the top of the settings. If you read every entry in the list you won’t find anything that seems relevant, and indeed, you just need to know to tap the very top of the settings list. Moreover, searching in settings for “subscriptions” returns no result, despite that being the name of the subentry.
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