9 ms·

I used to be of the mind that ad tech et. al. weren’t really hurting anyone, and that the more extreme examples of privacy offenses were simple edge cases. Tha

by lumost 5y ago

I used to be of the mind that ad tech et. al. weren’t really hurting anyone, and that the more extreme examples of privacy offenses were simple edge cases. That is until I switched to iOS and was given the option to hide my true email address, tell an app not to track me, and otherwise get visibility into just how much my data is getting sniffed for stupid reasons that have nothing to do with the service I’m using.

rodgerd 5y ago
My tipping point was noticing that about 30% of my DNS traffic on my home network was Android devices calling out to tracking and advertising networks. Moving to iOS has dropped that dramatically, more than an order of magnitude. The fact that we're now seeing multiple lawsuits, PR campaigns, and lobbying to damage Apple since they put a requirement to disclose privacy details in the App Store shows how much surveillance capitalism has twisted the world.
- samplatt 5y ago
  An alternative to giving your money to one of the largest tax-dodgers on the planet is a $30 raspberry pi with "pi-hole" installed. Browsing on my phone at home with all those ad networks blocked okay... until you go outside your home network and get all the ads again. It's almost made my stop using my phone outside of my home network.
  - hellcow 5y ago
    I set up Tailscale on Android to use my Pihole from anywhere. Works pretty well.
  - Helmut10001 5y ago
    That is why I have an IPSEC connection back to my home from work, so I can use my internal DNS with DNSBL blocklist. (be careful, few employers will allow such a setup). The top list seems like a reflection of market share: fls-eu.amazon.de, sessions.bugsnag.com, googleads.g.doubleclick.net, data.mistat.intl.xiaomi.com, app-measurement.com, in.treasuredata.com ..
  - JohnCurran 5y ago
    For ad blocking outside the home, install WireGuard on the RPi and configure it to use pihole as its DNS server. Install script should prompt you to do this automatically if it detects pihole is installed. Then just connect your WireGuard client on your phone to the endpoint Use something like freedns.afraid.org for dynamic IP address support
    - gen220 5y ago
      If you already own a domain, you can also pretty trivially (<10 lines of bash) implement your own dynamic IP address support with your DNS providers (my solution uses Cloudflare). In a nutshell: `update-dns get-my-current-external-ip-address $MY_DOMAIN_NAME` You can have a subdomain like `vpn.yourwebsite.com` point to your residential IP. It may take a bit of fussing to get the ports and such right. But otherwise it's "just worked" for me, for the last 6 months. Useful if you want to remove the dependency on yet-another-service-provider that can go out of business (the dynamic-dns people).
  - xrisk 5y ago
    You can just use an adblocking DNS server I think?
  - marderfarker2 5y ago
    Or you can use nextdns and have DNS protection on any network you’re on. They have a paid option that gives you a higher query quota.
  - kyralis 5y ago
    Apple's effective tax rate is actually higher than many of its peers, and higher than the sector on average. All multinationals need strong tax enforcement, but this isn't actually one where Apple is really any worse than others (and better than many). https://finbox.com/NASDAQGS:AAPL/explorer/effect_tax_rate https://finbox.com/NASDAQGS:AAPL/explorer/effect_tax_rate
    - deregulateMed 5y ago
      Apple has also banned more Apps to protect a Chinese dictatorship than many of it's peers.
    - samplatt 5y ago
      That's fine. There just seemed to be an unnecessarily large amount of tugging of Apple's dick in the top of the thread, and I wanted to suggest an alternative.
  - midasuni 5y ago
    Don’t worry, DoH will fix that pi hole loophole
    - rodgerd 5y ago
      Yep. This is the problem - DoH (using Google or CloudFlare) is just privacy-washing even more intrusion. The aversion that companies have to merely being required to label their fuckery shows what a problem we have.
  - zikduruqe 5y ago
    I used to run a Pi-Hole for a long time, but then I realized I was trading my day to day tech job, to screwing around with Pi-Hole (along with other RPi's in my house) on my personal time. And yes, I run a WireGuard VPN too and could/have turn on WG to tunnel back to my Pi-Hole. Switched over to NextDNS, so that my ad blocking is on the macro network too. I'm satisfied. My wife is not, since her trashy "click here" links don't work half the time. :) Tells me it is working just fine. https://nextdns.io https://nextdns.io My NextDNS dashboard - https://i.imgur.com/bjJ9OZH.png https://i.imgur.com/bjJ9OZH.png (My garage door opener is a chatty bastard)
    - brainbag 5y ago
      Isn't that just shifting the tracking to another site? Now nextdns.io knows everything that you're doing.
      - zikduruqe 5y ago
        And the SDK in your device knows, the hardware manufacturer knows, your cell carrier knows, etc.... just trying to clean up my experience in lessening ads on in my UI. Until an EMP takes us back to the Stone Age, it is really hard not to be tracked on the internet. Source - I used to work for a company that does the tracking.
  - rodgerd 5y ago
    > An alternative to giving your money to one of the largest tax-dodgers on the planet is a $30 raspberry pi with "pi-hole" installed. Try to be more condescending, kid. It'll make your point so much more effective if you think I don't know what DNS filtering is. Trying to spackle over social, economic, and political problems with technical hacks doesn't solve the underlying issue.
o8r3oFTZPE 5y ago
Progress. What would be neat is to see how much data Apple is collecting about its customers after purchase. Why wouldnt we want to know this. Could Apple provide option to hide true email address, tell app do not track and give visibility into data being sniffed without also collecting vast amounts of user data itself. We cannot answer that question until we see the data they collect. I used to be of the mind that Apple was not really hurting anyone until it became clear they are competing with Google and Facebook. Even Apple competing with Microsoft is unsettling because that company has been aggressively acquiring user data, also trying to compete with Google. On issues of user data, these companies have more similarities than they do differences. They are all hoovering it up, albeit through different channels.
- top_post 5y ago
  As someone who just bought their first iPad last week, I wonder the exact same thing. A nice cuddle from Apple telling me how they're protecting me from evil, but you hold all the same shit about me. So now I just trust a _different_ for profit company? Until when? At one stage Google wasn't evil, now it's evil as fuck.
  - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    Yes, Apple is a for profit company. On the side they are collecting your data for themselves and blocking others from getting it. Their profits come from products and services. Google is a for profit company. On the side the offer products and services. Their profits come from selling your data to others. Yes, I personally trust one over the other in this case. Although I don’t know what “for profit” has to do with anything. If it comes to Google or Government, geez, tough call that one.
    - deadmutex 5y ago
      > Their profits come from selling your data to others It is a common misconception that FB and Google sell user data. E.g. see https://www.facebook.com/help/152637448140583 https://www.facebook.com/help/152637448140583 "Google has also played a leadership role in creating industry standards for transparency and data protection. More than a dozen privacy employees at Google spoke to WIRED about how they make sense of the paradox of their work, insisting that there’s no internal pressure to compromise privacy protections to make a larger profit." -Wired (https://www.wired.com/story/wired-guide-personal-data-collection/ https://www.wired.com/story/wired-guide-personal-data-collec...) Google also sells a plethora of physical products (Pixel devices, Nest devices, etc.) and services (Storage[Drive], YouTube premium, Stadia, Nest, Fibit, etc.). This would be similar to calling Amazon "just a [book]store or a marketplace", whereas they also have their hands in Cloud Computing, logistics, grocery, iot, etc.
fartcannon 5y ago
Well, good, but you traded one bad apple for another. Apple is in the process of locking down freedom. And while you might not be tracked by Google, your quality of life in a closed ecosystem is just as bad in other ways. How many people have to contend with iCloud endlessly begging for money because they took a few photos of their child? Isn't iCloud data backed up on Chinese servers? I'm pretty sure that means you're being spied on. This is not to mention the waste generated by Apple actively fighting the right to repair. So, good, Google needs to go. But so do the tech giants.
- mikeiz404 5y ago
  > Isn't iCloud data backed up on Chinese servers? I'm pretty sure that means you're being spied on. Are you thinking of Apple’s switch in 2018 to storing icloud data in China for users in China? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICloud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICloud > In February 2018, Apple announced that iCloud users in China would have their data, including encryption data, on servers called “云上贵州” located in the country to comply with local regulations. This raised concerns from human rights activists who claim that it may be used to track dissidents. From some quick reading it looks like apple “has six data centers in the United States, two in Denmark, and three in Asia” as well as use of the major cloud providers. I’m not sure if there are restrictions on where or how data is stored for people not located in China though. I am assuming so.
- fastball 5y ago
  I don't think I've ever had iCloud "beg me for money". I've had it where iCloud tells me I am about to run out of space and should probably buy more, which seems reasonable. iCloud data is backed up on Chinese servers? Without being E2EE to boot? Do you have a source on this? If consumers seriously want easily repairable devices, it seems like such a phone would compete easily in the free market.
- breakfastduck 5y ago
  Where on earth are you pulling the 'begging for money' from? I've never seen that happen before. You are ultimately arguing that a business protecting my data, while also using it themselves to sell me their own products, is just as bad in other ways as a company taking my data and using it to manipulate election results, to sell to shady companies and to market the shit out of me.
runawaybottle 5y ago
‘Can I get a lick of your ice-cream’. Their ads have gotten good all of a sudden again (the irony of that being the whole ad is to stop other ads). https://youtu.be/8w4qPUSG17Y https://youtu.be/8w4qPUSG17Y
- historyloop 5y ago
  I don't care much about tracking, but this ad is very effective. It's kinda dishonest about what tracking is (it's not bunch of people making job and purchase decisions for you, come on). But effective.
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    No one made any decision for the main character. A shop employee recommended an anti itch cream. It looked like he asked her to. The others snooped and gave out his information.
    - historyloop 5y ago
      And they also took all the space on the sofa, which is the primary reason why I ban tracking cookies. /s
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
iee77e73y 5y ago
Out of curiosity what about having those features changed your opinion? I'm in a similar camp to your original viewpoint and what stood out from your story is that it doesn't seem like you discovered any significant damage so much as just gained new features to limit what others labeled as damage on the off chance they're right. Not trying to be confrontational but I feel like, when I lurk here, my view is the minority and so I think it's interesting to hear the thought process of a convert from my camp.
greggman3 5y ago
Where does this option to hide my email address appear? Twice I've tried to use Apple Pay and Apple said they'd share my email address if I continued. There was no option to opt out.
- nielsbot 5y ago
  At least one place: If you use "Sign-In With Apple", you'll get an option use a proxy e-mail address to register for the relevant service or website. Related, but different: There's a new proxying web browsing service for Safari called "Safe Browsing": https://www.macrumors.com/2021/02/11/ios-14-5-beta-safe-browsing-safari-apple-google/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/02/11/ios-14-5-beta-safe-brow... (edit: clarity)
colordrops 5y ago
Ive installed pihole at home and it reports hundreds of thousands of blocked requests a day. And this isn't counting everything the browser adblockers are stopping. We are a family of four, with really only the adults using the network an average amount. It's insane.
deregulateMed 5y ago
Careful. Your Apple data is being given away to Chinese dictatorships and the US government. You don't actually know if your data is given away. We only learn after Apple is caught.
- zepto 5y ago
  > Your Apple data is being given away to Chinese dictatorships Only if you live in China, which is well known to be a surveillance state with access to all personal data. > and the US government. Yes, but only by court order, rule which applies to every US company. This is a problem, but not one with Apple. > You don't actually know if your data is given away. We only learn after Apple is caught. True for every company in the world. You make this sound like a problem with Apple, but these are problems with the US and Chinese governments.

by lumost 5y ago

rodgerd 5y ago

My tipping point was noticing that about 30% of my DNS traffic on my home network was Android devices calling out to tracking and advertising networks. Moving to iOS has dropped that dramatically, more than an order of magnitude. The fact that we're now seeing multiple lawsuits, PR campaigns, and lobbying to damage Apple since they put a requirement to disclose privacy details in the App Store shows how much surveillance capitalism has twisted the world.

samplatt 5y ago
An alternative to giving your money to one of the largest tax-dodgers on the planet is a $30 raspberry pi with "pi-hole" installed. Browsing on my phone at home with all those ad networks blocked okay... until you go outside your home network and get all the ads again. It's almost made my stop using my phone outside of my home network.
- hellcow 5y ago
  I set up Tailscale on Android to use my Pihole from anywhere. Works pretty well.
- Helmut10001 5y ago
  That is why I have an IPSEC connection back to my home from work, so I can use my internal DNS with DNSBL blocklist. (be careful, few employers will allow such a setup). The top list seems like a reflection of market share: fls-eu.amazon.de, sessions.bugsnag.com, googleads.g.doubleclick.net, data.mistat.intl.xiaomi.com, app-measurement.com, in.treasuredata.com ..
- JohnCurran 5y ago
  For ad blocking outside the home, install WireGuard on the RPi and configure it to use pihole as its DNS server. Install script should prompt you to do this automatically if it detects pihole is installed. Then just connect your WireGuard client on your phone to the endpoint Use something like freedns.afraid.org for dynamic IP address support
  - gen220 5y ago
    If you already own a domain, you can also pretty trivially (<10 lines of bash) implement your own dynamic IP address support with your DNS providers (my solution uses Cloudflare). In a nutshell: `update-dns get-my-current-external-ip-address $MY_DOMAIN_NAME` You can have a subdomain like `vpn.yourwebsite.com` point to your residential IP. It may take a bit of fussing to get the ports and such right. But otherwise it's "just worked" for me, for the last 6 months. Useful if you want to remove the dependency on yet-another-service-provider that can go out of business (the dynamic-dns people).
- xrisk 5y ago
  You can just use an adblocking DNS server I think?
- marderfarker2 5y ago
  Or you can use nextdns and have DNS protection on any network you’re on. They have a paid option that gives you a higher query quota.
- kyralis 5y ago
  Apple's effective tax rate is actually higher than many of its peers, and higher than the sector on average. All multinationals need strong tax enforcement, but this isn't actually one where Apple is really any worse than others (and better than many). https://finbox.com/NASDAQGS:AAPL/explorer/effect_tax_rate https://finbox.com/NASDAQGS:AAPL/explorer/effect_tax_rate
  - deregulateMed 5y ago
    Apple has also banned more Apps to protect a Chinese dictatorship than many of it's peers.
  - samplatt 5y ago
    That's fine. There just seemed to be an unnecessarily large amount of tugging of Apple's dick in the top of the thread, and I wanted to suggest an alternative.
- midasuni 5y ago
  Don’t worry, DoH will fix that pi hole loophole
  - rodgerd 5y ago
    Yep. This is the problem - DoH (using Google or CloudFlare) is just privacy-washing even more intrusion. The aversion that companies have to merely being required to label their fuckery shows what a problem we have.
- zikduruqe 5y ago
  I used to run a Pi-Hole for a long time, but then I realized I was trading my day to day tech job, to screwing around with Pi-Hole (along with other RPi's in my house) on my personal time. And yes, I run a WireGuard VPN too and could/have turn on WG to tunnel back to my Pi-Hole. Switched over to NextDNS, so that my ad blocking is on the macro network too. I'm satisfied. My wife is not, since her trashy "click here" links don't work half the time. :) Tells me it is working just fine. https://nextdns.io https://nextdns.io My NextDNS dashboard - https://i.imgur.com/bjJ9OZH.png https://i.imgur.com/bjJ9OZH.png (My garage door opener is a chatty bastard)
  - brainbag 5y ago
    Isn't that just shifting the tracking to another site? Now nextdns.io knows everything that you're doing.
    - zikduruqe 5y ago
      And the SDK in your device knows, the hardware manufacturer knows, your cell carrier knows, etc.... just trying to clean up my experience in lessening ads on in my UI. Until an EMP takes us back to the Stone Age, it is really hard not to be tracked on the internet. Source - I used to work for a company that does the tracking.
- rodgerd 5y ago
  > An alternative to giving your money to one of the largest tax-dodgers on the planet is a $30 raspberry pi with "pi-hole" installed. Try to be more condescending, kid. It'll make your point so much more effective if you think I don't know what DNS filtering is. Trying to spackle over social, economic, and political problems with technical hacks doesn't solve the underlying issue.

o8r3oFTZPE 5y ago

Progress. What would be neat is to see how much data Apple is collecting about its customers after purchase. Why wouldnt we want to know this. Could Apple provide option to hide true email address, tell app do not track and give visibility into data being sniffed without also collecting vast amounts of user data itself. We cannot answer that question until we see the data they collect. I used to be of the mind that Apple was not really hurting anyone until it became clear they are competing with Google and Facebook. Even Apple competing with Microsoft is unsettling because that company has been aggressively acquiring user data, also trying to compete with Google. On issues of user data, these companies have more similarities than they do differences. They are all hoovering it up, albeit through different channels.

top_post 5y ago
As someone who just bought their first iPad last week, I wonder the exact same thing. A nice cuddle from Apple telling me how they're protecting me from evil, but you hold all the same shit about me. So now I just trust a _different_ for profit company? Until when? At one stage Google wasn't evil, now it's evil as fuck.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  Yes, Apple is a for profit company. On the side they are collecting your data for themselves and blocking others from getting it. Their profits come from products and services. Google is a for profit company. On the side the offer products and services. Their profits come from selling your data to others. Yes, I personally trust one over the other in this case. Although I don’t know what “for profit” has to do with anything. If it comes to Google or Government, geez, tough call that one.
  - deadmutex 5y ago
    > Their profits come from selling your data to others It is a common misconception that FB and Google sell user data. E.g. see https://www.facebook.com/help/152637448140583 https://www.facebook.com/help/152637448140583 "Google has also played a leadership role in creating industry standards for transparency and data protection. More than a dozen privacy employees at Google spoke to WIRED about how they make sense of the paradox of their work, insisting that there’s no internal pressure to compromise privacy protections to make a larger profit." -Wired (https://www.wired.com/story/wired-guide-personal-data-collection/ https://www.wired.com/story/wired-guide-personal-data-collec...) Google also sells a plethora of physical products (Pixel devices, Nest devices, etc.) and services (Storage[Drive], YouTube premium, Stadia, Nest, Fibit, etc.). This would be similar to calling Amazon "just a [book]store or a marketplace", whereas they also have their hands in Cloud Computing, logistics, grocery, iot, etc.

fartcannon 5y ago

Well, good, but you traded one bad apple for another. Apple is in the process of locking down freedom. And while you might not be tracked by Google, your quality of life in a closed ecosystem is just as bad in other ways. How many people have to contend with iCloud endlessly begging for money because they took a few photos of their child? Isn't iCloud data backed up on Chinese servers? I'm pretty sure that means you're being spied on. This is not to mention the waste generated by Apple actively fighting the right to repair. So, good, Google needs to go. But so do the tech giants.

mikeiz404 5y ago
> Isn't iCloud data backed up on Chinese servers? I'm pretty sure that means you're being spied on. Are you thinking of Apple’s switch in 2018 to storing icloud data in China for users in China? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICloud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICloud > In February 2018, Apple announced that iCloud users in China would have their data, including encryption data, on servers called “云上贵州” located in the country to comply with local regulations. This raised concerns from human rights activists who claim that it may be used to track dissidents. From some quick reading it looks like apple “has six data centers in the United States, two in Denmark, and three in Asia” as well as use of the major cloud providers. I’m not sure if there are restrictions on where or how data is stored for people not located in China though. I am assuming so.
fastball 5y ago
I don't think I've ever had iCloud "beg me for money". I've had it where iCloud tells me I am about to run out of space and should probably buy more, which seems reasonable. iCloud data is backed up on Chinese servers? Without being E2EE to boot? Do you have a source on this? If consumers seriously want easily repairable devices, it seems like such a phone would compete easily in the free market.
breakfastduck 5y ago
Where on earth are you pulling the 'begging for money' from? I've never seen that happen before. You are ultimately arguing that a business protecting my data, while also using it themselves to sell me their own products, is just as bad in other ways as a company taking my data and using it to manipulate election results, to sell to shady companies and to market the shit out of me.

runawaybottle 5y ago

‘Can I get a lick of your ice-cream’. Their ads have gotten good all of a sudden again (the irony of that being the whole ad is to stop other ads). https://youtu.be/8w4qPUSG17Y https://youtu.be/8w4qPUSG17Y

historyloop 5y ago
I don't care much about tracking, but this ad is very effective. It's kinda dishonest about what tracking is (it's not bunch of people making job and purchase decisions for you, come on). But effective.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  No one made any decision for the main character. A shop employee recommended an anti itch cream. It looked like he asked her to. The others snooped and gave out his information.
  - historyloop 5y ago
    And they also took all the space on the sofa, which is the primary reason why I ban tracking cookies. /s

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

iee77e73y 5y ago

Out of curiosity what about having those features changed your opinion? I'm in a similar camp to your original viewpoint and what stood out from your story is that it doesn't seem like you discovered any significant damage so much as just gained new features to limit what others labeled as damage on the off chance they're right. Not trying to be confrontational but I feel like, when I lurk here, my view is the minority and so I think it's interesting to hear the thought process of a convert from my camp.

greggman3 5y ago

Where does this option to hide my email address appear? Twice I've tried to use Apple Pay and Apple said they'd share my email address if I continued. There was no option to opt out.

nielsbot 5y ago
At least one place: If you use "Sign-In With Apple", you'll get an option use a proxy e-mail address to register for the relevant service or website. Related, but different: There's a new proxying web browsing service for Safari called "Safe Browsing": https://www.macrumors.com/2021/02/11/ios-14-5-beta-safe-browsing-safari-apple-google/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/02/11/ios-14-5-beta-safe-brow... (edit: clarity)

colordrops 5y ago

Ive installed pihole at home and it reports hundreds of thousands of blocked requests a day. And this isn't counting everything the browser adblockers are stopping. We are a family of four, with really only the adults using the network an average amount. It's insane.

deregulateMed 5y ago

Careful. Your Apple data is being given away to Chinese dictatorships and the US government. You don't actually know if your data is given away. We only learn after Apple is caught.

zepto 5y ago
> Your Apple data is being given away to Chinese dictatorships Only if you live in China, which is well known to be a surveillance state with access to all personal data. > and the US government. Yes, but only by court order, rule which applies to every US company. This is a problem, but not one with Apple. > You don't actually know if your data is given away. We only learn after Apple is caught. True for every company in the world. You make this sound like a problem with Apple, but these are problems with the US and Chinese governments.