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One is a massive advertising company that makes the vast majority of it's money on advertising and has a history of invasive privacy issues. The other one AFAI

One is a massive advertising company that makes the vast majority of it's money on advertising and has a history of invasive privacy issues. The other one AFAIK doesn't sell user data, has publicly denied to help the FBI (Have other companies done that? If not then they assume complied), and has put in a large amount of effort to protect privacy (It's one of the main arguments of why IOS/OSX is so locked down). Obviously this doesn't mean apple doesn't do bad things behind the scenes, but based on the information available to us is why people trust them more with privacy then google.

kllrnohj 8y ago
> Have other companies done that? If not then they assume complied Google literally lead the charge on this with their transparency report for government data requests and won huge victories in allowing for the reporting of things like FISA requests. It's great that Apple has followed Google's lead and also publishes a transparency report, but their own report also clearly shows that they DO comply with government requests: https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html And both Google & Apple have comparable percentages of requests honored per their own reports. Regardless an "assume complied" is an illogical position to take here. Assume a company did work that they didn't have to for one-off requests? That's a safe thing to assume they didn't do. Assume they did nothing, because that's way easier, cheaper, and simpler for them. Which means assume they didn't help anyone, including the FBI. > large amount of effort to protect privacy (It's one of the main arguments of why IOS/OSX is so locked down). No. iOS / OSX are locked down to prevent competition. There's no privacy benefit in keeping the user from poking at their own device. Apple did a lot of work specifically to enable apps to do things like track a user's location in the background. Things that didn't used to be possible, but which Apple put in work to do. The only significant thing they did here on iOS was make it a runtime permission, which other platforms have similarly done. OSX continues to have no real restrictions or enforcement for apps, except to try and prevent you from installing them outside of the app store. They put more effort into bragging about their privacy than they did in actually improving privacy. Advertising turns out to be extremely effective, as Apple frequently proves.
Spooky23 8y ago
Apple's position is more nuanced than that. Apple is saying "we do not want to write code to compromise device security", which is different than "not helping the FBI". They are obliged to and do provide access to things like iOS backups, etc. These companies are neither good nor evil. End of the day, if you care about privacy, cleartext cannot be in the custody of a third party.

kllrnohj 8y ago

> Have other companies done that? If not then they assume complied Google literally lead the charge on this with their transparency report for government data requests and won huge victories in allowing for the reporting of things like FISA requests. It's great that Apple has followed Google's lead and also publishes a transparency report, but their own report also clearly shows that they DO comply with government requests: https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html And both Google & Apple have comparable percentages of requests honored per their own reports. Regardless an "assume complied" is an illogical position to take here. Assume a company did work that they didn't have to for one-off requests? That's a safe thing to assume they didn't do. Assume they did nothing, because that's way easier, cheaper, and simpler for them. Which means assume they didn't help anyone, including the FBI. > large amount of effort to protect privacy (It's one of the main arguments of why IOS/OSX is so locked down). No. iOS / OSX are locked down to prevent competition. There's no privacy benefit in keeping the user from poking at their own device. Apple did a lot of work specifically to enable apps to do things like track a user's location in the background. Things that didn't used to be possible, but which Apple put in work to do. The only significant thing they did here on iOS was make it a runtime permission, which other platforms have similarly done. OSX continues to have no real restrictions or enforcement for apps, except to try and prevent you from installing them outside of the app store. They put more effort into bragging about their privacy than they did in actually improving privacy. Advertising turns out to be extremely effective, as Apple frequently proves.

Spooky23 8y ago

Apple's position is more nuanced than that. Apple is saying "we do not want to write code to compromise device security", which is different than "not helping the FBI". They are obliged to and do provide access to things like iOS backups, etc. These companies are neither good nor evil. End of the day, if you care about privacy, cleartext cannot be in the custody of a third party.