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In terms of data protection I have friends who work at Google and at Apple. The one working at Apple was able to check their spouse's spending trend on App stor

by gerash 4y ago

In terms of data protection I have friends who work at Google and at Apple. The one working at Apple was able to check their spouse's spending trend on App store (granted they were working in a relevant department) while at Google reading your own data is not even granted without justification let alone an external user.

cromka 4y ago
Sounds like something worth whistleblowing to relevant authorities. Depending on where are they located, they could even be rewarded for it.
justapassenger 4y ago
Talking from experience - having a real privacy program at a big company is really hard. Like thousands for people and billions of dollars hard. And speculating - wouldn't surprise me too much that Apple is actually weak there. Apple's approach to privacy seems to be mainly "we just don't get your data on our servers", which could be resulting them in ignoring how to build an actual robust privacy program on their side for other things.
null_object 4y ago
> The one working at Apple was able to check their spouse's spending trend on App store You obviously could back this hearsay up with actual evidence I assume?
- Quarrel 4y ago
  "Sure, here's the screenshots I took of my wife violating her NDA, while handing them to me to post to HN." Like, sure it is hearsay, but what do you want from the guy? Most of us are sharing anecdotes that we hope we be helpful to other HNers, most of the time. If anything, I think a lot of people look to the experience of other users here as the advantage.
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    "Sure it's complete hearsay, but it plays well with HN readers so…"
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - viridian 4y ago
      Most points of plot are hearsay, and Hacker News isn't a court of law. If I tell you that while working at unnamed multi-national finance company we wrote software used for what I would consider incredibly immoral, but not illegal (in the US) purposes, I don't have any right to be believed, but I also expect most people would believe me, because they know how these things go in real life, oftentimes in their own organizations.
      - CharlesW 4y ago
        The difference between "a friend who worked at Apple said he could see his spouse's purchases" and "I worked at a company which wrote software used for immoral purposes" is that one is hearsay and one is not.
        howinteresting 4y ago
        Do you want the friend to show up on news dot ycombinator dot com? What entitles this forum to that? HN isn't a court of law.
        oliveshell 4y ago
        One is hearsay to the speaker. Unless proof is provided, they’re both hearsay all the same to the receiving audience.
- summerlight 4y ago
  How could they? They obviously don't want to face C-suite level retaliation who can make their life miserable over the next 10 years.
- gerash 4y ago
  This was a few years ago and I actually don’t want to get anyone in trouble
  - novok 4y ago
    IMO this is just an indicator of a bunch of incomplete policies, usually something you see in smaller immature companies. I would think apple would've tightened that up by now, not being allowed to look up info for people you know or personal things is usually explicitly against the rules and can get you fired at most places! The only time these rules might be able to be 'broken' is to get data to fix bugs with the person's consent.
_joel 4y ago
Sounds like they also breached laws, way to go.
pyentropy 4y ago
Sounds believable to me. Google is really good at data warehouse & database tech (BigQuery, BigTable, Spanner) and access management systems, as well as sturdy custom-built tools for internal use by employees. Even though it might not be intentional, Apple is lagging at such tooling.
- MisterPea 4y ago
  Yep. As another user pointed out, privacy tooling is a very hard problem across a large company. When you have a cloud platform, you're especially incentivized to build a robust solution for this. I would imagine AWS and Microsoft also have a thorough tooling solution.
summerlight 4y ago
Can't say for Apple, but can confirm that it's quite challenging to access arbitrary user data in Google without giving good justification and all the log accesses are subject to audit. This is not just a mere possibility; also heard that a few cases were actually escalated and resulted in termination because of inappropriate access.
frankfrank13 4y ago
Idk if thats super relevant is it? Will Apple employees be handcrafting ads for the users they can see?
- friedman23 4y ago
  It means that Apple's care of user data is surface level. Google is under much more scrutiny than Apple and thus takes better care of your data.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jiggawatts 4y ago
To be honest I’m not that worried about individual employee access. I’m much more concerned about systematic organisational access. Apple might have a handful of employees misuse data. Google will do it on purpose, at scale.
throwaway__122 4y ago
it's not really personal data but i've seen a few times in recent years how easy it is to get all the details you want about your competitors' adsense campaigns & strategies if you know someone who work in the right departement at Google.

by gerash 4y ago

cromka 4y ago

Sounds like something worth whistleblowing to relevant authorities. Depending on where are they located, they could even be rewarded for it.

justapassenger 4y ago

Talking from experience - having a real privacy program at a big company is really hard. Like thousands for people and billions of dollars hard. And speculating - wouldn't surprise me too much that Apple is actually weak there. Apple's approach to privacy seems to be mainly "we just don't get your data on our servers", which could be resulting them in ignoring how to build an actual robust privacy program on their side for other things.

null_object 4y ago

> The one working at Apple was able to check their spouse's spending trend on App store You obviously could back this hearsay up with actual evidence I assume?

Quarrel 4y ago
"Sure, here's the screenshots I took of my wife violating her NDA, while handing them to me to post to HN." Like, sure it is hearsay, but what do you want from the guy? Most of us are sharing anecdotes that we hope we be helpful to other HNers, most of the time. If anything, I think a lot of people look to the experience of other users here as the advantage.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  "Sure it's complete hearsay, but it plays well with HN readers so…"
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - viridian 4y ago
    Most points of plot are hearsay, and Hacker News isn't a court of law. If I tell you that while working at unnamed multi-national finance company we wrote software used for what I would consider incredibly immoral, but not illegal (in the US) purposes, I don't have any right to be believed, but I also expect most people would believe me, because they know how these things go in real life, oftentimes in their own organizations.
    - CharlesW 4y ago
      The difference between "a friend who worked at Apple said he could see his spouse's purchases" and "I worked at a company which wrote software used for immoral purposes" is that one is hearsay and one is not.
      - howinteresting 4y ago
        Do you want the friend to show up on news dot ycombinator dot com? What entitles this forum to that? HN isn't a court of law.
      - oliveshell 4y ago
        One is hearsay to the speaker. Unless proof is provided, they’re both hearsay all the same to the receiving audience.
summerlight 4y ago
How could they? They obviously don't want to face C-suite level retaliation who can make their life miserable over the next 10 years.
gerash 4y ago
This was a few years ago and I actually don’t want to get anyone in trouble
- novok 4y ago
  IMO this is just an indicator of a bunch of incomplete policies, usually something you see in smaller immature companies. I would think apple would've tightened that up by now, not being allowed to look up info for people you know or personal things is usually explicitly against the rules and can get you fired at most places! The only time these rules might be able to be 'broken' is to get data to fix bugs with the person's consent.

_joel 4y ago

Sounds like they also breached laws, way to go.

pyentropy 4y ago

Sounds believable to me. Google is really good at data warehouse & database tech (BigQuery, BigTable, Spanner) and access management systems, as well as sturdy custom-built tools for internal use by employees. Even though it might not be intentional, Apple is lagging at such tooling.

MisterPea 4y ago
Yep. As another user pointed out, privacy tooling is a very hard problem across a large company. When you have a cloud platform, you're especially incentivized to build a robust solution for this. I would imagine AWS and Microsoft also have a thorough tooling solution.

summerlight 4y ago

Can't say for Apple, but can confirm that it's quite challenging to access arbitrary user data in Google without giving good justification and all the log accesses are subject to audit. This is not just a mere possibility; also heard that a few cases were actually escalated and resulted in termination because of inappropriate access.

frankfrank13 4y ago

Idk if thats super relevant is it? Will Apple employees be handcrafting ads for the users they can see?

friedman23 4y ago
It means that Apple's care of user data is surface level. Google is under much more scrutiny than Apple and thus takes better care of your data.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jiggawatts 4y ago

To be honest I’m not that worried about individual employee access. I’m much more concerned about systematic organisational access. Apple might have a handful of employees misuse data. Google will do it on purpose, at scale.

throwaway__122 4y ago

it's not really personal data but i've seen a few times in recent years how easy it is to get all the details you want about your competitors' adsense campaigns & strategies if you know someone who work in the right departement at Google.