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I have no issue with making Facebook ask for for permission for users, that is ok. But my bigger problem is the hidden intentions behind Apple. Why aren't Appl

I have no issue with making Facebook ask for for permission for users, that is ok. But my bigger problem is the hidden intentions behind Apple. Why aren't Apple's apps themselves also having to ask for permission? I personally do not trust Apple one bit, just as I do not trust Facebook. So why is it so much harder to disable Apple's tracking, compared to Facebook's? Something like this could have grounds for anti-competitive behaviour.

benguild 6y ago
Only apps that do this sort of tracking have to ask. Otherwise there is no need. Does that make sense?
- zimmen 6y ago
  We don’t know whether Apple’s apps will ask yet do we? Not until the next iOS update. And when an app doesn’t ask, does that just mean there is no tracking going on or is it some nefarious scheme to achieve who knows what? The nefarious option will probably become most popular on the interwebs, obviously. I can already see the HN posts: “Pages caught loading an asset from apple.com, violating their own tracking policy! Is Apple doomed?”
  - mqrs 6y ago
    Check out your iPhone’s Settings > Privacy and scroll to the very bottom. You’ll see “Analytics & Improvements” and “Apple Advertising”, which both contain toggles and details about the data that has been gathered so far. There was also an iOS update in the past where the onboarding flow asked me to grant these permissions, though I vaguely remember seeing it on every major iOS version update. Now, that’s not to say that the iPhone setting guarantees that Apple is not up to something sketchy. We can’t tell what’s going on under the hood or in their servers, but if we really wanted to be extremists about privacy, then we have to resort to apps that we’ve built and self-hosted ourselves.
- wayneftw 6y ago
  So who investigates whether Apple’s apps do this sort of tracking or not?
  - herodotus 6y ago
    Story removed as not useful
    - justapassenger 6y ago
      Not stealing user’s private PDF file during crash is very low bar for privacy. I agree that Apple cares about this stuff, but your story doesn’t really show it.
    - wayneftw 6y ago
      > Well, I worked at Apple for about NN years. ... If Apple was claiming it cared about privacy, but was secretly doing the opposite, I think this fact would not remain secret. > I will give one more concrete example: the crash reporter system would send me a detailed stack trace, but NOT the original document. I was told explicitly that this was done for reasons of privacy ... I had no idea who the user was or what was in the document. So you’ve had access to everything at Apple in your long career there, investigated it deeply the whole time and you’ve found nothing out of sorts. Got it. This jives with what I’ve read about Apple’s internal culture - that there’s no compartmentalization at all and employees can roam freely around the halls collecting whatever information they want from any department. I feel good now that you’ve investigated your own company and found no issues! Police unions should look into using this tactic of self-investigation. It seems quite effective! (I hope I protected your privacy by removing the irrelevant parts of your comment. Sorry I had to paste them in there but you deleted them and then my response made no sense. Also, sorry to have to use all of that sarcasm but you could’ve just answered the question. It’s Apple. Apple investigates if Apple apps for doing any sort of improper data collection.)
      - herodotus 6y ago
        OK, I get the point, which is why I removed the story. Do you mind deleting what I wrote from your comment?
darklion 6y ago
> Why aren't Apple's apps themselves also having to ask for permission? If you look at the list of example reasons [1] that would require an app to ask for tracking permission, they are (broadly) in two buckets: correlating and/or consuming user data from multiple sources, and sharing data with a data broker for advertising purposes. Apple does not share data outside of itself, and their apps do not display ads. -- [1] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/user-privacy-and-data-use/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/user-privacy-and-data-...
- 1f60c 6y ago
  > their apps do not display ads Except for the App Store and Apple News, AFAIK.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Apple News doesn’t display Ads except the upsell for Apple news+. They don’t sell advertising on Apple News. The App Store does display ads, but those are based on advertisers bidding for keywords in the search terms.
- ViViDboarder 6y ago
  At least not 3rd party ads. The App Store has ads for apps plus non-stop Arcade+ advertising. The News app is full of ads for News+ and loads of restricted links as well. This is, however, very different, as you point out.
  - random5634 6y ago
    These do not rely on tracking or personalization - which is very obvious to me (I don't play games - and they constantly have game promotions etc). Google gets this much better - with a ton of SAAS / biz focused apps. So I imagine google is tracking me somehow (I use google search / chrome etc) and apple does not seem to be doing that good a job.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  To be honest some of their apps, like the Podcasts app do much more tracking. It is kind of described in the privacy policy but you can’t turn it off.
jasonaten 6y ago
Apple has a specific definition of "tracking," which involves sending information collected to third parties. Apple doesn't do that. For that matter, it generally doesn't even collect information unless it's needed to perform a task (ie: location to show the weather). In those cases, it minimizes the data used, and doesn't associate it with you.
zepto 6y ago
> Why aren't Apple's apps themselves also having to ask for permission? They are. This question is based on a false premise. I see it repeatedly. It’s starting to sound a lot like “have you stopped beating your wife yet.
Bakary 6y ago
I don't have a iota of trust in Apple, but it does seem that they would have little to gain and a lot to lose from just selling user data.
acdha 6y ago
> Why aren't Apple's apps themselves also having to ask for permission? I personally do not trust Apple one bit, just as I do not trust Facebook. So why is it so much harder to disable Apple's tracking, compared to Facebook's? They do ask, either on every OS install or upgrade (things like Siri) or first use (non-core apps). If you look at the various privacy settings, Apple’s own apps are listed and you have the same controls to block or limit the data they can access.

benguild 6y ago

Only apps that do this sort of tracking have to ask. Otherwise there is no need. Does that make sense?

zimmen 6y ago
We don’t know whether Apple’s apps will ask yet do we? Not until the next iOS update. And when an app doesn’t ask, does that just mean there is no tracking going on or is it some nefarious scheme to achieve who knows what? The nefarious option will probably become most popular on the interwebs, obviously. I can already see the HN posts: “Pages caught loading an asset from apple.com, violating their own tracking policy! Is Apple doomed?”
- mqrs 6y ago
  Check out your iPhone’s Settings > Privacy and scroll to the very bottom. You’ll see “Analytics & Improvements” and “Apple Advertising”, which both contain toggles and details about the data that has been gathered so far. There was also an iOS update in the past where the onboarding flow asked me to grant these permissions, though I vaguely remember seeing it on every major iOS version update. Now, that’s not to say that the iPhone setting guarantees that Apple is not up to something sketchy. We can’t tell what’s going on under the hood or in their servers, but if we really wanted to be extremists about privacy, then we have to resort to apps that we’ve built and self-hosted ourselves.
wayneftw 6y ago
So who investigates whether Apple’s apps do this sort of tracking or not?
- herodotus 6y ago
  Story removed as not useful
  - justapassenger 6y ago
    Not stealing user’s private PDF file during crash is very low bar for privacy. I agree that Apple cares about this stuff, but your story doesn’t really show it.
  - wayneftw 6y ago
    > Well, I worked at Apple for about NN years. ... If Apple was claiming it cared about privacy, but was secretly doing the opposite, I think this fact would not remain secret. > I will give one more concrete example: the crash reporter system would send me a detailed stack trace, but NOT the original document. I was told explicitly that this was done for reasons of privacy ... I had no idea who the user was or what was in the document. So you’ve had access to everything at Apple in your long career there, investigated it deeply the whole time and you’ve found nothing out of sorts. Got it. This jives with what I’ve read about Apple’s internal culture - that there’s no compartmentalization at all and employees can roam freely around the halls collecting whatever information they want from any department. I feel good now that you’ve investigated your own company and found no issues! Police unions should look into using this tactic of self-investigation. It seems quite effective! (I hope I protected your privacy by removing the irrelevant parts of your comment. Sorry I had to paste them in there but you deleted them and then my response made no sense. Also, sorry to have to use all of that sarcasm but you could’ve just answered the question. It’s Apple. Apple investigates if Apple apps for doing any sort of improper data collection.)
    - herodotus 6y ago
      OK, I get the point, which is why I removed the story. Do you mind deleting what I wrote from your comment?

darklion 6y ago

> Why aren't Apple's apps themselves also having to ask for permission? If you look at the list of example reasons [1] that would require an app to ask for tracking permission, they are (broadly) in two buckets: correlating and/or consuming user data from multiple sources, and sharing data with a data broker for advertising purposes. Apple does not share data outside of itself, and their apps do not display ads. -- [1] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/user-privacy-and-data-use/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/user-privacy-and-data-...

1f60c 6y ago
> their apps do not display ads Except for the App Store and Apple News, AFAIK.
- zepto 6y ago
  Apple News doesn’t display Ads except the upsell for Apple news+. They don’t sell advertising on Apple News. The App Store does display ads, but those are based on advertisers bidding for keywords in the search terms.
ViViDboarder 6y ago
At least not 3rd party ads. The App Store has ads for apps plus non-stop Arcade+ advertising. The News app is full of ads for News+ and loads of restricted links as well. This is, however, very different, as you point out.
- random5634 6y ago
  These do not rely on tracking or personalization - which is very obvious to me (I don't play games - and they constantly have game promotions etc). Google gets this much better - with a ton of SAAS / biz focused apps. So I imagine google is tracking me somehow (I use google search / chrome etc) and apple does not seem to be doing that good a job.
tinus_hn 6y ago
To be honest some of their apps, like the Podcasts app do much more tracking. It is kind of described in the privacy policy but you can’t turn it off.

jasonaten 6y ago

Apple has a specific definition of "tracking," which involves sending information collected to third parties. Apple doesn't do that. For that matter, it generally doesn't even collect information unless it's needed to perform a task (ie: location to show the weather). In those cases, it minimizes the data used, and doesn't associate it with you.

zepto 6y ago

> Why aren't Apple's apps themselves also having to ask for permission? They are. This question is based on a false premise. I see it repeatedly. It’s starting to sound a lot like “have you stopped beating your wife yet.

Bakary 6y ago

I don't have a iota of trust in Apple, but it does seem that they would have little to gain and a lot to lose from just selling user data.

acdha 6y ago

> Why aren't Apple's apps themselves also having to ask for permission? I personally do not trust Apple one bit, just as I do not trust Facebook. So why is it so much harder to disable Apple's tracking, compared to Facebook's? They do ask, either on every OS install or upgrade (things like Siri) or first use (non-core apps). If you look at the various privacy settings, Apple’s own apps are listed and you have the same controls to block or limit the data they can access.