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This is a very important revelation for people to have: the deal with Apple is they have complete control over your identity and data. It's slightly better than

This is a very important revelation for people to have: the deal with Apple is they have complete control over your identity and data. It's slightly better than the deal with Google, FB, & Microsoft where they both control and sell your data to the highest bidder. Apple's position on privacy is somewhat of an illusion and could disappear whenever they decide. Remember the CSAM debacle? https://www.wired.com/story/apple-photo-scanning-csam-communication-safety-messages/ https://www.wired.com/story/apple-photo-scanning-csam-commun... I still think Apple is doing the best in the marketplace with respect to security and privacy, but if we're being honest they're playing the role of benevolent dictator.

GoofballJones 3y ago
The thing is, the terms-of-service they give you that you agree to. That thing everyone skips. In it, Apple specifically says they don't track you or sell your data (but as you say, that could change). This is why when they do have any breach of that agreement...like when they said that some humans listen to Siri requests to make sure it's being accurate, they were sued for it. People hold their feet to the fire over anything they may flub. And since Apple doubles down on saying they're the best at privacy, more and more people are chomping at the bit to sue them or call them out on it. They have to tread carefully. Google and Microsoft on the other hand blatantly say "yeah, we look over your shoulder at everything you do on the Internet...you know, to "help" you find what you're looking for or to feed more of it to you. And also, our advertisers would be very interested too". I mean, read THEIR TOS and marvel at it.
- AnonCoward42 3y ago
  Of all of them isn't Google the only one that is actually incentivized to keep the data they get on you to themselves, because of their business model? It sounds bad for Google when they sell their data to others, so they'd feed a competitor for personalized ads. I might be wrong tho. It's obvious, but I want to make clear, that this doesn't make Google less scary or more trustworty. Avoiding Google is still advised imo. edit: replace "private" with "to themselves"
  - spogbiper 3y ago
    Right as I understand it at least. Google's business model has never been to sell your data, despite how persistent that idea seems to be. Your data is Google's most valuable resource and they should be extremely motivated to protect it.
  - dwaite 3y ago
    Google's primary interest is in building a relationship with you so it understands the kinds of information you want, and can sell people on preferential order of getting information to you. They are primarily an information marketplace, and offer people free services so that they'll participate in that market. Their secondary interest is in things like Adsense and in products like Doubleclick, which are where you worry about tracking and them building a behavioral persona of what you do across the entire internet. However, Google doesn't need to even see this persona themselves - they just want to get the best ads in front of you to make marketing departments happy. Ideas like "privacy sandbox" are partially driven by this desire - give Google the value of gathering and correlating existing data and more, without the brand impact or risks of holding that data themselves. The thing they give up is the ability to do cluster analysis across people/demographics to understand where and why an ad is performing. Targeting of advertisements remains a manual process and not a machine learning driven one.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
  Can you clarify “don’t track you”? Apple charges its advertisers for ad clicks and reports the conversion rate, so whether you make a purchase after clicking one of their ads is definitely tracked (conversion is the main big money tracking data point that Facebook and Google care about).
  - dwaite 3y ago
    Reporting a conversion rate is not the same as reporting that _you_ as a particular user converted. For advertising to remain a viable way to support portions of the web, advertisers need to understand the effectiveness of their programs and marketplaces need to understand the exposure. Specifications like PCM are competing mostly around how to provide that, although there are also efforts to sandbox local personas to make ad presentation decisions on-device. Personally I'm not so much against those efforts, as it doesn't seem like a betrayal for my web browser to try to select information it thinks I'd more likely care about - as long as I can also choose how/if it does so.
    - account42 3y ago
      > For advertising to remain a viable way to support portions of the web I'd rather advertising NOT remain a viable way to support portions of the web
- YetAnotherNick 3y ago
  The amount of false information in this message is staggering. Apple never said they won't track you. Apple specifically says they collect this data[1]: > Usage Data. Data about your activity on and use of our offerings, such as app launches within our services, including browsing history; search history; product interaction; crash data, performance and other diagnostic data; and other usage data. > Health Information. Data relating to the health status of an individual, including data related to one’s physical or mental health or condition. > Financial Information. Details including salary, income, and assets information where collected, and information related to Apple-branded financial offerings Also, Siri hadn't been sued for breaking TOS AFAIK, but they were sued for leaking health records which they couldn't even after getting permission from the user. Also google selling user data is largely a myth. [1]: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/
  - dwaite 3y ago
    > Apple never said they won't track you. Apple specifically says they collect this data[1]: Indeed. Apple's concerns are about "third-party" tracking, e.g. multiple parties sharing information about you and building a persona without your awareness or consent. They fully _expect_ users to build first-party relationships, such as having Apple understand, save, and perhaps provide insights or fraud detection around the transaction log of your usage of your Apple Card. This is why Google's reaction to App Tracking Transparency was to effectively say "we'll be fine, we have lots of services, and we might push people to log in for features." This is also why Facebook's reaction was to freak out - because they had no legitimate relationships on which to base their web surveillance advertising product on, especially when it was being used to select advertisements for non-Facebook-users. For first party relationships, the App Store has "privacy labels", to document the data you collect, save and share with processors. Behavioral information is around sharing correlating factors that would be used for third-party tracking.
onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
Google doesn't sell your data. It allows advertisers to bid on you. Apple will do the same thing.
- ShaunK 3y ago
  Apple already does the same thing. Apple Search Ads is not limited to the same restrictions that Facebook and Google are with regards to iOS tracking and reporting for advertising attribution.
- ec109685 3y ago
  Google also collects your data outside Google owned experiences.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    So does Apple now. What's your point?
    - ec109685 3y ago
      What’s an example?
HWR_14 3y ago
Remember that Apple's "debacle" there was to comply with US law. Their issue was that (at the time) they were responsible for encrypted data backup's contents. So they could either scan on your device before backing up, or scan on the cloud. Scanning on your device, while it sounds scarier, actually offered more privacy protections, because otherwise their cloud needed to see your unencrypted data. And it only scanned on your device if you wanted to move things to the cloud.
- sneak 3y ago
  This is false. Apple already scans everything on iCloud for banned material serverside, as iCloud Photos and iMessage are, for most people, not e2ee, and never will be so long as e2ee is opt-in. Even if you enable the e2ee features rolled out in the last 12 months, your iMessages are still not e2ee unless all of your conversation partners have as well. Also there is no US law demanding scanning of user data, your opening assertion refers to nonexistent requirements.
  - astrange 3y ago
    It's more about proposed EU laws than US laws.
  - shuckles 3y ago
    Basically every claim in your comment is wrong: * iCloud Photo Library was not scanned for CSAM content at the time of the announcement, which Apple confirmed at the time. * iMessage E2E encryption is not opt-in. There isn't even an opt-out. * The "E2EE features" you might be referring to is Advanced Data Protection for iCloud Backups, which is not related to the iMessage protocol at all. You don't have any guarantees about what your recipients are doing with the data you send them, ever. There is US law which is ambiguous about the requirement on data providers to check content for CSAM material, which many have interpreted to require a check. This is why every other major cloud provider does scan for the content.
    - sneak 3y ago
      > iMessage E2E encryption is not opt-in. There isn't even an opt-out. This is incorrect. iCloud Backup escrows endpoint keys for "Messages in iCloud" to Apple every night in a non-e2ee fashion, which means that a non-endpoint has the keys, which means that iMessage is not e2ee. Apple has real-time access to plaintext of almost every single iMessage that transits their service. The only case in which they don't is where both users either don't have iCloud Backup enabled or both users have enabled e2ee iCloud Backup.
lanza 3y ago
> Google, FB, & Microsoft where they both control and sell your data to the highest bidder. Can we please keep this nonsense to lower quality sites like reddit? I like to pretend hacker news hasn't degraded this far yet.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  While not technically correct "sell your data to the highest bidder" is close enough to what Google and FB are doing, and the distinction is irrelevant for most people.
  - rossjudson 3y ago
    Please expand, and perhaps explain how Apple is different.
- ilyt 3y ago
  Ad networks are running realtime bidding for ad space already in case you didn't know. At the very least Google and FB got punished for doing that already in the past
  - fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
    Apple also runs this kind of bidding now: https://searchads.apple.com/best-practices/bidding https://searchads.apple.com/best-practices/bidding If that’s not “selling your data”, we need to be more specific about what we are talking about.
l33t233372 3y ago
The PSI system was pretty cool in my opinion. It was a very neat algorithm for obtaining information about set intersection in a privacy preserving way.
adrr 3y ago
Where do I buy FB, Google and MSFT user data?

GoofballJones 3y ago

The thing is, the terms-of-service they give you that you agree to. That thing everyone skips. In it, Apple specifically says they don't track you or sell your data (but as you say, that could change). This is why when they do have any breach of that agreement...like when they said that some humans listen to Siri requests to make sure it's being accurate, they were sued for it. People hold their feet to the fire over anything they may flub. And since Apple doubles down on saying they're the best at privacy, more and more people are chomping at the bit to sue them or call them out on it. They have to tread carefully. Google and Microsoft on the other hand blatantly say "yeah, we look over your shoulder at everything you do on the Internet...you know, to "help" you find what you're looking for or to feed more of it to you. And also, our advertisers would be very interested too". I mean, read THEIR TOS and marvel at it.

AnonCoward42 3y ago
Of all of them isn't Google the only one that is actually incentivized to keep the data they get on you to themselves, because of their business model? It sounds bad for Google when they sell their data to others, so they'd feed a competitor for personalized ads. I might be wrong tho. It's obvious, but I want to make clear, that this doesn't make Google less scary or more trustworty. Avoiding Google is still advised imo. edit: replace "private" with "to themselves"
- spogbiper 3y ago
  Right as I understand it at least. Google's business model has never been to sell your data, despite how persistent that idea seems to be. Your data is Google's most valuable resource and they should be extremely motivated to protect it.
- dwaite 3y ago
  Google's primary interest is in building a relationship with you so it understands the kinds of information you want, and can sell people on preferential order of getting information to you. They are primarily an information marketplace, and offer people free services so that they'll participate in that market. Their secondary interest is in things like Adsense and in products like Doubleclick, which are where you worry about tracking and them building a behavioral persona of what you do across the entire internet. However, Google doesn't need to even see this persona themselves - they just want to get the best ads in front of you to make marketing departments happy. Ideas like "privacy sandbox" are partially driven by this desire - give Google the value of gathering and correlating existing data and more, without the brand impact or risks of holding that data themselves. The thing they give up is the ability to do cluster analysis across people/demographics to understand where and why an ad is performing. Targeting of advertisements remains a manual process and not a machine learning driven one.
fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
Can you clarify “don’t track you”? Apple charges its advertisers for ad clicks and reports the conversion rate, so whether you make a purchase after clicking one of their ads is definitely tracked (conversion is the main big money tracking data point that Facebook and Google care about).
- dwaite 3y ago
  Reporting a conversion rate is not the same as reporting that _you_ as a particular user converted. For advertising to remain a viable way to support portions of the web, advertisers need to understand the effectiveness of their programs and marketplaces need to understand the exposure. Specifications like PCM are competing mostly around how to provide that, although there are also efforts to sandbox local personas to make ad presentation decisions on-device. Personally I'm not so much against those efforts, as it doesn't seem like a betrayal for my web browser to try to select information it thinks I'd more likely care about - as long as I can also choose how/if it does so.
  - account42 3y ago
    > For advertising to remain a viable way to support portions of the web I'd rather advertising NOT remain a viable way to support portions of the web
YetAnotherNick 3y ago
The amount of false information in this message is staggering. Apple never said they won't track you. Apple specifically says they collect this data[1]: > Usage Data. Data about your activity on and use of our offerings, such as app launches within our services, including browsing history; search history; product interaction; crash data, performance and other diagnostic data; and other usage data. > Health Information. Data relating to the health status of an individual, including data related to one’s physical or mental health or condition. > Financial Information. Details including salary, income, and assets information where collected, and information related to Apple-branded financial offerings Also, Siri hadn't been sued for breaking TOS AFAIK, but they were sued for leaking health records which they couldn't even after getting permission from the user. Also google selling user data is largely a myth. [1]: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/
- dwaite 3y ago
  > Apple never said they won't track you. Apple specifically says they collect this data[1]: Indeed. Apple's concerns are about "third-party" tracking, e.g. multiple parties sharing information about you and building a persona without your awareness or consent. They fully _expect_ users to build first-party relationships, such as having Apple understand, save, and perhaps provide insights or fraud detection around the transaction log of your usage of your Apple Card. This is why Google's reaction to App Tracking Transparency was to effectively say "we'll be fine, we have lots of services, and we might push people to log in for features." This is also why Facebook's reaction was to freak out - because they had no legitimate relationships on which to base their web surveillance advertising product on, especially when it was being used to select advertisements for non-Facebook-users. For first party relationships, the App Store has "privacy labels", to document the data you collect, save and share with processors. Behavioral information is around sharing correlating factors that would be used for third-party tracking.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago

Google doesn't sell your data. It allows advertisers to bid on you. Apple will do the same thing.

ShaunK 3y ago
Apple already does the same thing. Apple Search Ads is not limited to the same restrictions that Facebook and Google are with regards to iOS tracking and reporting for advertising attribution.
ec109685 3y ago
Google also collects your data outside Google owned experiences.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  So does Apple now. What's your point?
  - ec109685 3y ago
    What’s an example?

HWR_14 3y ago

Remember that Apple's "debacle" there was to comply with US law. Their issue was that (at the time) they were responsible for encrypted data backup's contents. So they could either scan on your device before backing up, or scan on the cloud. Scanning on your device, while it sounds scarier, actually offered more privacy protections, because otherwise their cloud needed to see your unencrypted data. And it only scanned on your device if you wanted to move things to the cloud.

sneak 3y ago
This is false. Apple already scans everything on iCloud for banned material serverside, as iCloud Photos and iMessage are, for most people, not e2ee, and never will be so long as e2ee is opt-in. Even if you enable the e2ee features rolled out in the last 12 months, your iMessages are still not e2ee unless all of your conversation partners have as well. Also there is no US law demanding scanning of user data, your opening assertion refers to nonexistent requirements.
- astrange 3y ago
  It's more about proposed EU laws than US laws.
- shuckles 3y ago
  Basically every claim in your comment is wrong: * iCloud Photo Library was not scanned for CSAM content at the time of the announcement, which Apple confirmed at the time. * iMessage E2E encryption is not opt-in. There isn't even an opt-out. * The "E2EE features" you might be referring to is Advanced Data Protection for iCloud Backups, which is not related to the iMessage protocol at all. You don't have any guarantees about what your recipients are doing with the data you send them, ever. There is US law which is ambiguous about the requirement on data providers to check content for CSAM material, which many have interpreted to require a check. This is why every other major cloud provider does scan for the content.
  - sneak 3y ago
    > iMessage E2E encryption is not opt-in. There isn't even an opt-out. This is incorrect. iCloud Backup escrows endpoint keys for "Messages in iCloud" to Apple every night in a non-e2ee fashion, which means that a non-endpoint has the keys, which means that iMessage is not e2ee. Apple has real-time access to plaintext of almost every single iMessage that transits their service. The only case in which they don't is where both users either don't have iCloud Backup enabled or both users have enabled e2ee iCloud Backup.

lanza 3y ago

> Google, FB, & Microsoft where they both control and sell your data to the highest bidder. Can we please keep this nonsense to lower quality sites like reddit? I like to pretend hacker news hasn't degraded this far yet.

HDThoreaun 3y ago
While not technically correct "sell your data to the highest bidder" is close enough to what Google and FB are doing, and the distinction is irrelevant for most people.
- rossjudson 3y ago
  Please expand, and perhaps explain how Apple is different.
ilyt 3y ago
Ad networks are running realtime bidding for ad space already in case you didn't know. At the very least Google and FB got punished for doing that already in the past
- fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
  Apple also runs this kind of bidding now: https://searchads.apple.com/best-practices/bidding https://searchads.apple.com/best-practices/bidding If that’s not “selling your data”, we need to be more specific about what we are talking about.

l33t233372 3y ago

The PSI system was pretty cool in my opinion. It was a very neat algorithm for obtaining information about set intersection in a privacy preserving way.

adrr 3y ago

Where do I buy FB, Google and MSFT user data?