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The article doesn’t actually explain why ‘You Might Want It Off’ beyond: If you don’t want your device to be included in that tally of nearby contacts for othe
by jrmg 3y ago
The article doesn’t actually explain why ‘You Might Want It Off’ beyond:
If you don’t want your device to be included in that tally of nearby contacts for others, you can toggle it off. Just remember that leaving it on won’t tell your friends—or Apple—anything about you personally.
- andy_xor_andrew 3y ago> If you don’t want your device to be included in that tally of nearby contacts for others, you can toggle it off. Just remember that leaving it on won’t tell your friends—or Apple—anything about you personally. That sentence seems like a self-contradiction? If it didn't tell my friends--or Apple--anything about me, how can it result in my friends getting journaling suggestions that are different based on whether the feature is enabled or not? Unless the author thinks "knowing who you were with and when" does not count as "knowing anything about you," which I would strongly disagree with, and I'm not even generally a paranoid person like some on HN are (no offense to them, glad they're paying attention)
- shuckles 3y agoYou can know how many of your friends are nearby without knowing who they are.
- chatmasta 3y agoThe text beneath the toggle is "Allows others to detect you are nearby to help prioritize their suggestions." This implies it's broadcasting some beacons containing my phone number to nearby devices, which can listen for those beacons and compare them with their contacts list.
- shuckles 3y agoYeah, appears that way: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/journaling-suggestions/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/journaling-sugge.... The caveat is that devices store counts not identities, but it does seem like some notion of identity is broadcasted.
- chatmasta 3y agoThe only way this feature could work is by broadcasting my information to nearby devices. That's enough reason to turn it off, especially given the only claimed benefit is that someone writing in their journaling app can have a marginally faster autocomplete experience when typing a string that is similar to my name.
- jrmg 3y agoThat’s not a claimed benefit. The article says it only tracks how many people you know are around you, not who they are. Apple’s usually pretty on top of this kind of thing. For example, there was the privacy-preserving Covid proximity thing, and I believe the Find My network works without allowing others to track you? Is there some fancy cryptographic algorithm that allows a person to broadcast something that allows others that already know them to recognize that a person they know is broadcasting (perhaps not even a specific person, just one they know) - without allowing people they don’t know to recognize they are the same person if they see them again?
- gcr 3y agoI do wonder how a dinner party host’s device can distinguish which guests are in their contacts from which ones aren’t.