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OP misconstrues an iOS tracking dialog to support their complaint: > The strange thing is that Apple introduced strict measures in iOS 14.5 to prevent develope

OP misconstrues an iOS tracking dialog to support their complaint: > The strange thing is that Apple introduced strict measures in iOS 14.5 to prevent developers from fingerprinting users. The dialog text in their screenshot reads: > Allow “App” to track your activity across other companies’ apps and sites? Users refusing this permission are not prohibiting tracking by the company that issued the dialog. They are prohibiting the company from tracking users beyond the boundary of their corporation. Apple’s App Store app is within the boundary of Apple Corporation, and so the tracking dialog shown is not relevant to their complaint. (I have no viewpoint to offer on OP’s argument beyond the logical reasoning error described above.)

tinus_hn 4y ago
Also Apple doesn’t have any incentive to ‘fingerprint’ App Store users because they are either logged in or using a unique identifier.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  Sure they do. What if they switch accounts, usernames, phones, etc. More data is better.
  - tinus_hn 4y ago
    If you do that, you lose all your apps and settings. Ergo, nobody does that. If you switch phones, you transfer the account. Also, Apple tracking what you do in their App Store is perhaps not very nice but doesn’t affect anyone in any detectable way so no normal person is going to go through the effort to avoid it, if they even know it is happening.
    - altairprime 4y ago
      This argument’s logical error is declaring that an inconvenience takes higher precedence than the desired outcome. For example, I am seriously considering doing exactly what you describe as “nobody does that” — having to repurchase all my apps and redo all my settings — in order to complete my transgender name change. Apple refuses to purge my old deadname’s iCloud email address, and so if I want to remove it, I’ll need to start a new Apple account and re-purchase all of my apps and content.
      - judge2020 4y ago
        It's extremely easy to disregard and disable any mention of your iCloud email address. You can set an apple id's email itself in settings -> user -> "name, phone numbers, email" which changes what nearly every part of the OS refers to. I forgot I even had one until I read this comment.
      - tinus_hn 4y ago
        You are an extreme outlier, Apple is not going to risk their reputation fingerprinting users just so they can track you. If you truly have a request like this, send an email to the person in the executive team responsible for Apple accounts, they’ll probably have executive relations fix it for you.
  - altairprime 4y ago
    This argument’s logical error is presenting unprovable beliefs as if they were facts. Apple may or may not care if users switch accounts. Only Apple confidential knowledge can prove or disprove this argument with certainty. In the absence of certainty, a best-faith effort must be made to determine whether their actions support or contradict these assertions. The claim “Sure they do” is unsupported both by available evidence and by a good faith interpretation of their material actions. Apple’s public statements and app store policies do not support the assertion “More data is better”. There is no indication that Apple is performing enrichment of accounts using third-party data.
    - Eisenstein 4y ago
      This argument’s logical error is approaching a response to a statements as if it exists in isolation. The person you are replying to was merely offering an example to contradict a blanket statement without a factual basis, essentially that Apple does not track users because the user is already logged in. The respondent presented a situation in which that reason would not apply. Also, your way of engaging people in this way is annoying -- specifically starting every reply with 'This argument’s logical error' and then coming up with a seems-right-at-a-glance breakdown of their argument's faults. Are you doing it on purpose to annoy people?
    - blowski 4y ago
      Starting every comment with “this argument’s logical error is…” is nauseating and hinders good conversation. Your point would sound better without it.
      - altairprime 4y ago
        Everyone’s using my comment about the OP post as a launching point for their own discussions and arguments about Apple, that would have earned their own standing as top-level threads — and ideally, some would have displaced mine. So I certainly didn’t expect to wake up and see my comment earning so much attention. Hooray, I suppose. Anyways, I stand by my original point and the reiteration of it demonstrated in that chain of replies: Unsupported arguments based on misconstrued statements and logical fallacies waste all our time here at HN. Do better, please.
  - s3p 4y ago
    What? If they switch devices and accounts, it doesn't matter WHAT is being "fingerprinted'... there's no way a unique identifier will persist across that type of change. Points for the theory though.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      The context here is "fingerprinting" you based on what your fingers do. So that will persist across devices and accounts. And before you say that's crazy, location information can mean they only need to distinguish a handful of people at a time.
  - threeseed 4y ago
    I remember credit cards being only usable by one AppleID. So switching accounts would not only mean you lose all of your App Store purchases, iCloud data etc. It would mean having to get a new credit card. That would make the likelihood of this scenario happening being pretty slim.
- altairprime 4y ago
  This argument’s logical reasoning error is to claim the absence of all incentive due to the absence of one incentive. Apple has access to the logged-in account’s properties, as you assert, but this does not rule out Apple having other incentives for tracking.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- m463 4y ago
  you can use an apple device without logging into icloud
helsinkiandrew 4y ago
> I have no viewpoint to offer on OP’s argument. This doesn't look like tracking or fingerprinting at all to me - they're logging user interaction (that many apps and websites have done for decades). Even if they didn't do this just about every click you make in the App Store results in a query to their backend for more information, presumably with the account id (so family, regional, parental control works).
amelius 4y ago
Whatever Apple is doing, it should be possible to buy a phone and not have it phone home without permission. And you should be able to use the phone without ever contacting the vendor again. Otherwise you bought a service, not a product. Also, I recall a case where MacOS was asking Apple permission whenever the user wished to start an executable. This is nuts.
- _Algernon_ 4y ago
  That exists. It's called a dumbphone
- coldtea 4y ago
  The line is blurry with smartphones, as all kinds of "smart" functionality IS a service, and depends on contacting the vendor. >Also, I recall a case where MacOS was asking Apple permission whenever the user wished to start an executable. This is nuts. Not that nuts. It's intended to be able to blacklist malware and such and retroactively disable it, through notarization (basically, registering apps to Apple and them getting a kind of fingerprint). They could have done it with a local cache (and they probably do in some capacity), but it would still need to ask/sync every now and then.
  - amelius 4y ago
    > The line is blurry with smartphones, as all kinds of "smart" functionality IS a service, and depends on contacting the vendor. No, because you can make your phone work with other service providers. The dependence on the original hardware vendor is artificial. > It's intended to be able to blacklist malware Choice of blacklists, content filters etc. is also orthogonal to the vendor.
    - simonh 4y ago
      And if you want a phone that works that way, they do exist. Personally I'm happy to offload most of that to one service provider, so I'm happy to use an iPhone. If that changes, I'll look elsewhere. Your mileage may vary.
    - 4y ago

tinus_hn 4y ago

Also Apple doesn’t have any incentive to ‘fingerprint’ App Store users because they are either logged in or using a unique identifier.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
Sure they do. What if they switch accounts, usernames, phones, etc. More data is better.
- tinus_hn 4y ago
  If you do that, you lose all your apps and settings. Ergo, nobody does that. If you switch phones, you transfer the account. Also, Apple tracking what you do in their App Store is perhaps not very nice but doesn’t affect anyone in any detectable way so no normal person is going to go through the effort to avoid it, if they even know it is happening.
  - altairprime 4y ago
    This argument’s logical error is declaring that an inconvenience takes higher precedence than the desired outcome. For example, I am seriously considering doing exactly what you describe as “nobody does that” — having to repurchase all my apps and redo all my settings — in order to complete my transgender name change. Apple refuses to purge my old deadname’s iCloud email address, and so if I want to remove it, I’ll need to start a new Apple account and re-purchase all of my apps and content.
    - judge2020 4y ago
      It's extremely easy to disregard and disable any mention of your iCloud email address. You can set an apple id's email itself in settings -> user -> "name, phone numbers, email" which changes what nearly every part of the OS refers to. I forgot I even had one until I read this comment.
    - tinus_hn 4y ago
      You are an extreme outlier, Apple is not going to risk their reputation fingerprinting users just so they can track you. If you truly have a request like this, send an email to the person in the executive team responsible for Apple accounts, they’ll probably have executive relations fix it for you.
- altairprime 4y ago
  This argument’s logical error is presenting unprovable beliefs as if they were facts. Apple may or may not care if users switch accounts. Only Apple confidential knowledge can prove or disprove this argument with certainty. In the absence of certainty, a best-faith effort must be made to determine whether their actions support or contradict these assertions. The claim “Sure they do” is unsupported both by available evidence and by a good faith interpretation of their material actions. Apple’s public statements and app store policies do not support the assertion “More data is better”. There is no indication that Apple is performing enrichment of accounts using third-party data.
  - Eisenstein 4y ago
    This argument’s logical error is approaching a response to a statements as if it exists in isolation. The person you are replying to was merely offering an example to contradict a blanket statement without a factual basis, essentially that Apple does not track users because the user is already logged in. The respondent presented a situation in which that reason would not apply. Also, your way of engaging people in this way is annoying -- specifically starting every reply with 'This argument’s logical error' and then coming up with a seems-right-at-a-glance breakdown of their argument's faults. Are you doing it on purpose to annoy people?
  - blowski 4y ago
    Starting every comment with “this argument’s logical error is…” is nauseating and hinders good conversation. Your point would sound better without it.
    - altairprime 4y ago
      Everyone’s using my comment about the OP post as a launching point for their own discussions and arguments about Apple, that would have earned their own standing as top-level threads — and ideally, some would have displaced mine. So I certainly didn’t expect to wake up and see my comment earning so much attention. Hooray, I suppose. Anyways, I stand by my original point and the reiteration of it demonstrated in that chain of replies: Unsupported arguments based on misconstrued statements and logical fallacies waste all our time here at HN. Do better, please.
- s3p 4y ago
  What? If they switch devices and accounts, it doesn't matter WHAT is being "fingerprinted'... there's no way a unique identifier will persist across that type of change. Points for the theory though.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    The context here is "fingerprinting" you based on what your fingers do. So that will persist across devices and accounts. And before you say that's crazy, location information can mean they only need to distinguish a handful of people at a time.
- threeseed 4y ago
  I remember credit cards being only usable by one AppleID. So switching accounts would not only mean you lose all of your App Store purchases, iCloud data etc. It would mean having to get a new credit card. That would make the likelihood of this scenario happening being pretty slim.
altairprime 4y ago
This argument’s logical reasoning error is to claim the absence of all incentive due to the absence of one incentive. Apple has access to the logged-in account’s properties, as you assert, but this does not rule out Apple having other incentives for tracking.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
m463 4y ago
you can use an apple device without logging into icloud

helsinkiandrew 4y ago

> I have no viewpoint to offer on OP’s argument. This doesn't look like tracking or fingerprinting at all to me - they're logging user interaction (that many apps and websites have done for decades). Even if they didn't do this just about every click you make in the App Store results in a query to their backend for more information, presumably with the account id (so family, regional, parental control works).

amelius 4y ago

Whatever Apple is doing, it should be possible to buy a phone and not have it phone home without permission. And you should be able to use the phone without ever contacting the vendor again. Otherwise you bought a service, not a product. Also, I recall a case where MacOS was asking Apple permission whenever the user wished to start an executable. This is nuts.

_Algernon_ 4y ago
That exists. It's called a dumbphone
coldtea 4y ago
The line is blurry with smartphones, as all kinds of "smart" functionality IS a service, and depends on contacting the vendor. >Also, I recall a case where MacOS was asking Apple permission whenever the user wished to start an executable. This is nuts. Not that nuts. It's intended to be able to blacklist malware and such and retroactively disable it, through notarization (basically, registering apps to Apple and them getting a kind of fingerprint). They could have done it with a local cache (and they probably do in some capacity), but it would still need to ask/sync every now and then.
- amelius 4y ago
  > The line is blurry with smartphones, as all kinds of "smart" functionality IS a service, and depends on contacting the vendor. No, because you can make your phone work with other service providers. The dependence on the original hardware vendor is artificial. > It's intended to be able to blacklist malware Choice of blacklists, content filters etc. is also orthogonal to the vendor.
  - simonh 4y ago
    And if you want a phone that works that way, they do exist. Personally I'm happy to offload most of that to one service provider, so I'm happy to use an iPhone. If that changes, I'll look elsewhere. Your mileage may vary.
  - 4y ago