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"20X more telemetry", in terms of data usage, is a pretty meaningless statistic on its own (unless it's large enough to affect your mobile data cap or something

"20X more telemetry", in terms of data usage, is a pretty meaningless statistic on its own (unless it's large enough to affect your mobile data cap or something). For instance, I would consider it a much bigger privacy violation for my phone to transmit my exact location every hour than my current CPU usage every 10 seconds.

swiley 6y ago
Sending telemetry can get expensive: in situations where bandwidth/throughput is restricted people often get picky about giving PCs with Windows installed internet access because of this. It can be bad even in normal situations: My girlfriend's laptop has so much broken telemetry crap between Microsoft and HP that her applications actually get pushed into swap (or whatever it's called on Windows.)
- wmichelin 6y ago
  Sending telemetry _poorly_ can get expensive. A good client can aggregate, even compress locally, and publish telemetry in batches. Let's not rule out telemetry entirely because of bad implementations. I'd say the moral of the story here is that Microsoft and HP just write shitty software.
kllrnohj 6y ago
Which Apple is apparently doing - they send location, local IP, and nearby wifi mac addresses even when you're not logged in. Similarly Apple is collecting more data types than Google according to the research paper.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- threeseed 6y ago
  Please provide evidence of this because Apple's official documentation says otherwise: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203033 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203033 They do send nearly WiFi hotspots for crowd sourcing purposes but it is never in conjunction with your local IP address (which is an identifying piece of information).
  - PurpleFoxy 6y ago
    The wifi thing is fine/good IMO. It allows everyone to get their location without gps. It’s what let’s devices with no gps like the MacBook and ipad to get their current location. Google does the exact same thing although they used street view cars for the initial dataset.
  - godelski 6y ago
    It's in the article that we're in the thread for. Table 1[0] [0] https://therecord.media/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Telemetry-1.png https://therecord.media/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Telemetry...
  - rOOb85 6y ago
    Did you read the OP article? The researchers clearly outline what apple is phoning home. They even made a nice clean table showing what apple and google are sending back to themselves.
    - threeseed 6y ago
      I read the article and it's wrong. Apple does not explicitly "send" the user's IP address. It naturally is accessible on their end as a result of the TCP/IP protocol. But Apple has made quite clear that it does not use that information in any way.
      - kllrnohj 6y ago
        Local IP would be your 192.168.1.whatever. Apple won't get that unless they capture it on the device. They would otherwise only get your public, nat'd IP with normal tcp/ip. Local IP isn't identifying, but it's a weird thing to include. And the paper clearly shows that being sent to Apple. > Later during the startup process the local IP address of the handset (i.e. not of the gateway, but of the handset itself) is sent in a POST request to /lcdn-locator.apple.com: POST https://lcdn-locator.apple.com/lcdn/locate https://lcdn-locator.apple.com/lcdn/locate Headers User-Agent: AssetCacheLocatorService/111 CFNetwork /1128.0.1 Darwin/19.6.0 POST body {"locator-tag":"#eefc633e","local-addresses":[" 192.168.2.6"],"ranked-results":true,"locator-software":[{" build":"17G80","type":"system","name":"iPhone OS","version ":"13.6.1"},{"id":"com.apple.AssetCacheLocatorService"," executable":"AssetCacheLocatorService",<...> So no the article isn't wrong. I suggest you give the paper a read (or at least a skim) if you're going to try and claim they are wrong about something.
- drewmol 6y ago
  Allowing wifi mac addresses, ssids, bssids, etc. of leased equipment in combination with subscriber address/goelocation to be shared or otherwise disclosed to third party affiliates, partners, agencies is a requirement included in the fine print of some residential ISP's agreement terms I've read, fwiw. I assumed that this probably is implemented as a 'non-public' goelocation service api as well raw data sharing agreements in some cases, but I'd doubt the data 'processors' and 'controllers' are known to anyone outside those parties.
kuratkull 6y ago
I was also surprised by the emphasis on "20x more data" aspect. The table on kinds-of-data sent was showing Apple in a much more negative light.
- tgv 6y ago
  The article is surprisingly short on details. E.g., Google does know your location and the Wifi APs, it's just not the OS that sends it.

swiley 6y ago

Sending telemetry can get expensive: in situations where bandwidth/throughput is restricted people often get picky about giving PCs with Windows installed internet access because of this. It can be bad even in normal situations: My girlfriend's laptop has so much broken telemetry crap between Microsoft and HP that her applications actually get pushed into swap (or whatever it's called on Windows.)

wmichelin 6y ago
Sending telemetry _poorly_ can get expensive. A good client can aggregate, even compress locally, and publish telemetry in batches. Let's not rule out telemetry entirely because of bad implementations. I'd say the moral of the story here is that Microsoft and HP just write shitty software.

kllrnohj 6y ago

Which Apple is apparently doing - they send location, local IP, and nearby wifi mac addresses even when you're not logged in. Similarly Apple is collecting more data types than Google according to the research paper.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
threeseed 6y ago
Please provide evidence of this because Apple's official documentation says otherwise: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203033 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203033 They do send nearly WiFi hotspots for crowd sourcing purposes but it is never in conjunction with your local IP address (which is an identifying piece of information).
- PurpleFoxy 6y ago
  The wifi thing is fine/good IMO. It allows everyone to get their location without gps. It’s what let’s devices with no gps like the MacBook and ipad to get their current location. Google does the exact same thing although they used street view cars for the initial dataset.
- godelski 6y ago
  It's in the article that we're in the thread for. Table 1[0] [0] https://therecord.media/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Telemetry-1.png https://therecord.media/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Telemetry...
- rOOb85 6y ago
  Did you read the OP article? The researchers clearly outline what apple is phoning home. They even made a nice clean table showing what apple and google are sending back to themselves.
  - threeseed 6y ago
    I read the article and it's wrong. Apple does not explicitly "send" the user's IP address. It naturally is accessible on their end as a result of the TCP/IP protocol. But Apple has made quite clear that it does not use that information in any way.
    - kllrnohj 6y ago
      Local IP would be your 192.168.1.whatever. Apple won't get that unless they capture it on the device. They would otherwise only get your public, nat'd IP with normal tcp/ip. Local IP isn't identifying, but it's a weird thing to include. And the paper clearly shows that being sent to Apple. > Later during the startup process the local IP address of the handset (i.e. not of the gateway, but of the handset itself) is sent in a POST request to /lcdn-locator.apple.com: POST https://lcdn-locator.apple.com/lcdn/locate https://lcdn-locator.apple.com/lcdn/locate Headers User-Agent: AssetCacheLocatorService/111 CFNetwork /1128.0.1 Darwin/19.6.0 POST body {"locator-tag":"#eefc633e","local-addresses":[" 192.168.2.6"],"ranked-results":true,"locator-software":[{" build":"17G80","type":"system","name":"iPhone OS","version ":"13.6.1"},{"id":"com.apple.AssetCacheLocatorService"," executable":"AssetCacheLocatorService",<...> So no the article isn't wrong. I suggest you give the paper a read (or at least a skim) if you're going to try and claim they are wrong about something.
drewmol 6y ago
Allowing wifi mac addresses, ssids, bssids, etc. of leased equipment in combination with subscriber address/goelocation to be shared or otherwise disclosed to third party affiliates, partners, agencies is a requirement included in the fine print of some residential ISP's agreement terms I've read, fwiw. I assumed that this probably is implemented as a 'non-public' goelocation service api as well raw data sharing agreements in some cases, but I'd doubt the data 'processors' and 'controllers' are known to anyone outside those parties.

kuratkull 6y ago

I was also surprised by the emphasis on "20x more data" aspect. The table on kinds-of-data sent was showing Apple in a much more negative light.

tgv 6y ago
The article is surprisingly short on details. E.g., Google does know your location and the Wifi APs, it's just not the OS that sends it.