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I know you're not disagreeing with me, but the issue you raise only distracts and lends ammo to the defenders of these prolific tracking mechanisms. It's the Ni

by nly 8y ago

I know you're not disagreeing with me, but the issue you raise only distracts and lends ammo to the defenders of these prolific tracking mechanisms. It's the Nirvana fallacy. I'm sure there's a Google rep somewhere that will tell you that their "advertising ID" is better than the status quo on the web because the user can rotate it and, because it's reliable and easy for app devs to use, they are discouraged from being more nefarious and sneaky in tracking users. This is all a bloody distraction from the point: it should not be an acceptable norm for this tracking to happen and it should be as hard as possible to pull off without informed user consent. The degree to which platforms are defensive against it is a different issue to whether or not they actively encourage it by design... which shouldn't even be open to debate.

VRay 8y ago
That's a good point. Depending on permissions, it would be hard to keep some malicious apps from stealing your nude photos too, but we don't take it for granted that "Of course the file explorer app looks for and surreptitiously uploads nudes! How else are they supposed to make money?" Our world is starting to looka lot like that of the Space Merchants..
blfr 8y ago
I didn't disagree with your original comment by I do disagree with the follow-up. It's neither a distraction, nor a fallacy. First, our computing devices do not protect our privacy and security sufficiently. It's a general problem, not limited or even particularly affecting Android. And you deal with general problems differently than with incidental ones. You don't tell people in an epidemic to "just go see a doctor." Second, I do more sensitive computing in the browser on my computer than I do on my phone. It's the bigger issue. Finally, the way we dealt with Internet worms and viruses was not by strongly stating how unacceptable infecting other people's computers is. We patched our software, kept it up to date, and even completely changed its design. Later shamed Microsoft into doing the same.
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  I upvoted you because while I disagree that browsers are the bigger issue (many people use mobile devices for important things, and the less tech literate, the higher the chance they do all their online stuff with them, I'll just claim that), you didn't bring browsers up, you just responded to that with a fair point... and the comment you responded to didn't mention browers to distract either, so it seems silly to me that there's now this hot potato of who distracted from what in play. Good points all around, that's what I'm seeing.
lern_too_spel 8y ago
The Android advertising ID is exactly the same as the iOS IDFA. Both companies enforce policies on using those identifiers for apps published on their app stores. https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6048248?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ... https://www.businessinsider.com/ifa-apples-iphone-tracking-in-ios-6-2012-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/ifa-apples-iphone-tracking-i...
- scarface74 8y ago
  You're responsible for ensuring your apps are in compliance with policies regarding its usage, as well as all Play policies. And the developer will pinky promise that they won’t abuse it....
  - Buge 8y ago
    That sounds similar to what Apple does according to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18790869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18790869
  - lern_too_spel 8y ago
    As the comment you're replying to pointed out, it's exactly the same as on iOS. In both cases, rogue publishers get banned.
Despegar 8y ago
Anybody suggesting technical solutions to this problem is completely misunderstanding the scale of it. The only acceptable answer is a legal/regulatory solution.
- danShumway 8y ago
  So honest question, how does a legal/regulatory solution protect users against illegal bad actors, foreign actors, or malicious projects and frameworks that are either Open Source or that aren't backed by a company? I hear this argument brought up a lot, that the only thing that can fix this is regulations. I've always come at this from the opposite direction -- regulatory solutions are nice, and I'm not against them, but they're less useful than technological solutions because my gut instinct is regulations only cover a) law-abiding entities (and usually only corporations at that), who are b) competent enough not to mess up compliance in the first place. The perspective I lean on by default is that even if you have good regulations in place, the problem isn't really solved until there's a widespread technical solution. So for example, it might be nice to have a law banning MITM attacks, but HTTPS is the superior solution that we really want. When we pass laws criminalizing stuff like hacking or tracking children, my perspective is we're just trying to buy time and localize the damage to the slightly less frequented parts of the Android app store while we fix the crappy permissions models and sandboxing on our core platforms. Is there a secondary aspect to the regulatory solutions that I'm missing? Something that would go much, much farther and be much stricter than laws like GDPR? I don't mean it as an argument, I'd just be curious to hear someone with the regulation>infrastructure perspective elaborate more on what they're thinking about when they say that, because it's a perspective I don't have much experience with.

by nly 8y ago

VRay 8y ago

That's a good point. Depending on permissions, it would be hard to keep some malicious apps from stealing your nude photos too, but we don't take it for granted that "Of course the file explorer app looks for and surreptitiously uploads nudes! How else are they supposed to make money?" Our world is starting to looka lot like that of the Space Merchants..

blfr 8y ago

I didn't disagree with your original comment by I do disagree with the follow-up. It's neither a distraction, nor a fallacy. First, our computing devices do not protect our privacy and security sufficiently. It's a general problem, not limited or even particularly affecting Android. And you deal with general problems differently than with incidental ones. You don't tell people in an epidemic to "just go see a doctor." Second, I do more sensitive computing in the browser on my computer than I do on my phone. It's the bigger issue. Finally, the way we dealt with Internet worms and viruses was not by strongly stating how unacceptable infecting other people's computers is. We patched our software, kept it up to date, and even completely changed its design. Later shamed Microsoft into doing the same.

PavlovsCat 8y ago
I upvoted you because while I disagree that browsers are the bigger issue (many people use mobile devices for important things, and the less tech literate, the higher the chance they do all their online stuff with them, I'll just claim that), you didn't bring browsers up, you just responded to that with a fair point... and the comment you responded to didn't mention browers to distract either, so it seems silly to me that there's now this hot potato of who distracted from what in play. Good points all around, that's what I'm seeing.

lern_too_spel 8y ago

The Android advertising ID is exactly the same as the iOS IDFA. Both companies enforce policies on using those identifiers for apps published on their app stores. https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6048248?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ... https://www.businessinsider.com/ifa-apples-iphone-tracking-in-ios-6-2012-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/ifa-apples-iphone-tracking-i...

scarface74 8y ago
You're responsible for ensuring your apps are in compliance with policies regarding its usage, as well as all Play policies. And the developer will pinky promise that they won’t abuse it....
- Buge 8y ago
  That sounds similar to what Apple does according to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18790869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18790869
- lern_too_spel 8y ago
  As the comment you're replying to pointed out, it's exactly the same as on iOS. In both cases, rogue publishers get banned.

Despegar 8y ago

Anybody suggesting technical solutions to this problem is completely misunderstanding the scale of it. The only acceptable answer is a legal/regulatory solution.

danShumway 8y ago
So honest question, how does a legal/regulatory solution protect users against illegal bad actors, foreign actors, or malicious projects and frameworks that are either Open Source or that aren't backed by a company? I hear this argument brought up a lot, that the only thing that can fix this is regulations. I've always come at this from the opposite direction -- regulatory solutions are nice, and I'm not against them, but they're less useful than technological solutions because my gut instinct is regulations only cover a) law-abiding entities (and usually only corporations at that), who are b) competent enough not to mess up compliance in the first place. The perspective I lean on by default is that even if you have good regulations in place, the problem isn't really solved until there's a widespread technical solution. So for example, it might be nice to have a law banning MITM attacks, but HTTPS is the superior solution that we really want. When we pass laws criminalizing stuff like hacking or tracking children, my perspective is we're just trying to buy time and localize the damage to the slightly less frequented parts of the Android app store while we fix the crappy permissions models and sandboxing on our core platforms. Is there a secondary aspect to the regulatory solutions that I'm missing? Something that would go much, much farther and be much stricter than laws like GDPR? I don't mean it as an argument, I'd just be curious to hear someone with the regulation>infrastructure perspective elaborate more on what they're thinking about when they say that, because it's a perspective I don't have much experience with.