Apple does right by users and advertisers are displeased | Hacker News Reader

Apple does right by users and advertisers are displeased

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433 pointsDiabloD3339 comments

Which is exactly why as of last month bought my first iPhone. The pro privacy stance that Apple is taking is wonderful to see. No idea if anyone pushing this at Apple will ever read this but you have a customer for life if you continue to do so and will champion your products to their entire sphere of influence.

Agreed. Apple has been mostly good wrt to privacy in the past, but since they've started to make it a selling/differentiation point, I expect them to solidify their stance.

I think it's a genius move. People will begin to understand in the coming years just how much information these companies are tracking/extracting, and turn(or stay) to Apple.

I think users would care about privacy, if they truly knew just how much information is being gathered.

It’s also much easier to care about privacy when there is a viable alternate way to do something desirable which preserves privacy.

Care about privacy? Ok, don’t use gmail instead setup your own mail server and configure gpg.

Care about privacy? Ok: use apple products when they work for you.

Apple has shareholders and changing CEOs. This is really naive at best

Compared to most companies, their CEOs don't change that much. The last one stayed on for life, for example.

And with regard to displeasing shareholders - Tim Cook has no problem with that - to quote, "if you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock."

http://www.businessinsider.com/tim-cook-versus-a-conservativ...

He's not as bad as Steve Ballmer for example - though you can draw many parallels - but he's never had the vision Jobs had. iPhones and iPads are going well, but the Mac is suffering badly under Cook because it has such a low return. I hope he proves me wrong, but at this point I'm very worried about the future of the Mac.

This might have been a reasonable stance a year ago, but they just publicly committed to making new Mac Pros and monitors, plus they have already announced a $5k iMac Pro.

Tim Cook is no Steve Job, but Steve Jobs was no Tim Cook. They’re good at different thing, but Tim Cook will probably go down in history as one of the greatest CEOs of all time.

The key to understanding Apple is to listen to what they're saying.

They see the Mac like a truck. Yes, most people will buy cars, but we'll always need trucks too.

Further, best as I can tell, Mac continues to grow, both fraction of new sales and installed base.

Apple has definitely lacked vision since Jobs left, it has been the biggest issue in my opinion for them as a company. Cook has a lot of very valuable skills, but I've still found myself wondering, "What the what is going on at Apple!!..." (In a negative way)

At this point? The Mac has not been one of their main products for almost a decade.

Mobile phones aren't for life. Parent can change company again whenever they like. This is really irrelevant at best.

(Besides Apple's CEOs tend to last a long time. 14 years with Jobs at the helm for example, and 6+ years with Cook and counting).

Apple has deep seated values throughout the organization that it's been nurturing for 40 years.

I think a mismatched CEO would either lose fighting it, or destroy the core of what makes Apple great, which shareholders will not like.

As long as the company can show the shareholders that differentiating on privacy provides good ROI, they will be happy.

There doesn't have to be a good ROI. Quoting Tim Cook: "When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don't consider the bloody ROI. [..] If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock."

https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/tim-cook-soundly-rej...

Maybe. Curious to what "at worst" would be...

For the record I'm not saying they are taking this stance for some charitable reason, I'm saying it would/could make financial sense for them, especially considering their branding as a premium product.

As a longtime Android fanboy who was actually waiting for the upcoming Pixels, I am tempted to switch over. I'm losing faith in Google's good faith, and want to reward / support companies that take my privacy at least semi-seriously.

With no snark whatsoever, though this question I realize implies it but I'll try my best to not: What good will? Google wrote the book on directed advertising. I'm genuinely interested why this attitude pervades Google's user base, that the Internet giant with 80% of the smartphone market is some kind of 'scrappy underdog' compared to Apple.

I can only answer for myself: I have a decent amount of faith in Googles ability to effectively advertise to me in a non-obtrusive manner, while treating my data responsibly.

Taking it one level of abstraction up, I don't see a future where using your data for efficient targeting of advertising isn't happening (and I don't consider that an obviously bad thing), and I consider Google a net positive force in shaping a responsible way of doing that.

While I'm nowhere near your position, I've been entertaining similar notions. Could you elaborate a bit on your views on this?

Not sure what you are after, exactly? They have the means and the motive to do this well, and as far as I can tell, they have been successful at it; I don't think they have suffered any significant breach of privacy.

Android was an underdog for years as iPhones rewrote the industry from top to bottom, killing Blackberry, Nokia, Windows Phone. It took years of intense focus to bring Android to parity, and lucky for Google, there are a few areas where Apple is weak...

Apple is underdog in services. To this day Apple Maps is a pale shadow of Google Maps. They're getting better to be sure, but still an underdog.

I imagine the only reason Apple Maps is worse than Google Maps is because the community around Google Maps has been updating it consistently for over a decade.

Apple maps transit experience is, in my opinion, much more carefully though out than Google's, so I know they can do something with the right information.

Apple Maps had a rough start, but people forget Google Maps wasn't always perfect either.

It would be nice if Apple users had the ability to submit corrections to Apple somehow.

You can. Not while turn-by-turn is active (presumably because Apple doesn't want to distract drivers), but outside of that, hit the (i) button and "Report an Issue" is an option.

What's neat about this is if you report a map error and they correct it, you actually get a push notification telling you that it's been fixed.

There is a lot of value in open sourcing the product. Yes there are proprietary pieces of Android, but overall it's mostly open. Contrast with Apple who closes everything and makes it difficult for a user to get at their own hardware. RMS is pretty out there on a lot of things, but he's right about the need for open products.

In terms of higher value userbase who still are willing to pay for apps and not easily able to pirate an app, Apple is still way ahead, this makes them far more desirable for app creators than Android does

Same here - but I would like more info on the subject to allow for a qualified decision. iPhones are very expensive.

Isn't basically all your data, everything you type being sent to Apple?

No. And when data is send to Apple, they go to great lengths to A) anonymize it, and B) not store it.

or C) (at least in regards to unlocking devices) encrypt it so even they can't retrieve it.

> Isn't basically all your data, everything you type being sent to Apple?

No. And I have looked.

Apple is very up front about the features that do and don't talk to the mothership. It has been a while, but I recall that as you go through the setup process, there's always info available telling you when they'll see your info, and more info online. But it tends to be pretty obvious - Apple has slurped up sensitive data before[1], but it did look like an accident, they fixed it, and were forthcoming about what happened.

They're very clear that security related stuff (Secure Enclave - the thumbprint/faceprint data) never leaves the device.

Things I know that talk back:

- App store (obviously, and they care about analytics) - News app (ditto, it is basically a thin web browser) - iCloud (ditto, clearly, and pay attention to the various modes for encryption: IIRC, you need 2FA enabled for the encryption key to not be recoverable on their end. But you should double check for yourself, I don't use iCloud, so I haven't paid attention.)

And looking at my phone on my local net with Wireshark, I also see some chatter that looks like things saving config information, similar to what you see on a Mac. I'm guessing this is them just not being careful - they want everyone backing up to iCloud, and even though I don't, various daemons keep nattering. I block all that stuff when on wifi (both Mac and iOS), with zero problems.

On iOS, you mainly need to be concerned with third-party apps. Some of them build in shady libraries for adtech shitheads, do stupid things with analytic/instrumentation libs, etc. The ecosystem seems less bad than Android, at least.

As close to a bottom line as I can come: turn off cloud backup and the syncing crap, use 2FA, don't download sketchy free games that ship your data to some guy in Romania, and you're leaking significantly less than on Android. Take more precautions (a content filter/ad blocker more aggressive than the defaults, disable wifi and bluetooth to avoid snoops along wherever you go, run your own mail/calendaring, etc.) and you're in pretty good shape, relatively speaking, and depending on your threat model.

[1] IIRC, location data was being logged such that it ended up being sent back in crash reports.

I can find no reference to this, and I've not heard anything about this happening in the past.

Issues with iOS include:

* iCloud not encrypting data securely serverside (i.e. they can potentially get at the data). You can avoid this by not using iCloud. * They have Ads in app, and now in the Appstore directly. Potentially this changes the dynamic, between user/advertiser in a negative way.

There are probably other issues... but I'm not currently aware of them. Overall it still seems like the best option from a privacy perspective.

I don't think first item is true especially if you have 2-step verification enabled. They explicit say that if you lose your auth token, they can't do nothing.

When I didn't used 2-step, I forgot my password, called them and they reset it for me (I had to confirm my identity providing them a code sent to my mac).

I think "can't" is "wont" in this case. Apple law enforcement guidelines state:

"All iCloud content data stored by Apple is encrypted at the location of the server. When third-party vendors are used to store data, Apple never gives them the keys. Apple retains the encryption keys in its U.S. data centers."

and

"iCloud content may include email, stored photos, documents, contacts, calendars, bookmarks, Safari browsing history and iOS device backups. iOS device backups may include photos and videos in the Camera Roll, device settings, app data, iMessage, SMS, and MMS messages and voicemail. All iCloud content data stored by Apple is encrypted at the location of the server. When third-party vendors are used to store data, Apple never gives them the keys. Apple retains the encryption keys in its U.S. data centres. iCloud content, as it exists in the subscriber’s account, may be provided in response to a search warrant issued upon a showing of probable cause."

So in short, Apple retains encryption keys for much of the data (including iOS backups), and will provide decrypted data to US law enforcement on request.

https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/law-enforcement-guidelin...

iCloud security overview: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

Hmm that page is pretty unclear. Because while it says the data is encrypted serverside. What it doesn't say is which data is encrypted with a key that Apple has access to.

Much of the data listed as encrypted on server is available to US law enforcement under warrant.

It would be nice, to have an option available where data is encrypted on server, with your key. But that would mean you couldn't recover your data if you lost your key of course (and I think Apple consider that a poor user experience, or are under pressure not to do that...).

As I'm a small phone fan (the Samsung Alpha was a bit too big!), the iPhone SE will definitely be my next one. It has the guts of the 6s, and is 519 EUR with 128GB storage, which is far less than the slightly-too-big 6s (or other 4.7" successors)

I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only small phone fan. My new job is asking me to get a new/other phone for work purposes...and while I've always been a fan of android (not especially religious fan, simply a mild fan)...any recent phones which have decent functionality are immense in size. The only phone that I find that is a great balance of size and functionality seems to be the iphone SE. That fact alone was putting me on the fence as to whether i would stay with android - for this new/other work phone - or if I'd take the plunge to the apple side. Well, now reading this privacy piece, i'm leaning a bit more to the apple side. And, it is nice to hear that there are other folks out there who like small phones...i mean, i certainly don't want to walk around with a phone nearly the size of a freakin' tablet! :-)

If you haven't already you might want to look into Sony phones, they've made good smaller phones in the past. I don't know if they've got anything new out but I've got an Xperia Z5 Compact and it has always been quite capable of doing whatever I want it to do.

It's 100% opt-in. Yes, you can have all of your photos, notes, bookmarks, etc. synced to iCloud in which case Apple can see the data and provide it to 3rd parties either knowingly (law enforcement agencies) or unknowingly (the fappening). However, you can turn all of the syncing off and none of that data ever leaves your phone and it stays encrypted using your device passcode. Other than the lack of automatic syncing to other Apple devices, there's not really any loss in usability if you disable iCloud.

That is not true. iCloud Backups are encrypted using the device's PIN. The only data that Apple would be able to provide is SMS data because that is not encrypted when it's sent and it's not encrypted when it's backed up.

I didn't say anything about backups because I'm not sure of their current state, but last I saw they are encrypted at rest with keys Apple controls, same as nearly all the rest of your data. Apple's website would indicate that's still the case as well.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

How do you figure that that's what their website indicates? The site you linked says that backups are encrypted in transit and on the server and they specifically say that the encryption is end-to-end so "only you can access your information, and only on devices where you’re signed in to iCloud. No one else, not even Apple, can access end-to-end encrypted information." That's quoted right from the page you posted.

A device pin contains nowhere near enough entropy to be useful for strong encryption. One would hope it’s encrypted with a key derived from the iCloud password.

And when you change your pin, how is it decrypted ?

Not really.

https://www.apple.com/privacy/

If you factor in resale value, iPhones aren't as expensive as they might appear.

Searching phone and on computer ("Spotlight") BY DEFAULT sends that data to Apple and third parties

https://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/20/apple-spotlight-suggest...

I recommend don't trust Apple. It's not your code, it's not your hardware.

> Searching phone and on computer ("Spotlight") BY DEFAULT sends that data to Apple and third parties

So turn off Spotlight Suggestions? Obviously if you're searching the web there will be traffic to the search engines.

> http://bgr.com/2015/04/01/iphone-location-tracking-map/

Frequent Locations is on-device only.

My point was that Spotlight search is on by default, that's what I took issue with.

It may be on-device only but it's not clear to the end-user that it's happening at all. No visible setting to disable it and vulnerable to malware.

Is your iPhone more secure than an open source version?

Compared to what we have currently out in open-source that easily runs on hardware the answer is yes. Google's Android is trying, but it's just not there yet, and it's not full Open Source. The rest of the open-source phone platforms are all dead as far as I'm aware.

Apple has a proven track record of respecting user privacy, Google has hardly any. iOS has a proven track record of respecting user privacy, Android has hardly any. Other 'open-source' alternatives shouldn't be considered generally viable at the moment.

Define your security model. If you are talking about advertisers, then both can achieve about the same "security" level. But there's no point talking about security (as remotely inaccessible) while we don't have an open hardware + firmware. Baseband is a "micro PC", some even run modified Linux kernel under the hood, WiFi chip, battery controller etc. -- all are capable of running spyware/malware too.

Judging by the amount of malware that shows up in the Play store and pwns rooted phones, absolutely.

AFAIK there's no such thing as a completely open source cell phone.

Unfortunately not. Even if there was, it's the mesh network they run on that breaks security - corporate & gov controlled cellular towers

> The pro privacy stance that Apple is taking is wonderful to see.

Yeah, it is. Welcome to what it feels like to be wholly the customer, instead of partially the product.

It cracks me up how much the hn userbase has changed. Apple has traditionally been very user hostile, but they make some grandstand PR move and so many people fall for it like Apple cares about user privacy/freedom, etc.

As Richard Stallman said, Apple puts the user in a prison. Just because the warden is getting better at playing nice some of the time and making the prison more beautiful doesn't change the fact it is a prison.

In a free system, the users could have done this themselves years ago instead of waiting for Apple.

Unless you're installing AOSP android on your phone, you're in the same boat with Google. You're increasingly limited to what Google will allow on the play store. You may have some more flexibility, but to continue your analogy: android is a like a low-security prison run by gangs you may have more freedom but at the end of the day you're still on the inside and now you run the risk of getting shanked.

!Apple !== AOSP/Google

With that said, the FSF endorses Replicant (which actually just had a new release and added more device support[0]). I use Replicant.

Given the free software philosophy, a free program is always superior to a non-free program, no matter how bad that free program is. But Replicant isn't bad; the most recent version is a fork of "the latest changes from LineageOS 13.0 ".[0]

What this emphasizes is the need for a fully free/libre mobile device, which has been the topic of other HN discussions.

[0]: https://blog.replicant.us/2017/09/a-new-replicant-6-0-releas...

> Given the free software philosophy, a free program is always superior to a non-free program, no matter how bad that free program is.

I never understood this opinion. If I need to navigate to drive to my grandmother's house, and none of the free nav software knows how to get there, but I have access to some proprietary software that will do the job, then why not use it?

I can stop using it at any time I want, no strings attached. I can also reason about its ability to perform actions that serve its creator's interests rather than mine (capture my data and send it to the mothership, mine bitcoins on their behalf, ...) and I can make rational decisions about whether the ability to find my way to grandma's house is worth the risk. Often, the math works out that I am better off occasionally using the proprietary software.

Your average user will be unable to make those "rational decisions" as they are often not made aware of the downsides. This is intentional

(Almost) All Android phones allow you to sideload apps without having to root, AFAIK. So you aren't really limited by the Play Store.

I have little idea about how the android market is. But when I had a rooted phone, the rooted market of apps/tweaks wasn't too impressive. I personally felt like iOS's jailbreak market was doing better even though it had dramatically shruken too. This is about 2 years ago.

So if the rooted tweaks and apps market isn't that strong for Android, how big would the side loading market be? I'm obviously thinking there's not much there. At least not for people where Google services and apps are included normally with Android like the US.

I'm curious, are there actually any Android phones at all that don't let you sideload?

> Unless you're installing AOSP android on your phone, you're in the same boat with Google. You're increasingly limited to what Google will allow on the play store.

I'm not aware of any android phone where you can't install whatever apk you like.

Could not disagree with you more. Google's own Pixel line is more controlled for the benefit of the user, in that the user ends up with a more unified and cohesive experience. OEM's readily make modifications to Android, and you can install a completely custom ROM as well. Finally, you can install applications by consuming third party APK's directly and bypassing the Play store entirely.

So no, your comparison of iOS to Android does not apply 1:1.

> and so many people fall for it like Apple cares about user privacy/freedom, etc.

I don't care if you call it a "grandstand PR move". It detracts from what Apple has actually done. It was not a valueless statement of ideals. It's an actual piece of functionality that millions of people will have built into their smartphones.

Stallman sits around hypothesising about vague 'open systems' that—when fleshed out—are completely impractical for the average user. This does very little. You can all sit around installing AOSP (or some other lesser-known open-source mobile operating system) and write your own ML-powered cookie bucketing engines and pretend that this is a viable alternative, and that Apple hasn't done something objectively pretty cool and great.

Thee fact is, the Stallman philosophy is absolutely meaningless to the vast majority of end-users, and they are incapable of doing anything with it. What Apple has done is something that will help end users. It's a selling point, they might win some people over with it, boo hoo, there's no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism. It still means a whole lot.

I think your comment downplays the importance of Stallman's work. Just because the vast majority of people do not use what he advocates, it doesn't mean he isn't having a significant impact on what they do use, indirectly. I think this is one example of a change that will affect people that happened probably in part because of people valuing rights that Stallman champions. It may not be him that directly influenced Apple, but he is a big part of influencing the bulk of opinion that did, so he has indirectly. It is not a case of one or the other.

It is like high art. Lots of people rarely look at modern art, but it doesn't mean it doesn't influence the design and pop-art they do see regularly, indirectly.

You are wrong to present behaving like Stallman and what Apple is doing as things that are competing alternatives, with things being in one camp or the other. Stallman's work influences the mainstream, so mainstream, less extreme, changes and what he does are not unconnected.

Stallman simply values other things than most users, as you correct point out.

You can view a castle as either a prison or a refuge, depending on your political inclinations. Apple has built a very robust castle -- whether that's a good or bad thing depends largely on your personal views. Stallman detests all castles; empirically, most people seem to find them comforting.

> Apple has traditionally been very user hostile

Here's an interview with Steve Jobs on privacy regarding location data:

https://youtu.be/39iKLwlUqBo?t=23s

Apple takes care of their users.

A rancher takes care of his cattle too — but they're not free to leave, and eventually he's going to slaughter them.

With Android, I can choose to load my own OS. With iOS, I cannot.

the fact that they care about privacy doesn't mean that they aren't user hostile

'user hostile' is too ambiguous to be useful.

I would argue that some of the perceived 'hostility' is a Necessary Evil® for improved UX elsewhere - specifically implementing DRM paved the way for Apple users to be able to "just buy/lease/get/download" lots of media (or actually licenses to media) very easily. I'm an Apple FanBoi though, so I am heavily biased because I really like their ecosystem.

Specifically about user privacy, Apple has a track record of being a decent advocate for user privacy. More publicly than I have been, that's for sure!

I agree. I think sentiment changed on HN when they apparently resisted the FBI.

But the company who does:

http://bgr.com/2015/04/01/iphone-location-tracking-map/

https://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/20/apple-spotlight-suggest...

... no thanks.

> http://bgr.com/2015/04/01/iphone-location-tracking-map/

That's had a toggle in Settings for several years. Also "Significant Locations are encrypted and cannot be read by Apple."

A prison you can choose to enter and leave at will? This is either excessive hyperbole or Stallman has no idea of what a prison is.

What about the term "jailbreak"?

The problem is also vendor lockin and customer loyalty (often times because people don't like change). You can leave, but most users won't or don't want to.

I'd say that vendor lock-in is unrelated; any platform can have it regardless of the openness of the platform.

Jailbreaking is not part of the lock-in. It's a way of doing more stuff with the hardware than the original software allowed you to do. The fact that the term has 'jail' in it doesn't make the users more locked in than they already were, they were free to enter and leave without jailbreaks.

Tangentially, I used to jailbreak my iphone because it offered me useful extra features that I couldn't otherwise get (e.g. a SSH client back when Apple didn't have such apps). But I haven't felt the need to jailbreak iOS for years now, because just about everything I could want to do with the system is already possible.

Finally, 'jailbreaking' is effectively another word for 'security hole'. If my iOS device can be jailbroken, it's actually a worry to me, not a benefit.

Google's chromebooks do offer a better alternative to this, whereby you can flush out ChromeOS by making a physical change to your device (in my case, disassembling the laptop and turning a particular screw). But it still can be a security risk; if there was some physical means of replacing iOS on a phone with alternative software, you could never trust that a secondhand iPhone hadn't been maliciously tweaked to preload malware.

> Jailbreaking is not part of the lock-in. It's a way of doing more stuff with the hardware than the original software allowed you to do.

That's precisely what rms is referring to when he says "jail":

https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html#jails

"allowed you to do" is the key phrase in your sentence---software should never tell you that you can't do something just because its developers don't want you to do so (we call that an "anti-feature"); software should be a tool to serve the user, not hold their computer/device hostage to exert control over them.

That link is really terrible and GNU should be embarrassed to be publishing something like that. Referring to people as "iMonsters" and the general tone of that page make it seem very childish. Some of those points are even worth discussion but it over-simplifies them to the point of being worthless and easily dismissible. That's a real shame.

It's a prison because they make it so enjoyable most people don't want to leave?

Jailbreak is a viral marketing term, and says very little about the actual situation. Is that really the leg you want to stand on?

The term "jailbreak" was coined by the users that broke into the first iPod/iPhone firmware, not Apple. The file with the key was called "lockdown.d" (or something of that nature) and so exposing the locked-down area was colloquially referred to as a "jailbreak".

And most users would never take advantage of a truly open platform phone. Maybe it's a prison, but it's a prison that might as well not even exist for most people because they'll never even see the walls.

If they don't want to, what's the problem? It's more of a hotel than a prison.

If he had made an analogy with a luxury resort, the argument isn't nearly as compelling.

I have seen no one doing as much as Apple for privacy along with a good user experience (though it might look restrictive to those coming from Android or desktop PC backgrounds). I'm willing to trade off a little bit of convenience for better privacy preservation. Many security researchers have stated that the desktop philosophy of letting any program run, access any resource it wants, etc., is outdated and harmful to users in the mobile era. That's one of the areas Apple's start with a restricted system that slowly expands to fulfill needs in a better way comes from.

If the users "could have done it themselves", we should have proof that someone did it in a way most people could use it. Where's such a system? Which mass market usable mobile OS does not put users in a prison? If the choices are between one that puts the user in a prison but protects the user better vs. another that doesn't, the decision for those who value this and can afford such a device is quite clear.

> I have seen no one doing as much as Apple for privacy along with a good user experience

Uh... Mozilla.

Sorry, I missed stating the context of my comment explicitly, which was around smartphones.

Mozilla, of course, is a great organization on this front. I've said that in comments here in the past, and am an unofficial Firefox evangelist.

You are conflating two concepts here. From what ever we see Apple has been really clear and focused on user privacy and security. They back up their words with actions and improve on them over time.

Also if a free system lets users do it themselves why are we talking about Apple being a better option for security and privacy over google?

> Apple has traditionally been very user hostile

What Apple are you talking about? The one I know has always held customer satisfaction as sacred. They've been fairly developer-hostile, but extremely user-friendly. They're literally famous for being user-friendly.

I never bought into Google/Android. I strongly preferred Java and Android over Obj-C and iOS, but I'd already seen the market fragmentation caused by clones (Windows OEMs), and had a pretty good hunch how it'd play out. I was right.

Can you care to point where Apple was user hostile from a privacy point of view?

It can be arguable why Apple limited the user iPhone wise. Actually, limiting the user not only affected performance but also privacy since Apps are jailed and can't easily "hack" your phone/data.

It be great to differentiate between two guys: 1. Who cares about freedom and performance and 2. Who cares about freedom only. I'd like to think that Apple is number 1. They care about freedom as long as it doesn't affect the performance vector.

> In a free system, the users could have done this themselves years ago instead of waiting for Apple.

Could they?

I was dimly aware of third-party cookies and enabled options to block them. Kind of made sense, but only because a big fuss was already being made.

These new tricks for fooling the browser into thinking third party cookies are first party? I wasn't aware of them at all. NB: I'm kind of an HN addict.

Are there any free-software browsers addressing this issue at all? Ones that ship by default with KDE, etc. at least?

And that fact would have any relevance at all, if there was a viable, free alternative to iOS and Android. For what is the Status Quo in the mobile market, Apple is doing well.

Even Custom Android ROMs have inherent design flaws, because it's been ultimately designed by Google and certain things just can't be changed without Google playing along (or breaking compatibility with the app ecosystem).

More information on the FSF's position: https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html

And rms' perspective: https://stallman.org/apple.html

The average user has no ability to do this, nor the will or want to.

That's OUR FAULT as programmers. We need to improve product design of open source software to make it accessible, easy to use and secure.

So do what Apple has done, except for the first part about which only programmers care?

That's not an excuse to prevent every user from doing it IMO.

People quoting Stallman have very little knowledge about the users.

Yes, this benefits Apple customers. I'm pleased.

But it also attacks the revenue of the other 3 horsemen (Google, Facebook, Amazon). Which also pleases me.

If I was Apple, I'd mess with advertising, just because.

Apple knows this; in fact, I'd say it's their core business strategy. They did this before with the iTunes Music Store, and they will continue doing it as long as they exist.

Apple focuses on the mass consumer as their sole and perpetual customer. This allows them to maintain laser focus on solving the problems of the end users rather than solving the problems of an advertiser and forcing the solution on end users.

Apple's refusal to "innovate" on its business model has actually put them where they are today. Most other tech companies have other motives in making mobile devices: Amazon wants to sell you content, Facebook and Google want to show you ads, while Apple just wants to make the best damn phone out there and sell it at a very high price.

If the market definition of "best damn phone out there" starts to include "protects your privacy", Apple doesn't have the conflicts of interest that Google or Facebook do. I'm sure everyone else will eventually follow suit, but Apple is the only one with the capability to take the lead on privacy.

Oh spare me. Apple is waaay in bed with rightsholders when it comes to DRM. It's all wine and roses as long as you're 100% bought in to their ecosystem. Try playing your iTunes purchase on a non-Apple product and you're SOL. I fail to see how this solves "the problems of the end users."

> Try playing your iTunes purchase on a non-Apple product and you're SOL

What are you talking about? Did iTunes add back DRM? Around 2009 or so Apple made all of iTunes DRM-free and were, I believe, the first major online music store to do so. It was a huge deal; Apple published an open letter from Jobs on their home page and everything.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/companies/07app...

"iTunes Plus refers to songs and some music videos* in high-quality AAC format that don't have Digital Rights Management (DRM). All songs now for sale in the iTunes Store are iTunes Plus."

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201616

and, as of 2014, you could kill DRM on DRM-ed iTunes purchases made before 2009 https://www.wired.com/2014/03/kill-itunes-drm/

Movies are still generally protected with DRM. Do you know if you can play iTunes movies with a third party player (like VLC).

Who sells DRM free movies?

gog.com

Plus, not all DRM schemes are equal. One that is exclusive to Apple is worse (IMHO) than one that isn't. For example, I can go to a store and buy a DVD or BluRay disk that has DRM yet I am very sure that I can play it on every player I own.

You have it backwards. The rights holders forced the DRM requirements on Apple - Apple never sought it out.

Even at risk of adding unnecessary comments, I feel compelled to tell you that this is the most insightful comment I have read all week.

My response to this is: But they DON'T make the best damn phone out there. They DO sell it at a very high price. Samsung phones are light years ahead on features and being the best damn phone out there.

I'd have to agree their hardware and software is lacking tremendously for tech users looking to use their phone exactly as they wish. This really isn't true for 99% of their userbase however. That being the case their ecosystem is very secure and their app store is slightly less of a dumpster fire than google play.

Ultimately if you have the money for a premium phone and just need it to make phone calls, browse the web etc (the basics) then the iPhone really is the best option as it's more secure at the moment.

The place where the iPhone doesn't sell to someone like me is the hand holding babysitting it does preventing you from manipulating the device as I wish. Again this is a non-issue to them.

It can be frustrating to see someone overpaying for what you consider an inferior product but they're not using it like you are.

If I want to manipulate a device, I'll buy a raspberry pi. My phone isn't a playtoy; it's something I need to just work transparently.

Really though; there's very little you can't do with an iPhone as long as you're willing to pay $99/yr and write some code...

I think this is true to some extent - they do suit many users more than more flexible, but as a result more complicated, Android - but the iOS ecosystem is more restrictive than it needs to be, and more restrictive than is ideal, for many more than 1% of users.

Personally, I think more than 50% of users would benefit for more flexibility than iOS offers, even at the cost of less ease of use. I don't think it has to cost that much ease of use though. I think the ideal for most people is somewhere in between Android and iOS, but probably closer to Android. Android is not that hard to use. It is also not impossible to have a highly curated app store like Apple's, and allow apps from other sources at the same time of people want to install them. Ideally we'd have more diversity in OS implementations I think, based on one or a small number of actual OSs. Android based OSs that are more heavily modified to be easier to use etc. This would be easier I think if phones were more like PCs in that you could install your own OS and get the drivers for your hardware. I think Android is somewhat moving in that direction so there is hope for that in future.

Phones are very much unlike PCs in a lot of important ways.

First, is that phone users value weight and size above all else. Regardless of what that means to each individual user, it does mean that any design compromises will need to come out favorably for weight/size considerations. Modular phones have been released, but they largely failed because they provided very little benefit for the added weight/size. Phones absolutely must be integrated devices as a result (i.e. no modular components, making them impossible to repair).

Second is that because of the above, basically every chip in a phone is a custom SoC. So not only do you have to support many flavors of devices, you also have to support different flavors of SoCs, often used in different ways in different devices. This isn't insurmountable with the right driver repository structure, but good luck getting vendors to update those drivers.

Third, I don't exactly know what benefits a less restrictive OS ecosystem would provide. Apple's App Store rules are not insane (there are so many bad actors out there, the curation is a huge benefit to users); and if you ever want to run programs that aren't "blessed" by Apple, you can buy a $99 developer license, sign the binaries yourself and sideload them through XCode. Could it be easier? Sure, it could. But it's realistically an edge case, and Apple is focused on the main use cases.

This is somewhat subjective and misses the point that hardware isn't the only determining factor. If I was on the fence about which platform I wanted, the one with better privacy and a more secure app store is appealing.

Samsung phones does have a lot more features. But iPhone is generally more polished and well thought out for general use cases imo. But "best" is highly subjective. Objectively, iPhones have faster processors and likely smoother animations overall, while Android is more flexibile.

Could you elaborate or give some links on the better features of Samsung phones compared to (equivalent) Apple phones? I'm honestly curious, because I haven't bothered looking outside the Apple ecosystem but last time around my experience was really good, until around the iPhone 5S (I went for the Nexus 4, I think).

That was my first (very pleased!) read on it at first but this snippet towards the end:

> "When you visit a site, any cookies that are set can be used in a third-party context for twenty-four hours. During the first twenty-four hours the third-party cookies can be used to track the user, but afterward can only be used to login and not to track. This means that sites that you visit regularly are not significantly affected. The companies this will hit hardest are ad companies unconnected with any major publisher."

Since the average internet user (aka not us) visits Facebook constantly and Google regularly, will this really have an impact at all?

The "unconnected with any major publisher." part is the major one. I would say this likely doesn't affect Google and Facebook much (it might affect Facebook greatly for me, since I use the site once every couple weeks). Who it does affect is shadier third party ad networks which have less well defined privacy policies. It also affects any fully legitimate and non-shady advertiser that doesn't have a web presence you want to visit regularly. So in that respect it punishes all the non-Google and non-Facebooks equally, which may or may not be a good thing.

Google and Facebook may know too much about you, but I'm not really worried about them selling that data, which is some small relief. They are the ferryman at the river, and they charge to take advertisers to their audiences. They aren't in the business of selling boats.

> Google and Facebook may know too much about you, but I'm not really worried about them selling that data, which is some small relief.

Why aren't you worried about that? How about in 15 years when they've gone downhill and are looking for ways to make some quick cash?

Like I said, a small relief. To clarify, I'm not worried about them selling the data now, and I have hopes that there will be some headway made on the issue legislatively prior to them running into problems. It's not a good situation, but it's better than joe-schmoe-adtech right now offering to target me for $X, and outright sell all that info for Y x $X because they need to raise some cash fast.

If we don't make headway on this issue legislatively and soon, I'm not sure it matters, as your profile information's privacy at all these sites has a shelf life in my eyes. Both sales and security breaches with exfiltration of data at random adtech companies will eventually lead to most this private profile data being publicly available anyway, so unless we put some strong limits on what can be collected, how it must be stored, notification of who is storing it, and the ability to review and remove items (and all of this at a minimum), I think it's a moot point who has it now, since everyone will eventually.

I would think the average user visits Facebook through the Facebook app, not through Safari, so that should very much affect them. Google is a different story...

Not on desktop, however. Safari for macOS is introducing the same functionality

Right, but isn't that the point that now they can't track you across sessions based on logins and things of that nature. If I use the app on my phone, they can't check my browser history against that and, on the Mac, they can keep my login information but they can't track me across sites. Seems like a win-win for users on both ends.

Right, no real effect for most users and ad publishers. Apple didn't really do much here.

On mobile Apple removed IDFA (can be reset), UUID and mac address tracking. They are pushing hard to remove a way to tell if your mobile ads convert. On web apps, yes, removing third party tracking is also helps to remove any kind of accountability within your ad spends. This basically promotes dumb ad spends: you spend money without knowing if you get anyone to convert. This doesn't hurt google,facebook, et al, it actually helps them. Dumb money advertising is their bread and butter. (Pay per click / impression)

Curious, how does this impact Amazon?

I'm not 100% sure, but I think it's going to close the window available for them to retarget you with ads. I'm talking about the annoying practice of noticing that you searched for headphones on Amazon then you start seeing ads for headphones everywhere you surf.

Retargeting by brands/products who then sell via Amazon? (although if they're spending money on a sophisticated ad tactic i'd be surprised if they don't have their own site/store from which to sell)

Browsers are really where privacy needs to come from.

I know a lot of people have hopes for a legislative solutions, but I think the EU (also UK and others) "cookie law" really needs to make us consider how effective they can be. The motivation for the law was good. They put their finger in the right place. . We got nag screens and little improvment in privacy.

Not every piece of privacy legislation does as little as this, but I still think we need to be wary. Browsers, OTOH, are in a great position to improve user privacy.

Maybe instead of letters to parliamentarians, letters to browser makers?

The biggest browser maker is funded by advertising revenue.

I recommend watching the film "Democracy"[1], which showed how an EU data protection law went through the process to become law. The "main character" (chair of the process) was a German MEP. The thing I best remember him saying[2] was in response to some lobbyists, who wanted to know why he was pushing back against their business interests when they were all united. The MEP said he primarily represented the thousands of people in his constituency, even though they couldn't afford to send lobbyists to Brussels.

With some stronger wording ("This site shares your data, including the web pages you view and where you click, with the following companies: Google, AdNetwork234, ..., These companies use it to sell advertising to you and may further share your data") the cookie law could have been stronger.

The MEP was in the Green party, but most aren't -- pressure from individuals on other MEPs would encourage other, more business-friendly MEPs, to push back against the lobbyists.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/14/democracy...

[2] I think it was in the film, but I also went to a screening with him giving a talk afterwards.

We all just click through cookie popups, the specific text doesn't make any difference to 99% of users, if not more.

The only thing legislation like that does is make companies pay people like me a little more to implement popups that annoy their users.

We click through them now, because the message is techno-waffle, or boring: "This site uses cookies. Read our policy."

If, instead, it said "Every click you make on this site is recorded and sent to four unrelated companies" the public might just have taken a bit more notice.

I doubt it.

There are signs all over California telling you that the appliance you are going to buy might kill you and nobody cares. You think they are going to care that some unrelated company will find out what you are reading on Medium?

It also creates awareness as people who had no idea that cookies existed also receive such pop ups.

Ultimately it creates terrible trust signals. Users learn that 'professionally made sites have those cookie banner things. It's something to do with security or something', they assume that sites without them are more likely to be dodgy, and place false trust in sites which do implement a cookie warning.

That's a straw man argument, clueless people that stay clueless are hardly a downside.

However, these banners have also clearly caused millions of people to ask the question "What's a cookie" which leads some of them to start caring about this issue.

I’d argue it doesn’t do much of that either. No-one reads error messages, and certainly no-one ready cookie notices.

The EU GDPR[1] legislation actually looks good. It includes the right to access your data and the right to be forgotten. It remains to be seen how well it's implemented, but they've really gotten the basics right I think.

1: http://www.eugdpr.org/the-regulation.html

> We got nag screens and little improvment in privacy.

We definitely got the nag screens¹, but improvement?

[1] Which is totally inferior solution technically & ux-wise, because the user/client voluntarily accepts the cookie from the server, and there's already setting for that in the browser.

The nags are only mandated for tracking, cookies are only a implementation detail. The EU directive explicitly mentions that, does not even focus on cookies, and states that cookies (or whatever) pertaining to site operation (such as login/cart/whatever) do not require nagging. Thus the proper browser setting is DNT, not accepting cookies.

But everyone construed that cookies <=> nag, because nobody RTFM.

I don’t think it’s a RTFM thing. The lawyers RTFM, and this is what they came up with.

The legislation called for informed consent. Two core issues were left open to definition, in practice. [1] What requires informed consent? [2] What counts as informed consent.

For question 2, a standard answer (nag screen) emerged.

Question 1 is trickier. The cheapest & easiest solution is to just nag, so that’s the default. If you want to drop the nag screen you can deal with question 1, but most don’t bother. Either they want the tracking, they want the easiest option or they want legal CYA.

I think the legislative intentions were good, but this was a hard area to legislate. It didn’t work, IMO.

Browsers are really where privacy needs to come from.

There's only so much a browser can do against someone who can follow your IP address around. What we really need is ISPs who randomize what the server sees from their pool of IPs and NAT it internally.

Placing trust in your ISP isn't a good decision, even if they are mandated by law---there's always bad actors, violating the law might be worth it depending on the penalty, and there's law enforcement / government warrant/subpoena power.

That would remove any way that you had to run a server on your home machines - trade one freedom for another?

Static IP is already an optional extra on most UK ISPs, so most people would lose nothing

It's an optional extra just about anywhere, but most routers have dyndns or some equivalent built in these days, and besides your address changes so seldom that you can run a server for a small group by just telling them the new IP when it changes.

Well, it's a trade-off. Personally I just use cloud VM now and don't run a home server anymore (previously I had DynDNS and would SSH X11 tunnel into my IRIX box from outside).

Or a VPN. Then again, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_fingerprint and it's game over again.

browsers could prevent fingerprinting. They could randomize information enough so that they still have the important bits but cannot easily be tracked.

And then the ISP comes along and adds a super cookie to your traffic.

It's ISPs that worry me the most. They see all the places you connect to. Even if you use https, they still know the endpoints.

ISPs can't add cookies to encrypted traffic going into a VPN relay.

It is a war of escalation though. You can be tracked via 304 responses and etags, for example. Fixing those client side isn't really practical.

You don't need to prevent tracking completely. You just need to make it enough of a hassle so that it becomes too impractical or too expensive to do at scale.

> We got nag screens and little improvment in privacy.

We could have skipped the nag screens with DNT.

Was recently telling my dad about this. I might get an iPhone X just because of Apple's new stance on browsing privacy. I recently quit my ad-tech job and what FB/Google does with tracking is incredibly sketchy.

Glad to see a large company with leverage fight back.

Good to hear! I have been summarily refusing ad-tech job offers (and boy, some of them were willing to pay big bucks).

The ethical concerns are staggering, and as it becomes harder to extract value it seems the ethics violations continue unbounded. People seem willing to do whatever it takes to keep their businesses (and most crucially, the jobs they cannot afford to lose) afloat. I suspect wage slavery is to blame for a lot of this.

It's anecdata, but not a single one of the people I know in media/advertising actually WANTS to be there, and all of them have serious concerns about the business practices. The #1 thing keeping them there in every case is "I need the money".

For those who have the luxury of choice I implore you: vote with your feet, switch jobs, and encourage others to do the same! I refuse to join a company unless I know its profits are tied directly to some mutual benefit for society.

> The #1 thing keeping them there in every case is "I need the money".

Basically, this was my situation. But I paid off my student loans and I have some money in the bank now so I have some leverage as I shop around for my next job.

I am actually super intrigued to hear about someone quitting ad-tech. Did you quit ad-tech because of moral/ethical concerns? What was your "wake up call"?

It wasn't so much a wake-up call, just a long-time simmer. When I first took the position, it wasn't in ad-tech, but our team slowly migrated to doing purely FB and Google ad automation.

I felt that not only was I underused technically, but also that my contribution was a net negative for society.

Why not an iPhone 6?

Don't know why people are downvoting this, but the 5C just got "obsoleted" so that could mean the 6 is right on the brink of update oblivion. So that could be a reason.

could be - but the question is so stupid - not worthy to actually reply.

In the light of such pretentious behaviour I have no idea why apple users have a reputation of being pragmatic and down2earth. </irony>

I'm an apple user, perhaps even a fan. I don't have a clue why your comment was downvoted. Is it a lot? Maybe it's a misclick.

just joking. nonetheless my question was serious.

I wouldn't like to pay more than €500 on a smartphone. And ...,iP6 < €500 < iP7,...

Actually I am a happy Android user. But I don't like too much of my data in one basket. Which is why I would consider iPhone for my next phone.

But the praise of iOS regarding privacy is rather new. So my question aims at whether I could expect also the privacy for older iPhones or if this is only coming with newer versions.

Of course data safety is in this case a result of an Apple policy - which would affect all products - but possibly older iPhones still send too much data to Apple.

F.x. let's assume a Catalonian opposition politician who's investigated by the Spanish police and a judge decides his data should be searched. With this warrant they contact Apple. Would apple now send all their data about the guy to the police - how much do they have?

That's another question I ponder besides ad tracking policies.

Well, the data sending is (AFAIK) about the OS, not the phone itself. So if did they made this policy change for iOS 11 [1] then all phones that run iOS 11 get it. And honestly, the 6 is probably fine. They stopped updated 5C and before because they were 32-bit phones. I expect 6 and on to keep getting security updates, etc. for a long time. At least I hope so because I had planned on staying with my 6 for as long as I can.

For your spanish case, I would refer to the case of the US terrorists: Apple prefered to pay a fine to the US government rather than unlocking it.

[1] I think they've always had this kind of policy, for the record.

"This question is an outrageous profanity!"

I wonder if Apple will make it easier to block tracking pixels in emails. I know they let you turn off remote image loading in total, but this is a pretty blunt instrument and makes many emails hard to read.

I would love if they came up with a smart solution that blocked all pixels, but didn't by default block substantive images. This is increasingly important as new email apps come out that offer consumers the ability to easily send emails with tracking pixels [1].

1: https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/18/rapportive-founders-new-st...

You can load images on an as-needed basis in mail. Generally, any email that is solely images and has no text is not going to be worth looking at.

I can't see how defining 'substantive' images could ever work. The other issue is that email clickable links are often unique and tracked, so images are unfortunately only part of the problem here.

>I can't see how defining 'substantive' images could ever work

You can't? Seems pretty straight forward, so long as you remember first and foremost that 100% accuracy is completely unnecessary. The "load all images" option can still be there, so all that's needed is a solution that's good enough to suffice the majority of the time and shape norms and standard-case. That leaves lot of low hanging fruit. To start with are basic heuristics like that there is no need in email for 1x1 or 2x2 or 3x3 or whatever pixel images, or images where the pixels are entirely set to transparent. A lot of tracking stuff, particularly mass scale efforts tied to multiple parties beyond the sender, is pretty blatantly content free for even a totally dumb static rule set. Slightly more smarts could be used to discriminate based on simple sender trust heuristics, such as whether the email is cryptographically signed, they're in your contacts book, whether you've ever replied or clicked through, etc. Finally this could be another area where, just as they did here with cookies, Apple applied some basic ML to answer the "likely substantive" question. Again, remember that failing here doesn't necessarily matter because it can still be an improvement over the status quo.

Sure, I agree that blocking pixel images and similar stuff like transparent images is an easy win, but the workaround for that would be for trackers to start supplying more substantive parts of the email appearance, such as company logos and so on.

Yeah, the question is what is the proportion of low-hanging fruit versus persistent actors. We didn't just give up on spam because "spammers will find a way around".

And if we can eliminate a bunch of low-hanging fruit (e.g., from consumers who don't care enough about tracking to put a trackable company logo image in their signature), that's better than nothing.

Just cache all images in apple's servers (even if the user doesn't open the mail) by default and tracking is useless.

The problem with detecting pixels is you generally have to load the image before you find out that it's only 1x1 or fully-transparent. And by then it's too late.

Apple could probably use ML to try and guess ahead of time whether a URL is a tracking pixel, but they have to load at least some of them first to be able to figure that out.

> I can't see how defining 'substantive' images could ever work.

See Superhuman. They're using tracking pixels with no related images or links.

If you download any image then that image can be used as a pixel image to track you.

They should just make not downloading external images the default and only option and remove the banner to manually download them, so people have to send the images as attachments and tracking is impossible.

Hopefully FireFox and-or IE will be the next to step up. I don't see Chrome stepping up until every other browser has.

Firefox, I doubt it. They love the ad money so biting the hand that feeds them is risky, never know who will feed them next and how much.

Microsoft might, even though Bing is profitable and in 2015 brought in ~ $1b a quarter https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/22/bing-is-profitable/ . Might be too much money for Microsoft to ruin it.

All Apple right I think, but if they wanted to hurt Google they could start a search engine, maybe by buying DDG.

As a browser vendor, yes, you have to try to not piss off advertisers, because if website owners don't make money off of your browser, they're not going to test against it much, but why would you list that reason specifically for Firefox? Firefox is the browser that's willing to bite advertisers' hands more than any other browser. They even ship effectively an ad blocker in Private Browsing.

DDG is not a search engine.

Can you elaborate? DuckDuckGo[1] sure looks like a search engine to me.

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/

OP probably means that DDG uses Bing search results to populate the index

Is it ice-cream? Dance Dance Gelato?

You may wish to visit this link:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/1/15726778/chrome-ad-blocker...

By the way, a friendly reminder that EFF is happy to take donations and there are a variety of ways to do so.

Blocking a few egregious ad types is not at all the same as the blocking of privacy-invading cookies as Apple is doing.

> The Chrome ad blocker doesn’t just help publishers, it also helps Google maintain its dominance. And it advantages Google’s own ad units, which, it’s safe to say, will not be in violation of the bad ad rules.

Don’t be evil, indeed.

Right, but it's a start - meaning they might eventually get there. It means there is pressure and that they may be obligated to take notice. It's not the end, it is the beginning.

> Right, but it's a start - meaning they might eventually get there.

Get where, exactly? 88% of Google money comes from Ads[0], if you think their plan is to remove them from web you are either crazy or stupid.

[0] - http://www.businessinsider.de/how-google-apple-facebook-amaz...

It means it's a start towards protecting the user and working towards privacy and security goals. They will still make money selling ads.

It means it's a start towards removing competitors ads as "bad ones," meaning "use Adwords if you your ads to show and bypass the ad-blocker."

Firefox already has some protection implemented [1], but I don't know exactly how much is blocked.

[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection-pbm...

Would I be right to assume that safari on iOS defeats browser finger printing, given the absence of flash and the fact that you can't really customise the platform, adding new fonts, etc, so the entropy is close to zero?

It doesn't seem so, visiting Panopticlick[0] on my unmodified Safari/iPhone7/iOS 10.3.3 gives "your browser has a nearly unique fingerprint"

[0]https://panopticlick.eff.org/

So, panopticlick marks down my browser because it doesn't unblock third parties that promise to honour "Do not track".

In what way is this bad? (Yes, I have third party cookies blocked. No, I'm not unblocking them.)

The more things you do that aren't like what everyone else does, the easier it is to single you out from the combination of those choices.

It's bad in a sense that you're possible to identify uniquely by the advertisers.

Do not track is snake oil anyway...

Being on an iPhone will however reduce most of those bits to 0. For example any iPhone 8 with iOS11 will share the same screen resolution, fonts, user agent and so on. They talk about this in their methodology, however do not give the actual bits in their results, only that you have 'more than 19'

I got the same thing. When I look at the fingerprint details though, it's not clear why it should be "nearly unique". Of the things listed there, there's not much that's customizable, mostly just time zone, locale, DNT, and if cookies are enabled. That said, it also has "Hash of canvas fingerprint", which apparently has a lot of bits, but I have no idea what information that's actually extracting. Similarly "Hash of WebGL fingerprint".

I did try this on iOS 11, which they probably don't have much data for yet and would explain some of the unique-ness, but you said iOS 10.3.3 which is much less new.

Maybe iPhone users just don't try panopticlick very much?

Ditto on iOS 11 with Safari. In Firefox I get just unique, in Safari it is “nearly unique”.

I don't know how well Panopticlick would do for scoring Safari 11, as it runs all its tests within a few seconds. Some of Safari's new behaviour around third and first party cookies only kick in after 24 hours, or 30 days.

I’m golden on iOS 11.0.0

You can still do things like being able to get the battery status with JS or detect visited links.

Newer versions (since around 2013) of webkit and gecko limit a:visited style changes to just colour or background colour.

So the getComputedStyle() trick doesn't work anymore. Is that what your referring to?

> detect visited links

Is this still possible? I was under the impression this is prevented in most browsers.

Well, browser vendors keep adding features, and in 2014, it was predicted by lcamtuf that the mix-blend-mode property would be useful to access browser history:

https://lcamtuf.blogspot.fr/2016/08/css-mix-blend-mode-is-ba...

Two years later, it was implemented, and the demo seems to be working here in Firefox 56: http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/whack/

Also wrt battery status - that's only Chrome thing these days.

http://caniuse.com/#feat=battery-status

For firefox there is dom.battery.enabled and https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Battery_Sta... but it seems that since 42 it is enabled only for addons. It seems that I was wrong about that indeed.

> Apple does right by users and advertisers are displeased

Looking at all the anti-Apple bile and conspiracy theory crap on this thread, it looks like the anti-Apple crowd are completely unhinged by it as well.

I usually turn off 3rd party cookies in my browsers and it is fine with mostly all sites, but often I forget about that and can't log into few services, cause they implement logging in a somewhat wrong way. For a big example, Atlassian lost me (and my small dev department) because their auth is too complicated to fit in one domain, while all I wanted was a simple svn hosting backed by serious player, no matter the price. /mycookiestory

I'll write a theorem that every company ends up with single sign on, no matter how poor it is (oh hi Youtube, hi Ted Cruz).

Another one is MS and Sony PSN

From a consumer privacy standpoint, Apple has the advantage over Google that they are not beholden to advertisers for any significant portion of their revenue.

you folks remember steve's letter on flash?

https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

i'd love to see such thing wrt the ad industry whinging like this. it would be so great.

Related: Check if your browser is currently allowing third party cookies https://alanhogan.github.io/web-experiments/3rd/third-party-...

Beyond ads/retargeting, does this render analytics services useless? Will Google Analytics and Mixpanel show anyone who isn't a daily active user as "new"? Will Optimizely not be able to customize my site and have that be retained for that user going forward beyond a day?

For the first time, I'm also tempted by an iPhone.

But, it's still a proprietary system, and there are far fewer open source apps in the App Store compared to the Play store.

Maybe I'm better continuing as I do now -- Android, but with Firefox + blocking plugins installed.

I think you are looking at it the right way. If the software you want to run isn't available on some platform, that should rule out the platform.

I've always had an Android phone and an iPad so I've tended to choose applications that are cross platform so switching is easy for me. I think my next phone is going to be an iPhone because I'm starting to feel like a sharecropper on the Google farm.

In case you're not aware, on Android there's also F-Droid, an app store with only open-source apps, maintained by a non-profit organization. At least when I'm looking for open-source apps on Android, that's where I start looking...

https://f-droid.org/

Does anyone have a guide as to how this affects things for ecommerce?

If I have a third party reviews module - Feefo, BazaarVoice etc. - will that work?

Is this the end for 'AddThis' and other tracker things marketing type insist on bulking the page load times with?

If Apple really wants to do right by users, they need to open source their software.

I don't like any giant company saying, "trust us, our code is completely closed and we put up tons of road blocks for you unless you use it the way we say you should, but we take your privacy seriously. Trust us <EvilSmile />"

As long as Apple is a closed and secretive company, I won't consider them advocates for users.

If you have that view of Apple and don't trust them, then what would be different if the code was open source? You think they couldn't do a special "evil" build for devices where you can't access the binary and then provide the "non-evil" source for it?

Does that mean the feature is also present in chrome on ios? Or is that controlled by the interface?

why don't site and advertiser just set up a subdomain of the primary site, and point the DNS to an ad server?

(maybe this is just too much work?)

This is all lovely and all, but... cookies?

If I were an ad network, I'd long ago switched to local storage and browser fingerprinting. Especially if it's my very survival as a business is at stake.

The localStorage is not readable across sites. Cookies are. The issue is mostly with 3rd party cookies which many in the industry rely on to do tracking.

My main point was in browser fingerprinting.

LocalStorage is just an icing on top to better cross-reference users in the scope of the same site.

Well, yeah.

So just compartmentalize. If there's some set of online activity that you don't want linked to you, do it in a dedicated VM. With Internet connectivity via some mix of VPNs and Tor. Everything that Mirimir does online is linked, at least somewhat. But that's fine, because it's not linked to my meatspace identity.

Well, sure.

Point being that this "fight for the users" centered around 3rd party cookies is a privacy theatre. If 3rd party cookies were to be completely blocked on every single computer tomorrow, the ad industry will just switch to another option and nothing will change. But this does make Apple look like privacy champions.

"Does right by users" is quite a claim, to deprive users of targeted advertising.

Be aware of this - we all know advertising is abused, and has tired users - but it's tricky to find a vendor of hardware being the gate keeper of such stance.

Next step is main media groups start to block safari browsers.

> to deprive users of targeted advertising

Oh wow! I didn't realize that having my browsing habits picked through by corporations just to show me ads for products I already bought was such a huge honour. Thanks for this.

> Next step is main media groups start to block safari browsers.

That'll be awesome, I won't have to guess which sites respect my privacy since the ones that don't will just fail to load.

It's not an honor, it is what is it. Advertising won't go away - it's the difference of seeing relevant communication to you, or get all shit.

But giving all your information to Apple, is somehow, ok.

They know who you are, if you'll buy the next iphone, they target advertising at you through their own mediums... but that's fine.

> That'll be awesome, I won't have to guess which sites respect my privacy since the ones that don't will just fail to load.

Soon your world will be all Apple. Amen.

You complain about targeted advertising, but you don't complain about the walls that are being built around you - probably cause you can't see them since they're being built brick by brick.

>it's the difference of seeing relevant communication to you

There is no relevant communication from any advertiser to me. When I need something or want to know about things, I research it. Other information might come from friends and family. I do not care about what a to-me-unknown third party thinks a product is worth (including my attention), because their entire agenda is to bullshit me into buying something REGARDLESS of the need or quality of the product they talk about.

Be aware of that stance - you are getting influenced by advertising, do not make the mistake of thinking you're not - because that's when you have all your cognitive defenses down.

Be critic. Research is influenced by advertisers, that's why you have copy writers, SEO specialists, influencers, and millions of dollars supporting it.

Mate you're a sitting duck.

I'm not sure you can comprehend a human that tries to block all forms of advertisement, controls all information the net has on them and sees ads as a possible factor towards not buying a particular product.

I might be an asshole who can be considered useless because I don't bring the ad industry a single cent, but I'm certainly not a sitting duck, mate.

> you are getting influenced by advertising, do not make the mistake of thinking you're not

Obviously, but that doesn't mean I want to make it easier for them to influence me by letting them track me and target ads specifically towards me.

The problem isn't targeted advertising. The problem is the information the ad companies collect in order to provide targeted advertising. If I could get targeted advertising in some magical fashion without the advertising company having any information about me, that would be pretty interesting. But it doesn't work that way¹. And I don't want ad companies (or really anybody) to have the kind of information necessary to do targeted advertising.

¹It could theoretically be done, e.g. maybe the ad company provides 1000 possible ads and my device selects the best one itself. But I can't see anyone actually doing that.

Adverts by definition try to sell you things that are not relevant to your needs. They'd be pretty bad adverts, if they tried to sell you things that you do need and therefore will buy anyways.

> deprive users of targeted advertising

Poor users, deprived of the joys of targeted advertising :(

I've been getting temporarily banned from blocking ads on Facebook lately. Apparently I am "abusing" their feature of clicking "why am I seeing this" button too frequently.

You would rather be blasted with pet snake food, hemorrhoids cream and nail polish - over the laptop with a drop in price after you visited a website and added it to the cart.

But if giving all your biometrics data to Apple and limit yourself to their brand is the way to go - mate, you're using the right products. In a near future your world will be all-Apple, and you won't even notice.

? You don't give your biometrics data to anyone when you use touch or faceId. Are you sure you know what you're talking about?

Right now Apple _might_ be a dominant share in the SmartWatch category but certainly not in any other category they produce products in (phones, tv boxes, computers).

In a current future some people buy almost everything through Amazon, do all their socializing with Facebook, and do all their e-mailing and internet searching with google. All three of those comoanies track you as you go around the web and exploit every little bit of information they can to build expansive profiles about people in the world.

Apple doesn't track you around the web and is (and has, they stopped apps from tracking users in particular ways in the past) activitely making it harder for entities to follow you around the web.

Kudos to Apple.

> ? You don't give your biometrics data to anyone when you use touch or faceId. Are you sure you know what you're talking about?

That data is stored in your phone - when the FBI has to ask permission to Apple to have access to a phone, that phone doesn't belong to you - it belongs to Apple. They can blast through your door and get through everything you have - phone records, phones, laptops, photos, documents, even your bank account. But not your Apple smartphone - that's some fucked up shit going right there.

> Apple doesn't track you around the web and is (and has, they stopped apps from tracking users in particular ways in the past) actively making it harder for entities to follow you around the web.

Apple doesn't need to track you around the web - Apple knows who you are. They just don't want everyone else to know who you are - keep you locked up.

When tracking "works" I'm blasted with ads for products I just bought for weeks. Never mind that on a fundamental level I should be able to choose whether ad companies get to track me or not.

You can turn tracking on if you wish. I'd prefer to leave it off. What you seem to be advocating for is a world where no one can turn tracking off.

> When tracking "works" I'm blasted with ads for products I just bought for weeks. Never mind that on a fundamental level I should be able to choose whether ad companies get to track me or not.

Those are still malpractices. I'm not claiming it's perfect - far from it - but I think it is useful in all the chaos.

No, I'm just stating that it shouldn't be up to Apple to decide it.

"You would rather be blasted with pet snake food, hemorrhoids cream and nail polish - over the laptop with a drop in price after you visited a website and added it to the cart."

Yes, I would, for two reasons. First, the more poorly targeted the advertising is, the less effective it is at manipulating my mental state. As much as we'd all like to pretend to be Ubermenschs unaffected by advertising, we are not, and even the effort of consciously countering the subconscious impacts is one I'd rather not have to take.

Second, such poorly targeted ads would be accompanied by not being worth much as an ad; ultimately the ad system is fed by actual purchases in some sort of vague reaction to the ads, so poorly targeted ads would starve the incoming funds to the whole system, and be much more likely to be simple destroyed by lack of effect.

Advertising tailored to the content it's adjacent to is way better than the advertising that's supposedly tailored to me. The former teaches me about new products, the latter teaches me about shit I already know about and either own or didn't buy for a reason.

At this point, I see more relevant ads on broadcast television than on the internet.

> Be aware of this - we all know advertising is abused, and has tired users - but it's tricky to find a vendor of hardware being the gate keeper of such stance.

Advertising is abused. End of story. People are starting to realize they can let it affect their life, or prefer products that respect it.

Someone is gonna have access at some point to that information, there is no way around it. You seem to be on the side of letting anybody get access to it. Others do not want that and think they can trust Apple to guard it. It's their choice, it is not the advertiser's. The worst that can happen is Apple fails to honor its promise, and then well be back where we started.

I don't know why, maybe you are part of the ad industry, maybe you just like to have no privacy, but your emotional appeal to a dark Apple-owned future full of zombies is cartoonish at best.

Apple is not just a vendor of hardware.

Would it be less tricky if it was an operating system vendor? If one of the Linux distros packages a default browser with this block would you say the same?

You're right!

Yes, I think I would say the same. Same apply for Microsoft, with Edge.

The claim of privacy, might support isolation and that's how you start to build bubbles around people.

We should keep in sight what's the goal of targeted advertising - is to deliver relevant a message to the right users. It's heavily abused, indeed, and it should be revised.

But deprive the capacity of segmentation from a brand that know's everything about you - which Apple does - it's just not right imo.

> The claim of privacy, might support isolation and that's how you start to build bubbles around people.

This is completely backwards. Tracking is what allows Facebook et al. to build bubbles around people by "delivering relevant messages to the right users". Privacy is about users having control about what information companies collect about them and how that information is used. If I don't want companies to track my information (because I don't find targetting at all useful) I should be able to make that choice and ad companies should respect it. The fact that they "work around" tracking protections, as described in the article, is pretty despicable.

That's the catch of all this - indeed targeting creates bubbles, but building walls do the exact same thing.

> I should be able to make that choice and ad companies should respect it

Exactly - you should make that choice, not Apple by default.

>We should keep in sight what's the goal of targeted advertising - is to deliver relevant a message to the right users.

No, the goal is to make more money. Relevant is a sometimes side effect. The "right users" might also be the ones that are drunk, or emotionally vulnerable, or just got paid, or won at blackjack, or etc.

Apple doesn't know everything about me, nor do they want to. Where are you getting your information?

With the iPhone X they'll even know the details for your face, besides knowing your voice and finger print.

People are submitting all the biometric data.

I would prefer targeted TV ads as well. I really don't need to see ads for Viagra and other stupid things.

You can probably opt out if you really miss the ads.

That won't happen. The media groups wouldn't alienate potential customers because of their browser choice, not these days.

They wouldn't alienate, just force them to switch browsers.

This is a direct threat to their business models, and we all know desperate times call for desperate measures - specially on industries that work with thin margins already, and are getting pressured for high quality inventory.

It's not going to happen. Users will switch websites before they switch browsers. Any media site that defects from the Safari boycott will stand to pick up a lot of users. Boycotts don't work.

It's all about costs.

Probably the next step is stop targeting safari browsers through programmatic buying, and if the inventory of safari browser users is worthless, publishers will act I think.

Except iPhone (where most usage of Safari comes from) users have consistently shown to be affluent and spend more money than other phone users. They are the exact users every advertiser wants.

> Next step is main media groups start to block safari browsers.

That would be an interesting development. I doubt it.

Two things:

1. Methinks the advertisers doth complain too much. iOS devices have essentially no way to block advertising. Not in the browsers, not by configuring certain settings. Advertisers should count their lucky stars over this.

2. Don't assume altruism here. Apple is a gatekeeper of very valuable data for advertisers. Afaik they don't have an ad tech arm, but they're sitting on an inordinately large amount of strong signal. They could sell it, and sell advertisers into their own ecosystem.

Edit: I'm told by several commenters that I'm wrong. And I'm happy to be. I'd like to move my goalposts and say that native apps do not have those capabilities :)

Actually you can now download ad blocker extensions for Safari in the App Store.

Except Content Blocker extensions have been around since iOS 9?

iOS has had ad blockers for several years. I’m using one right now.

Meanwhile they allow locations services to continue even after the user "turns off" the wifi following android footsteps(1). So tracking in apps will be worse for users.

As a customer really it seems they talk a lot about privacy yet implements "sneaky" changes like this, it seems a bit dishonest.

1. I know the feature is a different in IOS (it only disconnects connected devices) but for location services/tracking this is effectively the same as android. see: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208086

Can you clarify? Turning off wi-fi does not and should not turn off location services. Turning off location services is a separate Settings page on all recent versions of iOS.

You seem to be confused about that post. That only refers to turning off WiFi from Control Center. If you go into settings and turn off WiFi, it will actually turn the radio off. Separately, in Location and Privacy, you can disable location for your whole phone or on an App by App basis. Control Center WiFi is not tied to this.

It is a massive step backwards though in my opinion, changing the functionality of the toggle in control center from disabling WiFi to just disconnecting the device.

A privacy conscious user now has to do 4 actions (Unlock, open Settings, WiFi, disabling it) instead of two (swipe up, disabling it) to disable the WiFi.

I doubt many normal users would notice the difference, maybe thinking the toggle has the same functionality as before thus thinking they won’t constantly broadcast their known WiFi networks and thereby the pretty accurate location of their frequently visited places.

Please correct me if I misunderstood something!

Edit: I meant standard as in: If no other option than SMS 2FA is available.

You got it, you're right, and I agree.

I rarely go into Settings to disable WiFi, but it seems like I'll have to start doing that now.

This is a complete guess ...

Apple "does right by users". That's ok. But I'd wager this is only because that type of positioning is now Apple's chosen market differentiating* strategy. Against Google. Apple seems to want to position itself as the device that guarantees privacy and security. Apple would like to maintain exclusive access to a market segment that values security and privacy above all.

It worked for BlackBerry. Strong and almost cult-like loyalist following mostly guaranteed BB's reach in the executive circles. Even after BB became "Veblen", the device was in high demand. In such a market segment, the price per device doesn't really matter. My view is consistent with the apparent "horror" prices seen for the new iPhone.

If my guess is right, it's a shame about Apple's chosen direction. I love their products.

It's much simpler than that, Google's business is advertising, Apple's is hardware. If you make all your profit from selling advertising then it will compromise your approach to privacy.

Apple isn't the problem here, Google and Facebook is.

Why is it a shame about Apple's direction?

Apple realised there is a market of privacy minded people who don't want to trade themselves to get a phone at a low price.

Apple can be privacy minded for profit and "do right by the users" at the same time. They aren't diametrically opposed to each other.

It is sad that we expect that a company trying to stay profitable is trying to screw users over in some way.

I'm not saying its not true in many cases, just in this case.

> Why is it a shame about Apple's direction?

Because it's too easy when you see a company that once dominated this space with Jobs' legacy.

It's easy to be the good guy. It's morally reprehensible even to advertise yourself as such. Jobs' legacy of thinking differently has been recently misapplied with idiotic decisions like no headphone jacks, removal of fn keys, removal of magsafe power etc.

It would seem that the "innovation department" Apple would rather settle for difference BY DEFAULT.

That's the shame.

>It's easy to be the good guy

If that was the case others would be doing it too. For Google though it's extremely hard. And Microsoft caved to advertisers immediately.

>It's morally reprehensible even to advertise yourself as such

I don't see anything morally reprehensible to advertise yourself as such -- assuming you indeed are such.

At worst it can be a little tacky -- and that's for people. Companies are not people, and they do have to advertise their good qualities and what they offer that their competitors don't. Which is what Apple does.

>It would seem that the "innovation department" Apple would rather settle for difference BY DEFAULT.

Yeah, poor them. They only have the most exciting phone on the planet, with the best hardware (obliterating competitor cpus next and right) and a top-notch software platform.

> It's easy to be the good guy.

Then why are Apple the only company even contemplating this?

> Apple seems to want to position itself as the device that guarantees privacy and security.

And you have a problem with that because?

> Apple would like to maintain exclusive access to a market segment that values security and privacy above all.

Apple would like all the market. The fact they identified a currently underserved niche is just part of their game.

> In such a market segment, the price per device doesn't really matter. My view is consistent with the apparent "horror" prices seen for the new iPhone.

The cheapest iPhone is $350USD, and includes the same security and privacy focus as their most expensive device. Apple charges no premium for security.

Your problem should be with Google, Samsung, Facebook, and the Ad companies. That you are trying to shame Apple for recognizing the need for privacy and acting on it makes absolutely no sense.

If we could only harvest that negative spin, we would certainly have a working perpetuum mobile in no time.

What is wrong with positioning yourself as a device maker that guarantees privacy and security ? In the end it's a choice that they need to make and while it's definitely business driven, I don't see what they could possible do to make it less "shameful"?

There is a market for it and it's certainly something that I personally find very valuable. I don't like to be a "product" and rather pay a premium, although my iPhone SE is not that more expensive than a Pixel device for example.

More expensive? A base spec (32Gb) Pixel is $649, same 32Gb iPhone SE is nearly half the price at $349. The Pixels are many things, but they’re not cheap phones.

And remember, the SE is phone sized while all the other decent (specced) phones are tablet sized :)

Yeah, the Pixels are priced as flagship phones but IMO are not flagship quality.

The sweet spot for Android was when Google had the ~$400 Nexus line.

< Insert insult here >

"...I love their products..."

>Apple seems to want to position itself as the device that guarantees privacy and security. Apple would like to maintain exclusive access to a market segment that values security and privacy above all.

Both sound fine by me.

> Apple would like to maintain exclusive access to a market segment that values security and privacy above all.

You make it sound like Apple has some kid of unfair advantage over competitors. Or that Apple has monopoly power over the ideas of security and privacy. Bullshit.

> it's a shame about Apple's chosen direction.

I can't believe anyone could say that with a straight face.

Can you please not respond to flamebait with a flamewar? That takes the thread in just the wrong direction, and we're hoping for much better than that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

The OP made a valid and considered argument which I believe is completely wrong.

The comment wasn't an obvious troll, it wasn't even borderline. In fact, I think it's rather presumptuous of you to assume the OP was insincere. That's your interpretation; that's you applying your own assumptions upon the mind of another person.

If you really cared about the quality of conversation, perhaps you should apply your morally superior tone towards the origin of this so-called flamebait and not one of the multitude of respondents?

You misunderstood.

Security and privacy should be a given. Security and privacy should never have been an easy opportunity for Apple to differentiate against its competitors.

Edit: Would I expect my wife to cook me a lovely welcoming dinner if I phoned her from work to tell her I had been an honest and loyal husband for the whole day? No.

(She would, had I had gotten her flowers without saying a word though! But that's another thing.)

> Security and privacy should be a given

I couldn't agree more. The news shouldn't be that Apple is doing something remarkable, it should be how other browsers fail to protect their users in similar ways.

>Security and privacy should be a given. Security and privacy should never have been an easy opportunity for Apple to differentiate against its competitors.

Even so, that's a shame for the other vendors.

It's them who should "give it" to their users, to make it a given.

Apple has already done that.

>Would I expect my wife to cook me a lovely welcoming dinner if I phoned her from work to tell her I had been an honest and loyal husband for the whole day? No.

If you were the only honest husband around, then surely she would appreciate it.

Yes, but if security and privacy should be a given, why would you consider it a shame for a company to assert those values while their competitor don't ?

I'm sorry, but blaming Apple in this case makes absolutely no sense to me, and I'm definitely not pro Apple usually. In this case, it's the rest of the world that is to blame for not caring about privacy and security as much as Apple/at all, not the other way around

I suppose you also blame Tesla for promoting the excellent crash safety characteristics of their vehicles?

No sir, I don't misunderstand your stupid argument.

The only way Apple's competitors are ever going to care about user privacy is if they're shamed into it through competition. If anything, Apple ought to beat this drum more loudly.

(Also, your husband analogy is junk. For your analogy fit properly, we'd need to live in a world where it was the norm for husbands to be routinely dishonest and disloyal. And the wife would need to be a product rather than another equal human.)

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