4 ms·

Personally I feel this is as much a failing of of mobile OSs as anything else. As long as we have an environment where ad networks think it's desirable to colle

by janekm 4y ago

Personally I feel this is as much a failing of of mobile OSs as anything else. As long as we have an environment where ad networks think it's desirable to collect this kind of information it's going to get collected, whether by TikTok or ad networks. Apple at least attempt to limit what data is accessible by apps, Google is less incentivized to do so. It's not much help to "ban TikTok" while the ad networks run wild. If we're going to be worried about China I doubt it'd be too much trouble for them to place a few engineers into ad networks and exfiltrate the data from there.

Ekaros 4y ago
Maybe the governments should force mobile OS to provide absolute zero information about anything to apps. If the apps can't get anything they can't leak anything.
- hulitu 4y ago
  The governments are the direct beneficiaries of this data collection either directly or indirectly.
  - gzer0 4y ago
    Exactly right. As can be seen via the purchases of large swaths of private location data by the Department of Homeland Security and other government entities, essentially side stepping US citizens’ 4th amendment rights [1]. [1] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/new-records-detail-dhs-purchase-and-use-of-vast-quantities-of-cell-phone-location-data https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/new-records-det...
- iggldiggl 4y ago
  Unfortunately that approach pretty easily ends up in a territory where you can't do anything interesting with your phone, either, because it's all too dangerous.
- kaba0 4y ago
  Then your phone will be a quite useless device.
- yreg 4y ago
  As a user I want to have the app as isolated as possible and have the ability to grant it any system permissions I want. Perhaps combined with a store rule that an app isn't allowed to block unrelated functionality when it doesn't get the permissions it wants. iOS has been quite good to me in this regard, although it still needs improvements (e.g. add a permission for accessing internet).

by janekm 4y ago

Ekaros 4y ago

Maybe the governments should force mobile OS to provide absolute zero information about anything to apps. If the apps can't get anything they can't leak anything.

hulitu 4y ago
The governments are the direct beneficiaries of this data collection either directly or indirectly.
- gzer0 4y ago
  Exactly right. As can be seen via the purchases of large swaths of private location data by the Department of Homeland Security and other government entities, essentially side stepping US citizens’ 4th amendment rights [1]. [1] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/new-records-detail-dhs-purchase-and-use-of-vast-quantities-of-cell-phone-location-data https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/new-records-det...
iggldiggl 4y ago
Unfortunately that approach pretty easily ends up in a territory where you can't do anything interesting with your phone, either, because it's all too dangerous.
kaba0 4y ago
Then your phone will be a quite useless device.
yreg 4y ago
As a user I want to have the app as isolated as possible and have the ability to grant it any system permissions I want. Perhaps combined with a store rule that an app isn't allowed to block unrelated functionality when it doesn't get the permissions it wants. iOS has been quite good to me in this regard, although it still needs improvements (e.g. add a permission for accessing internet).