4 ms·

Nothing gets better by installing Apple as a gatekeeper. And the EU has been pretty good against bank transfer fees and roaming charges and the like.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> Nothing gets better by installing Apple as a gatekeeper Eh, privacy. A bit. The reason banks want you to use their app is they can collect more data than Apple passes along. I also doubt contactless payment would have the adoption it has among iOS users without Apple’s branding and marketing push.
- yunohn 5y ago
  > The reason banks want you to use their app is they can collect more data than Apple passes along. There’s incredibly strict laws around banking privacy in NL (and most of the EU). My banks can’t even mine my transactions for any inference, except fraud. They need my approval to even categorize or track spending.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Your privacy actively decreases by switching from pretty much anything to Apple services. At least if Microsoft or Google is at the wheel you can count on their incompetence: Apple's collusion with the American government is well-documented at this point, and a reasonable security threat to anyone located outside of the United States. It should be assumed that the NSA has access to every iMessage conversation ever held (otherwise, why would Apple even generate a key for themselves?), and that your device is constantly spying on you, waiting for a single discrepancy that it can report home. Frankly, if Apple's the alternative, I'd rather roll my own security. I have no interest in wasting my time trying to pick the lock on my golden handcuffs just to use my computer without being watched.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    > otherwise, why would Apple even generate a key for themselves? "For Messages in iCloud, if you have iCloud Backup turned on, your backup includes a copy of the key protecting your messages. This ensures you can recover your messages if you lose access to your Keychain and your trusted devices. When you turn off iCloud Backup, a new key is generated on your device to protect future messages and isn't stored by Apple." https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202303 https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202303 Apple's been fairly prominently resistant to government snooping of this nature, to the point of getting in a public fight with the FBI over it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d... The Snowden leaks indicate the two alternatives you suggest, Google and Microsoft, joined PRISM before Apple did, stating "98 percent of PRISM production is based on Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)
    - bduerst 5y ago
      >Apple's been fairly prominently resistant to government snooping of this nature, to the point of getting in a public fight with the FBI over it. Eh, that was 2016. Half a decade later and Apple has since kowtowed to the Chinese government to allow spying on iCloud user data. Despite their privacy-centric branding campaigns, Profits >> Privacy for Apple. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-ce...
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        That's the standard Chinese setup - Google and Microsoft aren't going to be allowed to do any differently there - and only for Chinese users. I'd expect it to be entirely firewalled off from the rest of Apple's infrastructure. (Microsoft similarly has datacenters there, with the same legal requirements. Google only pulled out over bad PR, IMO.) If you're a Chinese citizen, you're surveilled by the Chinese government, regardless of which device you buy.
- FireBeyond 5y ago
  Literally yesterday people were railing against Netflix for not integrating into Apple TV search, and not being willing to give their competitor (TV+) insights into their customer viewing history. While also patting Apple on the back for privacy.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  > I also doubt contactless payment would have the adoption it has among iOS users without Apple’s branding and marketing push. Maybe in the US. But hear in the EU contactless was a thing a decade before Apple Pay came along, and just about every merchant and bank card supported it for at least 5 years before Apple Pay. Indeed I would say that Apple Pay wouldn’t have the adoption it does in the EU, if it wasn't for contactless providing all the infrastructure needed to power it. A point you can provide evidence for my comparing Apple Pay adoption in the US vs EU. On your privacy point, you realise that banks get same amount of data about a transaction via the card networks, regardless of whether or not you use Apple Pay. The only party that looses any info is the merchant.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > banks get same amount of data about a transaction via the card networks, regardless of whether or not you use Apple Pay I don’t know the situation in the EU, given the privacy laws, but in the U.S., banks’ enhanced data from app-based contactless payments (on Android, obviously) sell at a premium to those through a scrubbed channel. The app picks up a lot more information, e.g. signals, location, device, clipboard, et cetera, than the payment transcript.
    - avianlyric 5y ago
      Those apps for the most part don’t really exist in the EU. I suspect a big reason is due the the hard caps on card network interchange fees. So the size of the transaction pie is smaller, and banks get a larger proportion of the pie than their US counterparts. In the US theres a very clear financial incentive for banks to try and cut out card networks, and claim their portion of the fees. The hard part then is convincing merchants to invest the time and money needed to support these new payment systems. Hence the significant carrot of providing customer data to merchants. In the EU, the banks wouldn’t make a significant saving by cutting out the card networks. So it not clear how they would fund the incentives needed to get merchants to support their new systems. All of those provides a barrier to bank payment apps (for C2B payments, C2C payments all happen through normal bank apps), before you even bring privacy into the equation, which just makes a bank payment system even less appealing to merchants. Having said all of that, open banking in the EU is creating new opportunities for merchants and banks to skip card networks, especially for online payments. So it'll be interesting to see how that ecosystem evolves over time.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> Nothing gets better by installing Apple as a gatekeeper Eh, privacy. A bit. The reason banks want you to use their app is they can collect more data than Apple passes along. I also doubt contactless payment would have the adoption it has among iOS users without Apple’s branding and marketing push.

yunohn 5y ago
> The reason banks want you to use their app is they can collect more data than Apple passes along. There’s incredibly strict laws around banking privacy in NL (and most of the EU). My banks can’t even mine my transactions for any inference, except fraud. They need my approval to even categorize or track spending.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
smoldesu 5y ago
Your privacy actively decreases by switching from pretty much anything to Apple services. At least if Microsoft or Google is at the wheel you can count on their incompetence: Apple's collusion with the American government is well-documented at this point, and a reasonable security threat to anyone located outside of the United States. It should be assumed that the NSA has access to every iMessage conversation ever held (otherwise, why would Apple even generate a key for themselves?), and that your device is constantly spying on you, waiting for a single discrepancy that it can report home. Frankly, if Apple's the alternative, I'd rather roll my own security. I have no interest in wasting my time trying to pick the lock on my golden handcuffs just to use my computer without being watched.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  > otherwise, why would Apple even generate a key for themselves? "For Messages in iCloud, if you have iCloud Backup turned on, your backup includes a copy of the key protecting your messages. This ensures you can recover your messages if you lose access to your Keychain and your trusted devices. When you turn off iCloud Backup, a new key is generated on your device to protect future messages and isn't stored by Apple." https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202303 https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202303 Apple's been fairly prominently resistant to government snooping of this nature, to the point of getting in a public fight with the FBI over it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d... The Snowden leaks indicate the two alternatives you suggest, Google and Microsoft, joined PRISM before Apple did, stating "98 percent of PRISM production is based on Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)
  - bduerst 5y ago
    >Apple's been fairly prominently resistant to government snooping of this nature, to the point of getting in a public fight with the FBI over it. Eh, that was 2016. Half a decade later and Apple has since kowtowed to the Chinese government to allow spying on iCloud user data. Despite their privacy-centric branding campaigns, Profits >> Privacy for Apple. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-ce...
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      That's the standard Chinese setup - Google and Microsoft aren't going to be allowed to do any differently there - and only for Chinese users. I'd expect it to be entirely firewalled off from the rest of Apple's infrastructure. (Microsoft similarly has datacenters there, with the same legal requirements. Google only pulled out over bad PR, IMO.) If you're a Chinese citizen, you're surveilled by the Chinese government, regardless of which device you buy.
FireBeyond 5y ago
Literally yesterday people were railing against Netflix for not integrating into Apple TV search, and not being willing to give their competitor (TV+) insights into their customer viewing history. While also patting Apple on the back for privacy.
avianlyric 5y ago
> I also doubt contactless payment would have the adoption it has among iOS users without Apple’s branding and marketing push. Maybe in the US. But hear in the EU contactless was a thing a decade before Apple Pay came along, and just about every merchant and bank card supported it for at least 5 years before Apple Pay. Indeed I would say that Apple Pay wouldn’t have the adoption it does in the EU, if it wasn't for contactless providing all the infrastructure needed to power it. A point you can provide evidence for my comparing Apple Pay adoption in the US vs EU. On your privacy point, you realise that banks get same amount of data about a transaction via the card networks, regardless of whether or not you use Apple Pay. The only party that looses any info is the merchant.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > banks get same amount of data about a transaction via the card networks, regardless of whether or not you use Apple Pay I don’t know the situation in the EU, given the privacy laws, but in the U.S., banks’ enhanced data from app-based contactless payments (on Android, obviously) sell at a premium to those through a scrubbed channel. The app picks up a lot more information, e.g. signals, location, device, clipboard, et cetera, than the payment transcript.
  - avianlyric 5y ago
    Those apps for the most part don’t really exist in the EU. I suspect a big reason is due the the hard caps on card network interchange fees. So the size of the transaction pie is smaller, and banks get a larger proportion of the pie than their US counterparts. In the US theres a very clear financial incentive for banks to try and cut out card networks, and claim their portion of the fees. The hard part then is convincing merchants to invest the time and money needed to support these new payment systems. Hence the significant carrot of providing customer data to merchants. In the EU, the banks wouldn’t make a significant saving by cutting out the card networks. So it not clear how they would fund the incentives needed to get merchants to support their new systems. All of those provides a barrier to bank payment apps (for C2B payments, C2C payments all happen through normal bank apps), before you even bring privacy into the equation, which just makes a bank payment system even less appealing to merchants. Having said all of that, open banking in the EU is creating new opportunities for merchants and banks to skip card networks, especially for online payments. So it'll be interesting to see how that ecosystem evolves over time.