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If privacy is worth something to you, it’s clearly better than Google. Is it? Has everyone forgotten the Yelp tracking beacon? Good thing Apple relies on Ye

If privacy is worth something to you, it’s clearly better than Google. Is it? Has everyone forgotten the Yelp tracking beacon? Good thing Apple relies on Yelp for business info and has pretty deep Yelp integration with the mobile app.

jeromegv 7y ago
Apple have shown times and times again that they wouldn't let 3rd party do shady things into their own Maps app, that's the whole reason they got rid of Google Maps. That's a baseless accusation.
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  Apple have shown times and times again that they wouldn't let 3rd party do shady things into their own Maps app, that's the whole reason they got rid of Google Maps. That's a baseless accusation. You're right, if you click around in the Maps app (desktop or mobile) it takes you straight to the shady source (yelp.com). Edit: Also this: https://www.courthousenews.com/data-mining-privacy-suit-against-yelp-advances/ https://www.courthousenews.com/data-mining-privacy-suit-agai...
  - duskwuff 7y ago
    > You're right, if you click around in the Maps app (desktop or mobile) it takes you straight to the shady source (yelp.com). Apple Maps doesn't use Yelp as a primary data source. It's used to add extra information (like reviews and photos) to existing points of interest, but the points of interest themselves are catalogued by Apple or their data providers. If you click around in Apple Maps a bit, you'll find that not all POIs have Yelp data. > Edit: Also this: [a lawsuit about social features in the Yelp app] I'm not sure how this is relevant.
    - inferiorhuman 7y ago
      I'm not sure how this is relevant. Apple Maps steers you pretty hard towards the Yelp app if you want any business info.
- metildaa 7y ago
  Apple has taken good stances on most privacy issues, but Apple Maps is poorly run. The main failure is not having something akin to a Google Scout, whereby iOS users could submit info about businesses and streets that lack data. Apple instead hires a ton of contractors in Austin (and now India) to manually trace roads and guess business hours based on anonymized GPS traces. Apple lacks the scale of Google's army of unpaid Google Scouts (though they could easily fix this) and is wasting time on minutia rather than task their staff/contractors with sourcing & importing higher quality data regularly. One example would be importing county shapefiles, Apple could easily vault ahead of Google Maps if they diffed their map against each of the thousands of county maps in the USA, and they would be the only one regularly doing this (OSM does this occasionally, but not often). They could also scrape business data from each state and use that to produce more accurate & detailed business listings than Google, among many other low hanging fruit.
  - jdminhbg 7y ago
    > The main failure is not having something akin to a Google Scout, whereby iOS users could submit info about businesses and streets that lack data. They weren't able to do this while they were still reliant on third-party data, because the contracts required them to submit those changes to the third-party providers first and then once they were accepted, get them in downstream updates. This is one of the main reasons they invested in building out their own data; they'll be able to accept user-sourced fixes much more quickly.
  - givinguflac 7y ago
    There’s an easy way for users to submit feedback/fixes to Apple maps, I used to do it all the time. The best (?) part is they’ll notify you on your device when the issue is fixed, typically in a day or two. Nowadays the only time I’ve submitted a fix is in a really small town no one goes to.
    - inferiorhuman 7y ago
      There’s an easy way for users to submit feedback/fixes to Apple maps Which is? If I say "Hey Siri, how do I report an error with your navigation?" I get search results for how to report problems with Google Maps. And I definitely don't see any UI widgets that suggest that they're for reporting problems.
- jamessb 7y ago
  > that's the whole reason they got rid of Google Maps Is it? It was widely reported at the time (e.g., [1, 2]) that they were getting rid of Google Maps and creating Apple Maps because Google wanted to keep spoken turn-by-turn directions an Android-only feature. [1]: https://daringfireball.net/2012/09/get_the_fainting_chair https://daringfireball.net/2012/09/get_the_fainting_chair [2]: https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-jilted-google-maps-over-verbal-turn-by-turn-directions/ https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-jilted-google-maps-over-verb...
samschooler 7y ago
In DuckDuckGo's implementation at least it looks like they proxy all requests to Yelp so there is nothing Yelp gets from you in a non anon way.
- nijave 7y ago
  Unfortunately it's incredibly difficult to become fully anonymous. Yelp can infer who you are by things like your home address (a few searches to see how far away restaurants are, for instance) This Wikipedia article has a few examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_re-identification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_re-identification
  - kortilla 7y ago
    Does distance calculation even go to yelp though? That sounds like a job of the map platform.
  - tinus_hn 7y ago
    So if DuckDuckGo proxies your requests and they are mixed in with all other requests, how would Yelp combine your searches?
m-p-3 7y ago
I wish DDG had the ability to also use OSM for data/map tiles and not just for direction. IMO it would help to make it grow if more people used it and contributed business data on it.
- nerdponx 7y ago
  It would have been pretty interesting if Apple had integrated with OSM instead of building their own solution. Kind of a pie in the sky concept, but I still would have liked to see it.
  - heed 7y ago
    Apple Maps does utilize and contribute to OSM data to some degree: https://github.com/osmlab/appledata/ https://github.com/osmlab/appledata/
dangus 7y ago
You don't ever have to install Yelp to use it within Apple Maps. The app does not come on the iPhone by default. By default it opens the Yelp website (which of course nags you to get their app and/or login, but that's not unique to Yelp). I suspect that all the news articles reporting on this issue are probably greatly misunderstanding how technology works. > And all night long, there was some startling behavior by a household name: Yelp. It was receiving a message that included my IP address — once every five minutes. [1] Literally any load balancer is going to know what IP address you're coming from. Having a website logging your IP address is not cause for alarm. A good mitigator for this probelm would be to disable background activity for Yelp or any other apps you feel do not need that sort of access. The journalist also makes no attempt to explain what steps they took to attempt to change their Yelp account preferences. They did not inform us whether or not they were logged in or opted in or out of any particular preferences. That's what makes the story so unhelpful. A more useful version of that article should be informing people to make a check on all their account preferences every time they sign up for a service. Usually, marketing and telemetry settings are on by default. I most definitely don't agree with this, but it's not unique to Yelp. Perhaps you're also referring to a lawsuit in progress regarding the way in which Yelp transfers contacts? [2] In this case, the arguments center around some rather nebulous contract law, in my layman's understanding of the case. Again, your OS already protects you - if you never grant an application access to your contacts, you never have to worry about the transmission of that data. It should be smartphone 101 that allowing an application data access will allow it forever, because that's how iOS has worked since day one. Again, we need more protections in the form of laws, not just conventions, and I don't agree with the idea that data can be sent around willy nilly, but this is the reality baked in to all mobile applications. Once you give third party code access to your data in a rather explicit fashion, it's not in your control what's done with it. So this still sounds bad, perhaps, but also, an iPhone with the default install and iCloud login is much more private than Google with a Google Account login. In Google's case, Google Maps has seen everything and can correlate it to your email content, business search activity, current location, and a host of other data especially if you use their search engine or YouTube. In Apple's case, Apple Maps just opened up yelp.com within Safari when you click on a business result (unless you explicitly install the Yelp app and give it permissions). [1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/while-youre-sleeping-your-iphone-stays-busy-heres-what-is-happening-and-how-to-limit-app-tracking/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/while-youre-sleeping-y... [2] https://www.courthousenews.com/data-mining-privacy-suit-against-yelp-advances/ https://www.courthousenews.com/data-mining-privacy-suit-agai...
whycombagator 7y ago
Yelp in the US. In the UK it's TripAdvisor. And I imagine it could be others elsewhere too
zshbleaker 7y ago
It is. Apple Maps uses various POI info providers including Yelp, Foursquare, TripAdvisor and even more in global. Yelp has to track user data as their business model required, but nor Apple. The integration of Yelp app is made by Yelp, through the open system API by iOS, which is definitely not exclusive to Yelp.
- zaptheimpaler 7y ago
  Nice! Its awesome to see Apple use their market power to help their customers rather than exploit them. It doesn't happen often.
  - Mindwipe 7y ago
    Lol, using their market power to help customers such as using their signing of the OS keys to force all default mapping applications to a proprietary location service that doesn't know where things are because of their own desire for power and control.

jeromegv 7y ago

Apple have shown times and times again that they wouldn't let 3rd party do shady things into their own Maps app, that's the whole reason they got rid of Google Maps. That's a baseless accusation.

inferiorhuman 7y ago
Apple have shown times and times again that they wouldn't let 3rd party do shady things into their own Maps app, that's the whole reason they got rid of Google Maps. That's a baseless accusation. You're right, if you click around in the Maps app (desktop or mobile) it takes you straight to the shady source (yelp.com). Edit: Also this: https://www.courthousenews.com/data-mining-privacy-suit-against-yelp-advances/ https://www.courthousenews.com/data-mining-privacy-suit-agai...
- duskwuff 7y ago
  > You're right, if you click around in the Maps app (desktop or mobile) it takes you straight to the shady source (yelp.com). Apple Maps doesn't use Yelp as a primary data source. It's used to add extra information (like reviews and photos) to existing points of interest, but the points of interest themselves are catalogued by Apple or their data providers. If you click around in Apple Maps a bit, you'll find that not all POIs have Yelp data. > Edit: Also this: [a lawsuit about social features in the Yelp app] I'm not sure how this is relevant.
  - inferiorhuman 7y ago
    I'm not sure how this is relevant. Apple Maps steers you pretty hard towards the Yelp app if you want any business info.
metildaa 7y ago
Apple has taken good stances on most privacy issues, but Apple Maps is poorly run. The main failure is not having something akin to a Google Scout, whereby iOS users could submit info about businesses and streets that lack data. Apple instead hires a ton of contractors in Austin (and now India) to manually trace roads and guess business hours based on anonymized GPS traces. Apple lacks the scale of Google's army of unpaid Google Scouts (though they could easily fix this) and is wasting time on minutia rather than task their staff/contractors with sourcing & importing higher quality data regularly. One example would be importing county shapefiles, Apple could easily vault ahead of Google Maps if they diffed their map against each of the thousands of county maps in the USA, and they would be the only one regularly doing this (OSM does this occasionally, but not often). They could also scrape business data from each state and use that to produce more accurate & detailed business listings than Google, among many other low hanging fruit.
- jdminhbg 7y ago
  > The main failure is not having something akin to a Google Scout, whereby iOS users could submit info about businesses and streets that lack data. They weren't able to do this while they were still reliant on third-party data, because the contracts required them to submit those changes to the third-party providers first and then once they were accepted, get them in downstream updates. This is one of the main reasons they invested in building out their own data; they'll be able to accept user-sourced fixes much more quickly.
- givinguflac 7y ago
  There’s an easy way for users to submit feedback/fixes to Apple maps, I used to do it all the time. The best (?) part is they’ll notify you on your device when the issue is fixed, typically in a day or two. Nowadays the only time I’ve submitted a fix is in a really small town no one goes to.
  - inferiorhuman 7y ago
    There’s an easy way for users to submit feedback/fixes to Apple maps Which is? If I say "Hey Siri, how do I report an error with your navigation?" I get search results for how to report problems with Google Maps. And I definitely don't see any UI widgets that suggest that they're for reporting problems.
jamessb 7y ago
> that's the whole reason they got rid of Google Maps Is it? It was widely reported at the time (e.g., [1, 2]) that they were getting rid of Google Maps and creating Apple Maps because Google wanted to keep spoken turn-by-turn directions an Android-only feature. [1]: https://daringfireball.net/2012/09/get_the_fainting_chair https://daringfireball.net/2012/09/get_the_fainting_chair [2]: https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-jilted-google-maps-over-verbal-turn-by-turn-directions/ https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-jilted-google-maps-over-verb...

samschooler 7y ago

In DuckDuckGo's implementation at least it looks like they proxy all requests to Yelp so there is nothing Yelp gets from you in a non anon way.

nijave 7y ago
Unfortunately it's incredibly difficult to become fully anonymous. Yelp can infer who you are by things like your home address (a few searches to see how far away restaurants are, for instance) This Wikipedia article has a few examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_re-identification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_re-identification
- kortilla 7y ago
  Does distance calculation even go to yelp though? That sounds like a job of the map platform.
- tinus_hn 7y ago
  So if DuckDuckGo proxies your requests and they are mixed in with all other requests, how would Yelp combine your searches?

m-p-3 7y ago

I wish DDG had the ability to also use OSM for data/map tiles and not just for direction. IMO it would help to make it grow if more people used it and contributed business data on it.

nerdponx 7y ago
It would have been pretty interesting if Apple had integrated with OSM instead of building their own solution. Kind of a pie in the sky concept, but I still would have liked to see it.
- heed 7y ago
  Apple Maps does utilize and contribute to OSM data to some degree: https://github.com/osmlab/appledata/ https://github.com/osmlab/appledata/

dangus 7y ago

You don't ever have to install Yelp to use it within Apple Maps. The app does not come on the iPhone by default. By default it opens the Yelp website (which of course nags you to get their app and/or login, but that's not unique to Yelp). I suspect that all the news articles reporting on this issue are probably greatly misunderstanding how technology works. > And all night long, there was some startling behavior by a household name: Yelp. It was receiving a message that included my IP address — once every five minutes. [1] Literally any load balancer is going to know what IP address you're coming from. Having a website logging your IP address is not cause for alarm. A good mitigator for this probelm would be to disable background activity for Yelp or any other apps you feel do not need that sort of access. The journalist also makes no attempt to explain what steps they took to attempt to change their Yelp account preferences. They did not inform us whether or not they were logged in or opted in or out of any particular preferences. That's what makes the story so unhelpful. A more useful version of that article should be informing people to make a check on all their account preferences every time they sign up for a service. Usually, marketing and telemetry settings are on by default. I most definitely don't agree with this, but it's not unique to Yelp. Perhaps you're also referring to a lawsuit in progress regarding the way in which Yelp transfers contacts? [2] In this case, the arguments center around some rather nebulous contract law, in my layman's understanding of the case. Again, your OS already protects you - if you never grant an application access to your contacts, you never have to worry about the transmission of that data. It should be smartphone 101 that allowing an application data access will allow it forever, because that's how iOS has worked since day one. Again, we need more protections in the form of laws, not just conventions, and I don't agree with the idea that data can be sent around willy nilly, but this is the reality baked in to all mobile applications. Once you give third party code access to your data in a rather explicit fashion, it's not in your control what's done with it. So this still sounds bad, perhaps, but also, an iPhone with the default install and iCloud login is much more private than Google with a Google Account login. In Google's case, Google Maps has seen everything and can correlate it to your email content, business search activity, current location, and a host of other data especially if you use their search engine or YouTube. In Apple's case, Apple Maps just opened up yelp.com within Safari when you click on a business result (unless you explicitly install the Yelp app and give it permissions). [1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/while-youre-sleeping-your-iphone-stays-busy-heres-what-is-happening-and-how-to-limit-app-tracking/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/while-youre-sleeping-y... [2] https://www.courthousenews.com/data-mining-privacy-suit-against-yelp-advances/ https://www.courthousenews.com/data-mining-privacy-suit-agai...

whycombagator 7y ago

Yelp in the US. In the UK it's TripAdvisor. And I imagine it could be others elsewhere too

zshbleaker 7y ago

It is. Apple Maps uses various POI info providers including Yelp, Foursquare, TripAdvisor and even more in global. Yelp has to track user data as their business model required, but nor Apple. The integration of Yelp app is made by Yelp, through the open system API by iOS, which is definitely not exclusive to Yelp.

zaptheimpaler 7y ago
Nice! Its awesome to see Apple use their market power to help their customers rather than exploit them. It doesn't happen often.
- Mindwipe 7y ago
  Lol, using their market power to help customers such as using their signing of the OS keys to force all default mapping applications to a proprietary location service that doesn't know where things are because of their own desire for power and control.