6 ms·

Just out of curiosity, how would you recommend that they do this without affecting the experience for the majority of people using their devices that, frankly,

Just out of curiosity, how would you recommend that they do this without affecting the experience for the majority of people using their devices that, frankly, don't care? How else should we be discovering this as opposed to the icon? I feel like a prompt or something to allow this for something that happens so frequently is just going to get UAC'd.

riazrizvi 7y ago
The majority of people aren’t going to ask all their apps and services to stop tracking them. This is for the minority of users who might be being tracked by an abusive ex, or an employee at a big company who wants temporary privacy to do a job interview at another company without it getting flagged by HR. If the data is being collected, we have seen in the press that the odds are high that it is being monetized/sold.
- dkonofalski 7y ago
  This is talking about wideband location scanning, not location services for an app. Apple's location services already do allow you to turn them off on a per-app basis.
  - metaphor 7y ago
    Delusional. Who cares if your Apple device constrains location information when, stochastically speaking, other devices within your proximity won't. This has been meta for a long time: WiFi, Bluetooth, cell towers, TPMS, just to name a few common mappings. UWB is yet another PHY contributing to the datapool.
    - dkonofalski 7y ago
      With Apple devices, at least, the location of said devices is never reported to anyone other than the device owner. Apple uses anonymous Mac addresses that are mapped on device to do their triangulation and they don't identify to other devices. Even if another devices were keeping a list of every device that attempted to connect to it, it would never get the same value twice nor would it get an accurate address so it would be functionally useless to anyone trying to collect it using that info.
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
Security researchers should be able to gain fully privileged access to their devices, via a process that is well-hidden from the average user. I hope those special iPhones for security researchers come out soon.
- wil421 7y ago
  Did you just say secret backdoor or secret root account for research purposes?
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    Sorry, that's definitely not what I meant! I would like there to be a process similar to disabling System Integrity Protection on macOS, which requires booting into recovery mode. From there you can gain kernel access and inspect whatever processes you want. It won't happen, and I consider it a major problem with iOS.
    - wil421 7y ago
      I’d imagine maybe a special mode in Xcode where you could connect via USB and get extra debugging.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        Then Cellebrite would spoof that.
    - earthboundkid 7y ago
      I also feel like iOS should have such a mode, but I also imagine that if it existed there would be a million pages saying, "Hey kids, want to install this cracked game? It's easy, first get your dad's iPhone and turn off system integrity protection…" It already happens with enterprise certs.
      - TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago

riazrizvi 7y ago

The majority of people aren’t going to ask all their apps and services to stop tracking them. This is for the minority of users who might be being tracked by an abusive ex, or an employee at a big company who wants temporary privacy to do a job interview at another company without it getting flagged by HR. If the data is being collected, we have seen in the press that the odds are high that it is being monetized/sold.

dkonofalski 7y ago
This is talking about wideband location scanning, not location services for an app. Apple's location services already do allow you to turn them off on a per-app basis.
- metaphor 7y ago
  Delusional. Who cares if your Apple device constrains location information when, stochastically speaking, other devices within your proximity won't. This has been meta for a long time: WiFi, Bluetooth, cell towers, TPMS, just to name a few common mappings. UWB is yet another PHY contributing to the datapool.
  - dkonofalski 7y ago
    With Apple devices, at least, the location of said devices is never reported to anyone other than the device owner. Apple uses anonymous Mac addresses that are mapped on device to do their triangulation and they don't identify to other devices. Even if another devices were keeping a list of every device that attempted to connect to it, it would never get the same value twice nor would it get an accurate address so it would be functionally useless to anyone trying to collect it using that info.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

Security researchers should be able to gain fully privileged access to their devices, via a process that is well-hidden from the average user. I hope those special iPhones for security researchers come out soon.

wil421 7y ago
Did you just say secret backdoor or secret root account for research purposes?
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  Sorry, that's definitely not what I meant! I would like there to be a process similar to disabling System Integrity Protection on macOS, which requires booting into recovery mode. From there you can gain kernel access and inspect whatever processes you want. It won't happen, and I consider it a major problem with iOS.
  - wil421 7y ago
    I’d imagine maybe a special mode in Xcode where you could connect via USB and get extra debugging.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Then Cellebrite would spoof that.
  - earthboundkid 7y ago
    I also feel like iOS should have such a mode, but I also imagine that if it existed there would be a million pages saying, "Hey kids, want to install this cracked game? It's easy, first get your dad's iPhone and turn off system integrity protection…" It already happens with enterprise certs.
    - TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago