Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look
1–10 of 355 posts
Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look
#2Apple should change their name to "Peeping Tim".
Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look
#3Apple should change their name to "Peeping Tim".
Did you even read the article? It clearly shows that all that's being sent to Apple is some opaque info about the dev certificate used for the app(s).
Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look
#4Apple should change their name to "Peeping Tim".
A low effort comment.
Doubly bad, because the actual post is about how Apple doesn't actually do the "tracks your every use of an app" peeping they original post that made all the fuss says they do.
Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look
#5> macOS does actually send out some opaque information about the developer certificate of those apps, and that’s quite an important difference on a privacy perspective.
Yes, and no. If you're using software that the state deems to be subversive or "dangerous", a developer certificate would make the nature of the software you are running pretty clear. They don't have to know exactly which program you're running, but just enough information to put you on a list.
> You shouldn’t probably block ocsp.apple.com with Little Snitch or in your hosts file.
I never asked them to do that in the first place, so I'll be blocking it from now on.
Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look
#6[deleted]
Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look
#7Apple should change their name to "Peeping Tim".
Did you even read the article? It clearly shows that all that's being sent to Apple is some opaque info about the dev certificate used for the app(s).
It clearly shows that Apple is getting fed the dev certificate info for each application being launched.
For developers with multiple applications, then sure, that's not going to be as clear as individually identifying the application.
But there are plenty of developers around with just one popular application. Sending the dev certificate for them is effectively the same as sending the application hash itself.
Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look
#8Can someone explain my why is this significantly less problematic than sending out app hashes? If we accept that most developers don't have many similarly popular apps, then isn't this enough to infer what apps are users running?
In the example from the article: if Mozilla's certificate is sent, then it's very likely that the app that has been opened is Firefox, as the a priori likelihood of using Firefox is way higher than eg using Thunderbird.
If the developer is Telegram LLC, then ... and so on.
Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look
#9There are two issues here. One is the privacy problem which I agree is not quite as bad as some think. The second is the stupid fact that if some server goes down you can’t launch apps. That is just awful.
Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look
#10> macOS does actually send out some opaque information about the developer certificate of those apps, and that’s quite an important difference on a privacy perspective. Yes, and no. If you're using software that the state deems to be subversive or "dangerous", a developer certificate would make the nature of the software you are running pretty clear. They don't have to know exactly which program you're running, but j…
> I never asked them to do that in the first place, so I'll be blocking it from now on.
Apple's working on making sure you can't block it. They already keep you from blocking their own traffic with Little Snitch and similar tools: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24838816