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> Why did Apple do this, though? If you recall, Apple's stance on privacy is quite recent. The tech world has a short memory, but I remember Apple being caught

by jxdxbx 7y ago

> Why did Apple do this, though? If you recall, Apple's stance on privacy is quite recent. The tech world has a short memory, but I remember Apple being caught red-handed slurping data from user's iPhones not so long ago. Also, unless things have changed (honestly, I haven't followed), Apple tracks users through their native apps, because you're pretty much obligated to go through Apple's SDKs for many things, and they require a tracking ID, which brings revenue to Apple. This is incredibly misleading. Apple has been mostly criticized for allowing apps to collect excessive user data--for example, apps could access contacts at first without permission. It has been slowly shutting down these methods, as the realization has sunk in the the more open environment of Macs and PCs is just not appropriate for mobile phones. For example, apps in iOS 13 cannot access bluetooth or Wifi information by default, since it was being used to infer location. Apple does of course collect some user data, e.g. for Siri or app analytics. But it's all painstakingly disclosed and its practices around differential privacy, deletion, and so on are quite good. The tracking ID was Apple throwing a bone to ad industry and app makers, when it shut down far more precise ways of tracking users.

Yoric 7y ago
> This is incredibly misleading. Apple has been mostly criticized for allowing apps to collect excessive user data--for example, apps could access contacts at first without permission. It has been slowly shutting down these methods, as the realization has sunk in the the more open environment of Macs and PCs is just not appropriate for mobile phones. For example, apps in iOS 13 cannot access bluetooth or Wifi information by default, since it was being used to infer location. Yep, the tech world has a short memory :) I distinctly remember Apple caught red-handed slurping GPS data from their users. > The tracking ID was Apple throwing a bone to ad industry and app makers, when it shut down far more precise ways of tracking users. Unless I'm mistaken, it's still much more precise than any form of web tracking.
- jeromegv 7y ago
  You keep repeating that "Apple was caught red-handed" but what exactly are you referring to? What are your sources on that?
  - Yoric 7y ago
    I'm referring to this: https://www.wired.com/2011/04/apple-iphone-tracking/ https://www.wired.com/2011/04/apple-iphone-tracking/
    - vlovich123 7y ago
      Which is literally when they began to take privacy very seriously. Keep in mind that's 8 years ago & the first iPhone was released 12 years ago. I wouldn't characterize that as "recent".
      - Yoric 7y ago
        Well, people still distrust Microsoft for stuff they did during the 90s :) But yeah, I'll grant you that it's not recent.
    - sambe 7y ago
      You say “caught red handed” and other accusatory statements. The article says they had announced how (encrypted, anonymised) and why (to provide more accurate location information to users) before it was “discovered”. It doesn’t really appear to be very nefarious, nor an advertising issue. Maybe an unintentional or neglectful privacy issue at worst, in the case of an already-stolen phone.
AdamJacobMuller 7y ago
> the more open environment of Macs and PCs is just not appropriate for mobile phones This is changing too. The last major MacOS upgrade added iOS-style permissions for some things (contacts access comes to mind) and the latest version of MacOS (Catalina) VASTLY expands that. We're not just talking about apps from the Mac App store either which are sandboxed. Fire up terminal and you can't access the underlying SQLite database powering contacts anymore. sudo to root and you still can't! MacOS is gradually adopting a more iOS-style permission model in an incredible way. One which does not even remotely phase or inhibit me as an extreme shell power-user. It's a quite impressive transformation they're undertaking here.

by jxdxbx 7y ago

Yoric 7y ago

> This is incredibly misleading. Apple has been mostly criticized for allowing apps to collect excessive user data--for example, apps could access contacts at first without permission. It has been slowly shutting down these methods, as the realization has sunk in the the more open environment of Macs and PCs is just not appropriate for mobile phones. For example, apps in iOS 13 cannot access bluetooth or Wifi information by default, since it was being used to infer location. Yep, the tech world has a short memory :) I distinctly remember Apple caught red-handed slurping GPS data from their users. > The tracking ID was Apple throwing a bone to ad industry and app makers, when it shut down far more precise ways of tracking users. Unless I'm mistaken, it's still much more precise than any form of web tracking.

jeromegv 7y ago
You keep repeating that "Apple was caught red-handed" but what exactly are you referring to? What are your sources on that?
- Yoric 7y ago
  I'm referring to this: https://www.wired.com/2011/04/apple-iphone-tracking/ https://www.wired.com/2011/04/apple-iphone-tracking/
  - vlovich123 7y ago
    Which is literally when they began to take privacy very seriously. Keep in mind that's 8 years ago & the first iPhone was released 12 years ago. I wouldn't characterize that as "recent".
    - Yoric 7y ago
      Well, people still distrust Microsoft for stuff they did during the 90s :) But yeah, I'll grant you that it's not recent.
  - sambe 7y ago
    You say “caught red handed” and other accusatory statements. The article says they had announced how (encrypted, anonymised) and why (to provide more accurate location information to users) before it was “discovered”. It doesn’t really appear to be very nefarious, nor an advertising issue. Maybe an unintentional or neglectful privacy issue at worst, in the case of an already-stolen phone.

AdamJacobMuller 7y ago

> the more open environment of Macs and PCs is just not appropriate for mobile phones This is changing too. The last major MacOS upgrade added iOS-style permissions for some things (contacts access comes to mind) and the latest version of MacOS (Catalina) VASTLY expands that. We're not just talking about apps from the Mac App store either which are sandboxed. Fire up terminal and you can't access the underlying SQLite database powering contacts anymore. sudo to root and you still can't! MacOS is gradually adopting a more iOS-style permission model in an incredible way. One which does not even remotely phase or inhibit me as an extreme shell power-user. It's a quite impressive transformation they're undertaking here.