8 ms·

Do you think iPhone users care if it’s harder for Facebook and the like to catch fraud?

by wil421 6y ago

Cipater 6y ago
I'll flip this one back to you in the same spirit. Do you think iPhone users care that Apple is implementing anti-tracking?
- CubsFan1060 6y ago
  I do, but mostly as part of the overall message. Folks like my parents will comment about how creepy targeted ads are. When I showed them how to turn it off currently, they were very happy. I don't think they know each setting that is available, but they without doubt have the impression that "Apple is better with privacy"
- Twisell 6y ago
  Yes we do care Maybe not all of us, but for me it's an important and differentiating feature. What we don't really care about is hypothetical thinking about wether we care from people that apparently don't care.
- sequoia 6y ago
  They’ll care if Apple tells them to care. Sent from my iPhone
- wil421 6y ago
  Absolutely and it’s a huge reason I will never use Android. I don’t want an advertising company making my phone.
- leadingthenet 6y ago
  Yes, it's like half the reason I own Apple devices.
- coldpie 6y ago
  I've used Android for the past decade, but I'm very strongly considering switching to iPhone because of Apple's pro-privacy moves in iOS over the past year (and also because they are the only manufacturer to make a phone that fits the human hand).
- rahoulb 6y ago
  The number of times I've had non-tech people complain about how their phone is listening to them and then showing them adverts about stuff they've been talking about has gone through the roof in the last 18 months (generally as soon as I mention that I work with computers). It's becoming a real concern for normal people - they don't understand what it is or how it works but they really don't like it.
  - giancarlostoro 6y ago
    I've seen articles that defend this by stating Facebook buys debit card data, but then I was shown an ad about something extremely niche, like way out there... Aircraft pavement, specifically for aircraft hangars. One single comment was mentioned to me 8 hours prior... Involving aircraft hangar gravel or something, I never googled it, I never have even thought about such a product in my entire life. Yet there was the ad from a completely once in a lifetime conversation I had with someone. It's too damn niche to be coincidence. I was in shock when I saw it on Instagram on my brand new iPhone (switched from Android) which has all mic permissions off by default. So some 'smart' device in their home must of heard us. Some advertiser somewhere must have my voice profile hooked up to my Instagram account by now and they somehow share it in an "unidentified" way. Edit: We need further research into these 'impossible' ads to see if devices from different software OS' and companies are listening and grabbing detail and showing ads based on what are supposed to be 100% private conversations.
    - filoleg 6y ago
      > Involving aircraft hangar gravel or something, I never googled it, I never have even thought about such a product in my entire life. Yet there was the ad from a completely once in a lifetime conversation I had with someone. It's too damn niche to be coincidence. You might have not googled it yourself, but I bet the person you had that conversation with did. If the conversation took place in real life, then that person's device was in physical proximity to yours (i.e., location data tracking; for example, if you enter a room full of people who googled tons of stuff about a certain subject, expect to see ads around that subject popping up on your device in the near future, even if you didn't google anything about that subject before and aren't planning to do so in the future). You also probably exchanged contacts and called (or texted) each other about other stuff in general (probable, but not necessary for the scenario I am describing). And if the conversation took place online, then it is even easier. Here you go, you just created a social link between yourself and the person who googled stuff about aircraft hangar gravel. In which case, it isn't surprising at all that you got that ad. So in a sense, you are correct, it wasn't a coincidence. But I heavily doubt it has anything to do with smart devices listening and analyzing to what you said at all. It is much more trivial and less creepy to simply utilize your social links to figure out what kind of ads to display to you than listen in and try to analyze your conversations. More reliable too.
- jasonlotito 6y ago
  Consider that up until they implemented it, they allowed it, and people still bought phones. I don’t think people care. I think people will be happy, but I don’t think it matters one way or another for actual purchases.
- dtech 6y ago
  Strictly more than they care about Facebook and Google's anti-click fraud problems.
bartread 6y ago
That's not what the GP is saying. They're saying that only Facebook and the like have the resources to catch fraud, and smaller players won't. Yes, it's harder, but that hardness is almost an irrelevance to Facebook and other FAANG-alikes, whereas it could be much more of a problem for smaller businesses who will struggle to bear the costs both of fraud, and to develop anti-fraud solutions (or pay for anti-fraud services). Maybe that opens up some opportunities as well, but that's not necessarily particularly appetising for businesses that aren't focussed around those areas of opportunity.
- dkdk8283 6y ago
  Market will catch up. I used Apache beam and we got really creative. As with all things it’s an arms race.
  - sammm 6y ago
    Did not expect to see Apache Beam mentioned as part of this conversation. Mind me asking what you mean?
    - dkdk8283 6y ago
      Apache beam is the underlying engine we use for fraud detection. Based on proprietary heuristics we can provide the application with a confidence score the user is legit. Its up to the sec/product teams to determine when specific actions need additional verification like one time token via email or captcha. Just two examples.
- wil421 6y ago
  Can you explain how Apple’s anti tracking measures are going to hurt small business and make fraud easier?
  - jefftk 6y ago
    Most of the time, privacy and fraud both benefit from the same changes. To prevent tracking online, you want your device to look just like everybody else's devices. To prevent fraud, you want devices to look different so you can tell when a device does not represent a real user. At the extreme, imagine if every person has a unique identifier that was automatically sent whenever they used any device: preventing ad fraud would be really easy, and you would have essentially zero privacy. At the other extreme, imagine if every device looked exactly the same, with no user agent, no IP, no cookies, no way to tell my traffic from yours. In that situation, people would have pretty strong privacy, but if you had headless browsers loading the ads on your site no one would be able to tell that those views were not from real users. As the GGP says, removing IDFA shifts the balance toward both privacy and fraud. See https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-supports-privacy-pass/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-supports-privacy-pass... and https://web.dev/trust-tokens/ https://web.dev/trust-tokens/ for attempts to separate these. (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself.)
thomasahle 6y ago
If there's suddently a lot more fraud and scams on the services they use, they'll probably be annoyed. Though they probably won't blame Apple if that's your point. It's still a worse user experience.

Do you think iPhone users care if it’s harder for Facebook and the like to catch fraud?

by wil421 6y ago

Do you think iPhone users care if it’s harder for Facebook and the like to catch fraud?

I'll flip this one back to you in the same spirit. Do you think iPhone users care that Apple is implementing anti-tracking?

CubsFan1060 6y ago
I do, but mostly as part of the overall message. Folks like my parents will comment about how creepy targeted ads are. When I showed them how to turn it off currently, they were very happy. I don't think they know each setting that is available, but they without doubt have the impression that "Apple is better with privacy"
Twisell 6y ago
Yes we do care Maybe not all of us, but for me it's an important and differentiating feature. What we don't really care about is hypothetical thinking about wether we care from people that apparently don't care.
sequoia 6y ago
They’ll care if Apple tells them to care. Sent from my iPhone
wil421 6y ago
Absolutely and it’s a huge reason I will never use Android. I don’t want an advertising company making my phone.
leadingthenet 6y ago
Yes, it's like half the reason I own Apple devices.
coldpie 6y ago
I've used Android for the past decade, but I'm very strongly considering switching to iPhone because of Apple's pro-privacy moves in iOS over the past year (and also because they are the only manufacturer to make a phone that fits the human hand).
rahoulb 6y ago
The number of times I've had non-tech people complain about how their phone is listening to them and then showing them adverts about stuff they've been talking about has gone through the roof in the last 18 months (generally as soon as I mention that I work with computers). It's becoming a real concern for normal people - they don't understand what it is or how it works but they really don't like it.
- giancarlostoro 6y ago
  I've seen articles that defend this by stating Facebook buys debit card data, but then I was shown an ad about something extremely niche, like way out there... Aircraft pavement, specifically for aircraft hangars. One single comment was mentioned to me 8 hours prior... Involving aircraft hangar gravel or something, I never googled it, I never have even thought about such a product in my entire life. Yet there was the ad from a completely once in a lifetime conversation I had with someone. It's too damn niche to be coincidence. I was in shock when I saw it on Instagram on my brand new iPhone (switched from Android) which has all mic permissions off by default. So some 'smart' device in their home must of heard us. Some advertiser somewhere must have my voice profile hooked up to my Instagram account by now and they somehow share it in an "unidentified" way. Edit: We need further research into these 'impossible' ads to see if devices from different software OS' and companies are listening and grabbing detail and showing ads based on what are supposed to be 100% private conversations.
  - filoleg 6y ago
    > Involving aircraft hangar gravel or something, I never googled it, I never have even thought about such a product in my entire life. Yet there was the ad from a completely once in a lifetime conversation I had with someone. It's too damn niche to be coincidence. You might have not googled it yourself, but I bet the person you had that conversation with did. If the conversation took place in real life, then that person's device was in physical proximity to yours (i.e., location data tracking; for example, if you enter a room full of people who googled tons of stuff about a certain subject, expect to see ads around that subject popping up on your device in the near future, even if you didn't google anything about that subject before and aren't planning to do so in the future). You also probably exchanged contacts and called (or texted) each other about other stuff in general (probable, but not necessary for the scenario I am describing). And if the conversation took place online, then it is even easier. Here you go, you just created a social link between yourself and the person who googled stuff about aircraft hangar gravel. In which case, it isn't surprising at all that you got that ad. So in a sense, you are correct, it wasn't a coincidence. But I heavily doubt it has anything to do with smart devices listening and analyzing to what you said at all. It is much more trivial and less creepy to simply utilize your social links to figure out what kind of ads to display to you than listen in and try to analyze your conversations. More reliable too.
jasonlotito 6y ago
Consider that up until they implemented it, they allowed it, and people still bought phones. I don’t think people care. I think people will be happy, but I don’t think it matters one way or another for actual purchases.
dtech 6y ago
Strictly more than they care about Facebook and Google's anti-click fraud problems.

bartread 6y ago

That's not what the GP is saying. They're saying that only Facebook and the like have the resources to catch fraud, and smaller players won't. Yes, it's harder, but that hardness is almost an irrelevance to Facebook and other FAANG-alikes, whereas it could be much more of a problem for smaller businesses who will struggle to bear the costs both of fraud, and to develop anti-fraud solutions (or pay for anti-fraud services). Maybe that opens up some opportunities as well, but that's not necessarily particularly appetising for businesses that aren't focussed around those areas of opportunity.

dkdk8283 6y ago
Market will catch up. I used Apache beam and we got really creative. As with all things it’s an arms race.
- sammm 6y ago
  Did not expect to see Apache Beam mentioned as part of this conversation. Mind me asking what you mean?
  - dkdk8283 6y ago
    Apache beam is the underlying engine we use for fraud detection. Based on proprietary heuristics we can provide the application with a confidence score the user is legit. Its up to the sec/product teams to determine when specific actions need additional verification like one time token via email or captcha. Just two examples.
wil421 6y ago
Can you explain how Apple’s anti tracking measures are going to hurt small business and make fraud easier?
- jefftk 6y ago
  Most of the time, privacy and fraud both benefit from the same changes. To prevent tracking online, you want your device to look just like everybody else's devices. To prevent fraud, you want devices to look different so you can tell when a device does not represent a real user. At the extreme, imagine if every person has a unique identifier that was automatically sent whenever they used any device: preventing ad fraud would be really easy, and you would have essentially zero privacy. At the other extreme, imagine if every device looked exactly the same, with no user agent, no IP, no cookies, no way to tell my traffic from yours. In that situation, people would have pretty strong privacy, but if you had headless browsers loading the ads on your site no one would be able to tell that those views were not from real users. As the GGP says, removing IDFA shifts the balance toward both privacy and fraud. See https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-supports-privacy-pass/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-supports-privacy-pass... and https://web.dev/trust-tokens/ https://web.dev/trust-tokens/ for attempts to separate these. (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself.)

thomasahle 6y ago

If there's suddently a lot more fraud and scams on the services they use, they'll probably be annoyed. Though they probably won't blame Apple if that's your point. It's still a worse user experience.