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Is anyone in the tech community still under the illusion that Apple is in any way a privacy company?
by colordrops 4y ago
Is anyone in the tech community still under the illusion that Apple is in any way a privacy company?
- duxup 4y ago> in any way a privacy company More than the alternatives.
- Rackedup 4y agoOnly Apple allows anyone to track anyone all over the world for $20.
- duxup 4y agoDoes the price matter? Otherwise that’s not new / exclusive. I should be able to track my things.
- Rackedup 4y ago> I should be able to track my things. not by using my device
- xref 4y agoYou can opt out. You’re beclowining yourself ranting through this entire thread but not having researched any details
- Rackedup 4y ago> xref - You can opt out. track your ex girl friend easily... thanks apple .... it should be opt-in at the very least Not sure why HN is so anti-privacy lately
- colordrops 4y agoHN is a microcosm of the world. People support whatever is the norm, because they are social beings. Being privacy focused is "idealist" or "extremist" or "paranoid", and people don't want to be outcasts. And you are a conspiracy theorist for thinking that Apple and Google don't have your best interests at heart. And abuse of Hanlon's razor, etc, etc
- dvzk 4y agoActually, it's more that many of us frequently risk the likely theft of our precious items, the permanent loss of which would be extremely damaging or upending. And the contrived examples of abuse cases are much less compelling, especially when the only alternative, cellular GPS trackers, are even more invasive. And I dare someone to formulate an ethically consistent argument for banning GPS tracking devices.
- Timshel 4y agoReading the comments outside of the article I see no other example where it helped catch a thief but I find one case of possible abuse to track soomeone. Annecdotic I know, but I guess some of us value the potential abuse of others higher than an hypothetic recovery in case of theft.
- iainmerrick 4y agoHow about this story: Apple initially launched AirTags with the “find your missing possessions” use case in mind, and didn’t fully anticipate the stalking use case. When they realised there was a stalking problem, they put in some fairly robust defences against it (see https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/02/an-update-on-airtag-and-unwanted-tracking/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/02/an-update-on-airtag-a...), robust enough that it makes the tags a lot less useful for tracking stolen items. Do you agree that’s what happened? And if so, what parts of it make Apple anti-privacy? Should they have axed the entire product?
- theshrike79 4y agoYou can find a ton of tracking devices that work "all over the world", none of them tell the one being tracked that someone is tracking them.
- Rackedup 4y agousually you have to pay for a mobile internet connection and use GPS... not of them have access to all iphones
- kube-system 4y agoAirTags are literally the only Bluetooth tracker that have mitigations for this. iPhone users will be notified if someone else’s AirTag is following them, and so will android users if they download the Tracker Detect app.
- colordrops 4y agoNo, not more than AOSP and self hosting. And the difference between Google and Apple is negligible compared to the difference between Apple and DIY. Sucking slightly less data out of your customers doesn't make you a privacy company.
- duxup 4y agoI feel like that not exactly the same as an alternative company. Even if I ignore the company aspect the scale of heavy lifting there is pretty big.
- colordrops 4y agoI never said anything about alternative companies in my initial comment. I said Apple is not a privacy company, which is true. What do you mean by "heavy lifting"?
- duxup 4y agoI feel like I don’t understand what you mean by “a privacy company” now. I’m guessing that is just some unreachable standard?
- colordrops 4y agoNo, I mean a company that actually has privacy as a core goal, rather than bolted on as marketing term that doesn't actually match reality. Signal is a privacy company in my opinion. If Signal, a non-profit, can figure out how to utilize esoteric intel opcodes to avoid storing any personal information on their services, the multi-trillion dollar Apple, who designs their own CPUs no less, should be able to figure out how not to store identifying info on their servers. If apple needs identifying info to make their services work, that's fine, but they don't have to falsely sell themselves as a privacy company. It's not some unreachable standard. They haven't even taken basic steps, like offering crypto payments for certain services, or utilizing on-device storage and encrypted data in the cloud, or open sourcing components that transfer user info.
- theshrike79 4y agoIf Apple is not a privacy focused company for you, what is? Any examples?
- colordrops 4y agoRead the thread below, I gave an example and go into detail about Signal.
- fmajid 4y agoApple is close to breaking $10B annual advertising revenue. No advertising company is privacy-friendly, period, they just hobble competitors’ tracking, not their own.