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Apple's commitment to privacy and security is really cool to see. It's also an amazing strategic play that they are uniquely in the position to take advantage o
by wcfrobert 8mo ago
Apple's commitment to privacy and security is really cool to see. It's also an amazing strategic play that they are uniquely in the position to take advantage of. Google and Meta can't commit to privacy because they need to show you ads, whereas Apple feels more like a hardware company to me.
- bigyabai 8mo agoYou know what's even cooler? Apple's commitment to hiding US federally-mandated backdoors for dragnet surveillance: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-secretly-giving-governments-push-notification-data/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-... Apple has since confirmed in a statement provided to Ars that the US federal government “prohibited” the company “from sharing any information,” but now that Wyden has outed the feds, Apple has updated its transparency reporting and will “detail these kinds of requests” in a separate section on push notifications in its next report.
- Noaidi 8mo agoThat people fall for this corporate BS while Tim Cook is giving gold bars to Trump and dining and dancing with him When people are being murdered on the streets by ice is just amazing to me.
- OGEnthusiast 8mo agoWell that’s what Americans voted for. So I don’t think anyone cares that every CEO (definitely not just Tim Cook) is schmoozing with Trump.
- bigyabai 8mo ago> Well that’s what Americans voted for. Americans are not one person. > So I don’t think anyone cares Clearly they do. > every CEO (definitely not just Tim Cook) is schmoozing with Trump. Tim Cook was (supposedly) principled. I guess it's hard to pretend that you care about privacy or human rights while eating dinner next to bin Salman.
- OGEnthusiast 8mo ago> Tim Cook was (supposedly) principled. I guess it's hard to pretend that you care about privacy or human rights while eating dinner next to bin Salman. I guess if you thought he had principles then yeah that could be disappointing. Personally I've never tried to moralize corporations though, I just assume the only principle that every company and CEO operates by is whatever increases the stock price.
- pjmlp 8mo agoAnd me thinking company values actually meant something in all those trainings. /s
- Noaidi 8mo agoFunny that you think that people have free will under this zombie social media mind controlled Internet world we’re living in. Besides Trump‘s approval ratings are worse than ever so I don’t think people really got what they wanted, they got who they voted for not what they voted for.
- n8cpdx 8mo agoThe Twinkie defense is alive and well, I see.
- bambax 8mo agoYeah Americans voted for Trump. But that shouldn't prevent CEOs to show a spine. Tim Cook is no different from all the others, therefore Apple doesn't deserve any less contempt from us.
- vrosas 8mo ago[flagged]
- dangus 8mo ago> Apple gives zero fucks about security. Hyperbole doesn’t help your point. They definitely care about security, their profits depend on it.
- candiddevmike 8mo agoAll while slowly stuffing (more?) ads into their software. In a lot of ways Apple is as aligned to data privacy the same way other "platforms" are: to gatekeep the user data behind their ad service. It's better than selling your data, maybe, but you're still being tracked and monitored.
- isodev 8mo agoThe worst part is since Apple is technically not a 3rd party, many of the rules don’t apply to them even though they bring the same harm to the users. Did you notice the new “creative suite” has analytics with identities linked to your Apple account turned on by defend? Free Pages/Numbers is not so free anymore.
- astrange 8mo agoYou can't sell cell phones and "not care about security". There are these things called government regulators that won't let you sell them anymore if security issues happen.
- jtbayly 8mo agomodeless linked to this article earlier today: https://james.darpinian.com/blog/apple-imessage-encryption/ https://james.darpinian.com/blog/apple-imessage-encryption/ My current understanding of the facts: 1. Google defaults to encrypted backups of messages, as well as e2e encryption of messages. 2. Apple defaults only to e2ee of messages, leaving a massive backdoor. 3. Closing that backdoor is possible for the consumer, by enabling ADP (advanced data protection) on your device. However, this makes no difference, since 99.9% of the people you communicate will not close the backdoor. Thus, the only way to live is to assume that all the messages you send via iMessage will always be accessible to Apple, no matter what you do. It's not like overall I think Google is better for privacy than Apple, but this choice by Apple is really at odds with their supposed emphasis on privacy.
- dd8601fn 8mo agoADP isn’t the default, and almost nobody who isn’t a journalist/activist/potential target turns it on, because of the serious (potentially destructive) consequences. How does Google manage this, such every normie on earth isn’t freaking out?
- buckle8017 8mo agoNobody expects their text messages to be backed up. They get deleted and people shrug.
- weikju 8mo agoOr IOW, Googles solution affects only messages. Apple’s solution affects your whole digital life so the consequences are a lot more dire.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- deafpolygon 8mo agoGoogle’s solution also ensures that they know all the metadata of your messages, except the content of the message itself.
- isodev 8mo ago> Apple's commitment to privacy We know now that it was all marketing talk. Apple didn’t like Meta so they spun a bunch of obstacles. Apple has and would use your data for ads, models and anything that keeps the shareholders happy. And we don’t know the half of the story where as a US corp, they’re technically obliged to share data from the not-E2EE iCloud syncs of every iPhone.
- astrange 8mo ago> Apple has and would use your data for ads, models and anything that keeps the shareholders happy. Illegal to do this in (at least) the EU, California and China.
- dangus 8mo agoApple has ads. See the App Store, Apple Maps is also planning to roll out advertising.
- derbOac 8mo agoIt's all tempered by them ultimately controlling what you can put on your phone though. As was demonstrated in LA, it's starting to have significant civil rights consequences.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- throwaway290 8mo agoSecurity is pointless if platform allows 90% users to be social engineered into running code disabling that security
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- bigstrat2003 8mo agoThe ability for people to do stupid things is the inescapable price of freedom. That does not make freedom not worth it.
- derbOac 8mo agoWhat's funny is you could read that statement as being an argument for or against walled gardens, depending on what kind of social engineering is being referred to.
- throwaway290 8mo agoAlso depending on whether review process is going to catch the bad code...
- nozzlegear 8mo agoWhat happened in LA?
- derbOac 8mo ago
- ioasuncvinvaer 8mo agoApple is an ad company now though
- baxtr 8mo agoApple sells some ads yes. But it’s a tiny fraction of their revenue. Would Google or Meta go bankrupt if they stopped selling ads? Yes. Apple wouldn’t.
- bigyabai 8mo agoApple would go bankrupt without US protectionist policy propping up their service revenue. That's pretty bad. Maybe not "reliant on ad monopoly" bad, but pretty close.
- porcoda 8mo agoIn their revenue report this week out of $140B, services made up 30B. 140B-30B = 110B. Thats pretty far from bankruptcy.
- baxtr 8mo agoAnd that was just one quarter…
- bigyabai 8mo agoRun 12 quarters, for all I care. Service revenue accounts for more than 50% of Apple's YoY revenue growth: https://www.statista.com/chart/14629/apple-services-revenue/ https://www.statista.com/chart/14629/apple-services-revenue/ Hardware sales aren't picking up the slack, and advertisement revenue is also following a growth trend. Apple's stock would indeed be cooked if they went balls-out against the government that guarantees them access to cheap hardware and software that has been declared illegally anti competitive by foreign sovereigns. Apple needs this.
- manuelabeledo 8mo ago
- eddyg 8mo agoI still like to encourage people to watch all of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLGFriOKz6U&t=1993s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLGFriOKz6U&t=1993s for the details (from Apple’s head of Security Engineering and Architecture) about how iCloud is protected by HSMs, rate limits, etc. but especially the timelinked section. :)
- bigyabai 8mo agoI still recommend Mr. Fart's Favorite Colors as a refutation, describing why all of these precautions cannot protect you in a real-world security model: https://medium.com/@blakeross/mr-fart-s-favorite-colors-3177a406c775 https://medium.com/@blakeross/mr-fart-s-favorite-colors-3177... Unbreakable phones are coming. We’ll have to decide who controls the cockpit: The captain? Or the cabin?
- eddyg 8mo agoKrstić: “Here’s how we reduce the chance that even Apple can access or alter X, and here’s how we can make that credible.” Ross: “Even if you make X cryptographically airtight, the real fight becomes political/physical coercion: ‘ship this or else.’” Those can both be true at the same time.
- Thorrez 8mo agoI don't understand. That article (written in 2016) says that Apple will build unbreakable phones in the future. Now is the future. So it seems to imply that Apple phones today are unbreakable. Also, where does the article discuss "all of these protections"? (HSMs, rate limits, etc.)
- bigyabai 8mo ago> So it seems to imply that Apple phones today are unbreakable. Indeed. If you don't control the "unbreakable" security though, then the lock is not for your benefit. > where does the article discuss "all of these protections"? You could read the danged article, it's pretty clear about the vulnerability of proprietary mitigations. I hate quoting spoilers verbatim but here you go: The sharper you get, the more important the work. But the more valuable the work, the craftier — and more determined — your adversaries. Every attack is more novel than the last. [...] By the time you land an engineering gig at Apple, you are a twitchy, tinfoily mess. And it is in this spirit that you develop one of the most secure systems the world has ever known. [...] So adversaries be damned: You finally win on the merits. But who said anything about meritocracy? During the champagne toast, Mr. Fart steps from behind the curtain and pulls the pistol of last resort: “Don’t ship this. Or else.”
- epolanski 8mo agoI claim bs at this whole apple privacy thing, nothing but propaganda. Two years ago I was locked out of my MacBook pro. Then I just booted in some recovery mode and just..reset the password!? Sure macos logged me off from (most) apps and website, but every single file was there unencrypted! I swear people that keep boasting that whole apple privacy thing have absolutely no clue what they are talking about, nothing short of tech illiterate charlatans. But God the propaganda works. And don't start me on iMessage.
- n8cpdx 8mo agoYou chose not to enable FileVault during setup. Probably because you were worried about being locked out and wanted an easy way to reset the password. Would you prefer that Apple did not give you the option to disable the security feature you disabled during setup?
- epolanski 8mo agoAin't nobody paying attention, in any case it's still propaganda.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- raw_anon_1111 8mo agoI still like their hardware. But let’s not pretend that there is any part of Trump’s body that he won’t kiss and sell out his customers for. If Trump asked Cook to put a backdoor in iPhones or impose tariffs on Apple, Cook would do it in a minute
- nozzlegear 8mo agoCook couldn't personally put that backdoor in himself though. There would (presumably) be Apple employees who would blow the whistle if they received such a command.
- raw_anon_1111 8mo agoIn today’s market? You see how many tech workers have shut up about protesting every little thing inside large companies with all of the layoffs happening? I have been cocky for 30 heads with the thought that I could always find a job quickly - and have even in 2023 (3 offers within 2 weeks) after being Amazoned and in 2024 (just replied to one recruiter the day after a layoff). But even I shut up and keep my head down these days. As long as we ain’t killing kids, I am not saying anything.
- nozzlegear 8mo agoThat's a good point. I'm lucky enough to be self employed, and I tell myself that if I were ever in the position to blow the whistle at a corporate or government job I'd do it in a heartbeat. But what we tell ourselves in our head and what we do when our family's livelihood is on the line aren't always the same.
- int_19h 8mo ago> As long as we ain’t killing kids Even that level of non-involvement is getting increasingly difficult with anything Big Tech given their IDF involvement, although Apple might just be a rare exception.
- JKCalhoun 8mo agoMy Mother Night hope is that Cook publicly shows obsequiousness only so that in private he can hold the line on backdoors, etc. I know, I'm living in a fantasy world in my head.
- jmaker 8mo agoCan someone explain what the real difference is to a consumer user between an iPhone and a Pixel or a Samsung device? Across all services, push notifications, and device backups. Both promise security, Apple promises some degree of privacy. Google stores your encryption keys, and so does Apple unless you opt in for ADP. Is it similar to Facebook Messenger (encrypted in transit and at rest but Meta can read it) and Telegram (keys owned by Telegram unless you start a private chat)? There are things Pixels do that iPhones don’t, e.g., you get notified when a local cell tower picks your IMEI. I mean it’s meaningless since they all do it, but you can also enable a higher level of security to avoid 2G. Not sure it’s meaningful but it’s a nice to have.
- isoprophlex 8mo agoSome of these companies don't make money from you, the end user, but by selling ads and data to more effectively deliver said ads. Differences in capabilities, experience and implementation are all downstream from that. In other words, everyone pays lip service to privacy and security, but it's very difficult to believe that parties like Meta or Google are actually being honest with you. The incentives just aren't there. With Apple, you get to fork over your wallet, but at least you seem the be primarily the user they've got to provide services to. With Google/Meta, you're a sucker to bleed dry.
- tpolzer 8mo agoApple, Samsung and Google all earn money from ads on your phone, just with different monetization pathways.
- fsflover 8mo agoGiving all your private data to Apple is not "privacy and security", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39927657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39927657