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The entire point of private relay is that neither Apple nor the third party CDN can match the destination website to an individual. If your argument is “they p

by atty 5y ago

The entire point of private relay is that neither Apple nor the third party CDN can match the destination website to an individual. If your argument is “they probably aren’t doing what they say they’re doing” and so you shouldn’t use their tools, then you better start writing your own operating system from scratch and designing and fabbing your own silicon, because there’s no guarantee any of these companies or open source projects aren’t compromised.

josho 5y ago
Apple is also capturing DNS queries, so they minimally have that as a data point. Regardless, the more general concern that parent seems to make is what is to stop Apple in the future from monetizing this data? I think the only thing protecting us as consumers is their policy. And as we all know policies can change very simply with a change to the terms of service.
- dwaite 5y ago
  I believe Apple now supports ODoH (oblivious DNS over HTTPS) although I do not know if it is used for private relay.
  - No1 5y ago
    They are using ODoH in the private relay. https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/iCloud_Private_Relay_Overview_Dec2021.PDF https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/iCloud_Private_Relay_Over...
    - tylerchr 5y ago
      To quote the relevant section: “ODoH sends DNS queries through the first internet relay, so the DNS server cannot identify the user issuing a query. Each query itself is padded and encrypted using Hybrid Public Key Encryption (HPKE) to help ensure that the first internet relay cannot tell the domain name a user is looking up.” Apple is the “first internet relay” and they seem to explicitly state that they don’t see the DNS queries themselves.
- gigel82 5y ago
  I will eat my hat if Apple doesn't enter the ad market big-time in a couple of years. All the signs point to them building a massive privacy-invading trove of data on their customers to exploit. Of course, their PR will spin it up as "privacy focused, totally anonymous, personalized advertisement" and some will just gobble that up as gospel. I don't trust any of these fuckers any more... :)
  - josho 5y ago
    I think 2 things are stopping apple from entering that market in earnest. 1. Privacy is a differentiator for Apple’s business. Google et al can’t compete and win on privacy. Apple can use this to win at recruiting and win at selling their ecosystem. 2. Apple’s hitting revenue/ growth targets. Other r&d investments better align with their ecosystem so there is no business driver today to enter this market. Having said that I won’t be surprised if Apple misses a few qrtly earning targets and decides to enter the ad market.
    - fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
      It already happened: https://amp.ft.com/content/074b881f-a931-4986-888e-2ac53e286b9d https://amp.ft.com/content/074b881f-a931-4986-888e-2ac53e286...
- pram 5y ago
  It uses ODoH for DNS. https://blog.cloudflare.com/oblivious-dns/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/oblivious-dns/

by atty 5y ago

josho 5y ago

Apple is also capturing DNS queries, so they minimally have that as a data point. Regardless, the more general concern that parent seems to make is what is to stop Apple in the future from monetizing this data? I think the only thing protecting us as consumers is their policy. And as we all know policies can change very simply with a change to the terms of service.

dwaite 5y ago
I believe Apple now supports ODoH (oblivious DNS over HTTPS) although I do not know if it is used for private relay.
- No1 5y ago
  They are using ODoH in the private relay. https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/iCloud_Private_Relay_Overview_Dec2021.PDF https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/iCloud_Private_Relay_Over...
  - tylerchr 5y ago
    To quote the relevant section: “ODoH sends DNS queries through the first internet relay, so the DNS server cannot identify the user issuing a query. Each query itself is padded and encrypted using Hybrid Public Key Encryption (HPKE) to help ensure that the first internet relay cannot tell the domain name a user is looking up.” Apple is the “first internet relay” and they seem to explicitly state that they don’t see the DNS queries themselves.
gigel82 5y ago
I will eat my hat if Apple doesn't enter the ad market big-time in a couple of years. All the signs point to them building a massive privacy-invading trove of data on their customers to exploit. Of course, their PR will spin it up as "privacy focused, totally anonymous, personalized advertisement" and some will just gobble that up as gospel. I don't trust any of these fuckers any more... :)
- josho 5y ago
  I think 2 things are stopping apple from entering that market in earnest. 1. Privacy is a differentiator for Apple’s business. Google et al can’t compete and win on privacy. Apple can use this to win at recruiting and win at selling their ecosystem. 2. Apple’s hitting revenue/ growth targets. Other r&d investments better align with their ecosystem so there is no business driver today to enter this market. Having said that I won’t be surprised if Apple misses a few qrtly earning targets and decides to enter the ad market.
  - fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
    It already happened: https://amp.ft.com/content/074b881f-a931-4986-888e-2ac53e286b9d https://amp.ft.com/content/074b881f-a931-4986-888e-2ac53e286...
pram 5y ago
It uses ODoH for DNS. https://blog.cloudflare.com/oblivious-dns/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/oblivious-dns/