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Nobody’s disputing that. But if Apple wasn’t anywhere near blocking these clever tricks, they wouldn’t be screaming bloody murder. Again, Apple knows these fin

Nobody’s disputing that. But if Apple wasn’t anywhere near blocking these clever tricks, they wouldn’t be screaming bloody murder. Again, Apple knows these fingerprinting parts exist, has acknowledged they exist, has stated they are going to block them and has blocked them. And no, they aren’t done, they might never be done. But also they have stated no intention of stopping.

CyberRabbi 6y ago
They cannot block IP address, screen res, battery level, time zone, just to name a few.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  Apple can bin battery level so it doesn’t contribute to fingerprinting, IP addresses are dynamic and shared and screen resolution and time zone are shared by millions of others. Why would tracking companies be grasping for straws like boot up time if these other obvious things are so effective and impossible to block?
  - CyberRabbi 6y ago
    Those are just a few examples, the surface area is obviously massive (100s if not 1000s). We both know that. The reality is that iOS was not designed with this attack vector in mind. Here is yet another one I just randomly thought up “install date of app” https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39255403/get-date-of-when-app-was-installed-ios https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39255403/get-date-of-whe... now imagine what a dedicated developer could design.
    - tinus_hn 6y ago
      Sorry, it’s not difficult or forbidden to remember user identity in your own app. It’s about sharing that identity between apps. And by the way, there is absolutely nothing stopping Apple from reporting your app was installed on January 1st, 1970.
      - CyberRabbi 6y ago
        > And by the way, there is absolutely nothing stopping Apple from reporting your app was installed on January 1st, 1970. I doubt Apple would do that but I think you are very much missing the point. These one-off patches are not effective at scale, there are literally 100s if not 1000s of information leaks of this type that indeed are observable across multiple apps. App install date was just one that I pulled from thin air that required no thought. A dedicated engineer could easily solve this problem.

CyberRabbi 6y ago

They cannot block IP address, screen res, battery level, time zone, just to name a few.

tinus_hn 6y ago
Apple can bin battery level so it doesn’t contribute to fingerprinting, IP addresses are dynamic and shared and screen resolution and time zone are shared by millions of others. Why would tracking companies be grasping for straws like boot up time if these other obvious things are so effective and impossible to block?
- CyberRabbi 6y ago
  Those are just a few examples, the surface area is obviously massive (100s if not 1000s). We both know that. The reality is that iOS was not designed with this attack vector in mind. Here is yet another one I just randomly thought up “install date of app” https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39255403/get-date-of-when-app-was-installed-ios https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39255403/get-date-of-whe... now imagine what a dedicated developer could design.
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    Sorry, it’s not difficult or forbidden to remember user identity in your own app. It’s about sharing that identity between apps. And by the way, there is absolutely nothing stopping Apple from reporting your app was installed on January 1st, 1970.
    - CyberRabbi 6y ago
      > And by the way, there is absolutely nothing stopping Apple from reporting your app was installed on January 1st, 1970. I doubt Apple would do that but I think you are very much missing the point. These one-off patches are not effective at scale, there are literally 100s if not 1000s of information leaks of this type that indeed are observable across multiple apps. App install date was just one that I pulled from thin air that required no thought. A dedicated engineer could easily solve this problem.