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Apple: Android is a tracking device [pdf]
- m-p-3 3y agoAll smartphones are. There's only so much you can do to cover your track. There's most likely always someone knowing where you are if your phone is powered on (or even powered off with Apple Find My network). https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/07/ios-15-find-my-network-can-find-your-iphone-when-it-is-powered-off/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/07/ios-15-find-my-network-can-fi...
- boxed 3y agoTalk about a false equivalency. One has spying built into the business model itself. The other does not.
- Frost1x 3y agoThe thing about business models is they are in never-ending flux, always shifting, optimizing, and re-optomizing seeking the most profitable model(s). If you have some business model either coincidentally or intentionally in alignment of consumer privacy, you're going to see marketing said alignment so long as it's a potential selling point (if it's not, it wont be advertised unless you can spin it). It doesn't mean anything though. It doesn't mean that either or any business has your interests in mind. Apple executives do not care about your privacy, no matter what narrative they weave. Apple probably banked on older ideals of consumer privacy and didn't anticipate businesses that disregarded user privacy and found ways of making money out of that process would be so successful. They were behind the curve and found a way to spin the narrative that the reality is they're just here to protect consumers all along. Perhaps they took a risk that differentiating on privacy would be more profitable years ago and are pushing it more now there's real consumer talk (a wise risk path IMHO). No matter what, it's all profit driven. At this point there could be a bit of a sunk cost fallacy and it would be pretty awkward for them to shift but that doesn't mean they won't . Consumers have shown by and large they just don't care about privacy or at least are willing to sacrifice it for other things. That's bad for Apple (and bad for consumers frankly, IMHO). I don't buy these narratives from any business propaganda machine and you shouldn't either. When push comes to shove, if Apple is down and forced to compete and privacy protection isn't profitable or they're not in a position to explore an alternative truly competitive position, they will jump ship in an instant and mimic the rest of industry. The only thing keeping these models at bay are a distribution of consumers that keep the competing models afloat. If Apple caves we'd rapidly go down the lack of privacy hole of spying functions until we reach legal protections. If Android caves, we'll see Apples continued model for awhile until the insatiable demand for revenue growth starts looking at initial principles like privacy as the last remaining revenue streams then we'll slowly start back with 2000s era advertising back to current and future dystopian levels of privacy invasion. The difference is just a time factor here, so long as large enough segments of the consumer market will cave to these ideals (which has already been proven). I suppose some business could just add a line item "privacy tax" that you just pay for depending on the valuation of your privacy so to keep your privacy you clearly pay that tax so the business continues to get its expected revenue growth from said privacy invasion without actually invading your privacy. To some degree this is already baked into higher costs for many Apple products but as markets optimize I anticipate we'll eventually get to such a point, just like we have ad-free and ad-infested service options.
- svvvy 3y agoMaybe I don't understand your point, but isn't this similarly false equivalency? The business models are for-profit and subject to change. But despite that, right now, there is a material difference in privacy. Also I think it a bit humorous - "privacy tax" to me is when services like Google offer services at a cost to my privacy.
- boxed 3y ago> The thing about business models is they are in never-ending flux, always shifting, optimizing, and re-optomizing seeking the most profitable model(s). Googles hasn't since the start. It's ads. Which leads to abuse and spying.
- jon-wood 3y agoFind My doesn’t actually map the device to an individual. Someone might know where the device which is currently broadcasting an ID is, but that ID rotates frequently, and can only be resolved to you using keys held against your Apple ID. The entire thing is specifically designed such that objects being tracked by Find My can’t be resolved to individuals, because the network depends upon publicly broadcasting those object’s IDs via Bluetooth.
- rgrs 3y agoCan ID be mapped to IMEI and by extension SIM or mobile number? If yes, then it can be resolved to individuals.
- Cu3PO42 3y agoNo, the "Find My" identifiers cannot be mapped to an IMEI except by the user to whose account the device is registered.
- rekoil 3y agoIt can not. The master private key used by the system is generated locally and never leaves your Apple devices in a state that anyone except your devices can read it. The master key is used to derive an AirTag specific private key which is provisioned to the AirTag and is in turn combined with an increasing counter which generates a third private key that's never stored anywhere. The ID broadcast is the public key of this third key. It changes every 30 minutes or 1 hour, I forget which. Other devices see this key, use it to encrypt their own location, and upload that encrypted blob along with the public key to Find My, and in order for Apple to even know which account the encrypted blob they can't decrypt belongs to I have to actually request the location of my AirTag by locally deriving the keypair it used for a certain point in time.
- rekoil 3y agoYeah, the GPS location (of the finder device) is encrypted using the ID as encryption key before uploading to Apples servers, so unless the owner of the device actually looks for it, Apple doesn't even know who the encrypted blob they can't read belongs to.
- brookst 3y agoFind My does not leak user or device location to Apple or other users. The greatest info leak is “there is a find my device near me”.
- rekoil 3y ago> The greatest info leak is “there is a find my device near me”. Which is anonymous and the identity changes every 30 minutes or an hour, I forget which.
- imglorp 3y agoForget about all the app and OS, maybe they're clean and maybe not. There's also the cell layer, which constantly negotiates with cell towers for sector and power as normal idling. So they know your location at least to tower (CGI), sector and delay (CGITA) and sometimes trilaterated (UTDOA) from ~1000m down to 10m accuracy. The towers' base station controllers need to keep logs anyway, so the cell company has records of your rough location. Then there's bluetooth, wifi, audio beacons, optical, magnetic and inertial nav, all emitting or recieving you move through the world. None of this requires GPS, some requires app participation, some doesn't. All phones are location and surveillance devices. Leave it home if you're serious.
- cloudripper 3y agoThe positive side to tracking and a cell layer anecdote - cell layer forensics are often utilized in search and rescue contexts. I have seen this data accessed (through legal procedure in the US) and utilized to save lives of the missing and to provide closure to the families/friends of the missing.
- alpaca128 3y agoOn the flipside e.g. in Germany this has been used to track down creators of illegal graffiti, using a law that is intended for terrorism and other heavy crimes. We can allow search and rescue missions without having to also accept abuse of power.
- fsflover 3y ago> All smartphones are. My Librem 5 isn't.
- m-p-3 3y agoYour carrier can follow your location by triangulating your position from your SIM ID.
- fsflover 3y agoOnly if the modem hardware kill switch is on. I can always make sure I'm not tracked whenever I need it.
- colinsane 3y agoplus as anyone doing navigation with these open source phones knows, 3gpp location is embarrassingly low resolution without a supplemental source like WiFi SSID visibility, which has to be measured client-side. plus cell networks are asymmetric (SNR is higher from tower -> cell than from cell -> tower) so all else equal triangulation on the tower side should be even lower resolution.
- Y_Y 3y agoAndroid isn't a device though. Airtags are tracking devices. Android phones can be used for tracking, but that's because of phones, not because of Android.
- alexfromapex 3y agoMy impression is that it’s metonymy not meant to be taken literally
- Y_Y 3y agoI guess so, but it's an awkward use, like if you said "the oval office is a bad president".
- fsflover 3y agoIt is because of Android: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261
- hospitalJail 3y agoThis is so crazy to see. Usually when Apple faces the public, everything is super curated to sound pro-consumer, even if its anti-consumer. Sure this PDF doesnt venture far from it, they still paint Apple in the prettiest picture, but the terminology shows that Apple is basically doing the same thing as google but with slightly different methods to blur it. Heck, we don't actually know what is going on inside an iPhone, they could be combining accounts and sending data to Cambridge Analytica for all we know. At least with a degoogled Android, you know exactly where everything is going. This is the classic gaslighting that I've come to expect.
- HumblyTossed 3y ago> Heck, we don't actually know what is going on inside an iPhone, they could be combining accounts and sending data to Cambridge Analytica for all we know. You have a point. Apple depends so much on security by obscurity.
- brookst 3y agoThat’s true of everything you haven’t compiled yourself, using a compiler you wrote and bootstrapped yourself. There is no technical proof that any of the software or hardware we use every day is trustworthy. There is, however, incentive alignment that makes it unlikely that companies do wild and crazy things.
- rekoil 3y ago> That’s true of everything you haven’t compiled yourself, using a compiler you wrote and bootstrapped yourself. Don't forget the hardware you built yourself. [1] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine
- fsflover 3y ago> That’s true of everything you haven’t compiled yourself Except if your software is reproducible: https://reproducible-builds.org/ https://reproducible-builds.org/
- RistrettoMike 3y agoTitle could probably use a “2013”
- lutrinus 3y agoIt hasn’t changed though, has it?
- TrickyRick 3y agoIt really has, Android actually has privacy controls now which they definitely didn't in 2013. Developers can't request your location 24/7 without you even being aware of it like they could 10 years ago.
- isodev 3y agoThe point of the slides was Google, not third party developers. I feel things have gotten worst. Google controls not only the device itself, but also most people’s browser and tools when they decide to use something else.
- fsflover 3y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261 Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS (therecord.media) 816 points by gormandizer on March 30, 2021 | 445 comments
- RistrettoMike 3y agoI guess my point is that I think even Apple likely has different policies or talking points around this now as opposed to a decade ago. Probably some more and some less troublesome than what's shown here.
- cultureswitch 3y agoI'd rather have Apple's hypocritical "only we may spy on our users" approach than Google's. But anyway, I use GrapheneOS.
- eimrine 3y agoWhy is Apple's approach better and what is really different?
- Alifatisk 3y agoI would guess is because Apple and Google have different business models, Google is an ad company specializing on collecting info while Apple is selling hardware and software.
- fsflover 3y agohttps://searchads.apple.com/ https://searchads.apple.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433
- Alifatisk 3y agoWhat does this prove? That I was wrong about my assumption because an article about Apple having incorrect default setting?
- ubermonkey 3y agoI don't think you really need this explained to you.
- kopollo 3y agoWhat's wrong with someone watching us? Aren't we already competing on social media to show where we are
- rib3ye 3y agoDo you build the binary from source?
- retskrad 3y agoI mean, Android is extremely invasive and Google collects a ton of data on you. That's why you don't see Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Evan Spiegel and other prominent figures use Android devices.
- shtam 3y agoZuck uses a Samsung Galaxy
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- maxehmookau 3y agoI love that the presentation was called "..._Final.key". Even the best business people haven't solved that problem.
- ubermonkey 3y agoIt's a whole thing, right? There EXIST tools to do versioning of office docs, same as they do with code, but there's almost zero usage of them in offices.
- user_7832 3y agoOn a similar note, do you know any tools for version control with changes visible for something like word? There's "track changes" but the UI isn't the best.
- ksec 3y agoThe convention on HN to put the year in the title for older articles, so this is missing 2013.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38113226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38113226
- Frankclarassa 3y ago[dead]