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Seriously, Apple is "big tech," but they are the only one that appears to give a crap about privacy at all. And really, they put a lot of money and effort into
by consumer451 2mo ago
Seriously, Apple is "big tech," but they are the only one that appears to give a crap about privacy at all. And really, they put a lot of money and effort into it.
We need to give kudos when they are due.
Apple's Private Cloud Compute should have won some kind of Nobel Privacy Prize, which for some reason does not yet exist.
- refulgentis 2mo agoThe person you're replying to is saying "Sites I use block all VPNs besides Apple's subscription service VPN" - I'm not sure they're not blocking it just because they fervently believe in Apple's privacy commitments and engineering :) Only pointing this out because I love Apple's privacy story and don't want your reply to be misconstrued as sarcasm, and thus the reason why it enjoys a singular exemption is because its ineffective.
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- SkyPuncher 2mo agoI’ve never been under the impression that privacy relay is anything like a true VPN. I mostly thought it stopped BS that happens on public WiFi and public sniffing. It’s meant to protect you only until you get to a major carriers infrastructure.
- snazz 2mo agoThe design is supposed to be better than a true VPN, because neither Apple nor the exit node (Akamai, Cloudflare, Fastly) are supposed to know both who you are and what you’re doing. Of course, Apple pays them for this service, so they could exchange info.
- ezfe 2mo agoIt is a VPN in the sense that your traffic flows privately through a third party. This is what most people refer to when they say VPN. It is not a VPN only in the technical approach.
- monk_grilla 2mo agoIt's something of a "private relay", you might say.
- inigyou 2mo agoThey don't block it because of the publicity it would generate. Social factors matter. "We blocked people for using special hacker privacy tools. Stop using the special tools if you want service." versus "we blocked people for using the most popular kind of end device. Buy a second, really obscure brand of device if you want service." (In the US, that is. Outside the US, Android devices are more popular but Apple still has the plurality because there's only one of it)
- int_19h 2mo agoApple is luxury big tech. In this day and age, privacy is luxury, so that's what they sell. I don't think there are any ethical motivations for them (or any other large corporation - none of them have morals so they cannot act morally). It's just that there's a market niche, so it will be filled by someone.
- tonyhart7 2mo agomoney from advertising basically dwarf user lifetime purchase of privacy tax you mentioned
- michaelt 2mo agoThe ad business has a lot of people chasing after the same ad spend. Superbowl ads, TV ads, radio ads, print ads, billboard ads, public transit ads, youtube ads, podcast ads, search ads, e-mail ads, social media ads, in-app ads, in-store ads, sports team sponsorship, individual athlete sponsorship, stadium naming, product placement ads, elevator ads, cinema ads, bathroom ads. And Coca-Cola doesn't increase their advertising budget just because someone finds a new place to slap ads on - they just re-allocate their spending. Sure, Google and Facebook make a good chunk of money from ads. But it's a very, very competitive business.
- tonyhart7 2mo agoyet and they still dwarf if any, Apple user are the most expensive ads money industry willing to pay for
- saretup 2mo agoIt’s an additional layer of wall for their walled garden to keep the technically proficient users that are more likely to hop walls.
- leshenka 2mo agoTechnically proficient users can figure out their own solutions for throwaway emails e.g. aforementioned Fastmail.
- TheDong 2mo agoThey still don't let me install uBlock origin + noscript. Whitelisting per-domain and per-site what can run Javascript does more for my privacy than anything else, and I can do that with firefox on linux and android, but on iOS I'm not allowed to install firefox. There's obviously no real technical limitation since if you live in the EU you can sideload an alternative browser in theory (though apple has made it unrealistic in practice since they're ignoring the spirit of the law and instead doing their darndest to resist giving users even a whit of freedom).
- kstrauser 2mo agoThey also don’t allow you to install Windows executables. They do allow you to run adblockers designed for Safari, like Wipr, and there are any number of noscript-alikes, like StopTheScript. I’m not saying that to be snarky, but to say that different platforms have different ways of doing things. And Firefox is in the iOS App Store. I know what you meant to say, and that it’s not the same as Firefox on Android, but it’s wrong to say you’re not allowed to install Firefox.
- pjerem 2mo agoSince Apple specifically disallows using other web engines on the App Store, I have bad news for you : Firefox on the App Store is just a reskinned safari and as such, a lot of features cannot be implemented because they depend on the web rendering engine.
- cryptoegorophy 2mo agoOnly thing I wish they were 20 years sooner.
- TiredOfLife 2mo ago> but they are the only one that appears to give a crap about privacy at all. they advertise that they do. that is not the same as doing Apple literally wanted to scan all your photos and automatically report you to law enforcement if a fuzzy hash happened to match an opaque database.
- zackwu 1mo agono one is saying Apple is the saint. It's just better in comparison to other big techs who want your privacy as much and don't even pretend to care
- TiredOfLife 1mo agoI think that pretending to care is much much worse than not caring.