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Comment by panzer_wyrm | Hacker News Reader

Not sure how much apple care about my privacy when they force the phone to call home after factory reset and using it as a dumbphone and blackmail you to provide a valid credit card before installing any free app...

If you care about privacy you don't collect data on your users.

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> force the phone to call home after factory reset

Sounds like a useful anti-theft measure?

Yes. Banning cash and making every transaction public without bank secrecy is great anti money laundering measure But we are talking privacy. Privacy means also privacy from the vendor. It is almost impossible in iOS.

People ate already "laundering money" using cryptocurrencies, so banning cash won't fix anything. It will just make it easier for the government to take the taxes directly out of your account. And then invent some new taxes, until you will have to resort to "money laundering" yourself to make ends meet.

You are able to download free and paid apps without using a valid credit card. You only have to provide your address which is not checked by apple from my experience (they probably have to do that because it is the law to ask for a billing address when you buy something -- physically or digitally). Skipping the "please enter a credit card" dialog is a little bit tricky but from what I remember: you have to create the account by downloading a free app instead of creating an account and then download the app. There are many articles how to download free apps without a CC.

Furthermore, you are also able to buy itunes gift card at many stores in cash, so if you wanted to download something and not be associated with that purchase, you can simple pay for the card in cash. But if you are worried about such privacy, purchasing digital goods is not a wise choice because there are very little places where you can purchase such goods without a CC. Not many sites accept bitcoin or are large enough to have their own gift cards.

With all these companies, they want to own everything about you, but will want to protect that precious IP from any other non-contracted party.

Apple is somewhat unique here in that they make profit off their hardware sales and their online stores, and thus doesn't even have to sell to 3rd party personal info agencies to make a profit.

There's privacy and there's anonymity. They don't care about our anonymity for various reasons (which may or may not satisfy you). But they do (seem to) care about our privacy.

True, but nevertheless, their actions in this case advanced the interests of privacy, both on a technical level, and by the PR of presenting it as something worth preserving.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204034

You've been able to download free apps without a credit card since forever

This is from their own page.

If you're using the iTunes Store or App Store for the first time

If you're using the store for the first time with an existing Apple ID, you must provide a payment method. After you create the account, you can change your payment information to None. If you're creating a new Apple ID, you might be able to create an account without entering your credit card details.

The only way is with gift card which is not sold worldwide.

That's due to them using it as a way to limit fake accounts and account spam.

Quite reasonable as a trade off and as you mentioned it is possible to circumvent the need for a traditional credit card.

Plus, if you're against that then you'd have to be 100% off the grid anyhow - any bank or utility company (inc your phone company) knows more about you than Apple.

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