It's Time for Action on Data Privacy
time.com
time.com
What we're missing today is the option to use normal products and services without any of this data sharing and telemetry going on when they aren't necessary for the normal functioning of the product or service, which the kinds that upset or concern people almost never are. We need to sever the ties between using everyday things and participating in data-based schemes that make the suppliers more money but are otherwise not necessary for what the customer was buying. Clearly the market has failed here and is in a race to the bottom, and that is the point where regulation/legislation should step in.
You hit the nail on the head here, as far as I'm concerned.
I want to be able to use my real name, date of birth, gender; share my location or my medical information; input my financial details or my real phone number, all the while knowing that it's being used for exactly the purpose I keyed it in for to being with and not something else, on the side, via a third party, that I never asked for, paid for, or agreed to (because it was a buried in a 90,000 word legal document.)
I believe we will start to see a big wave of indie app developers bringing forward very privacy friendly apps just like we're seeing a big push in the indie gaming market for short, story heavy games opposing the 100-person Battle Royale, no-story junk we have today.
How much do you think your average user is willing to pay each month for an email account?
Theses services are cheap, they are just not as mainstream as they should be. But your hundred dollar a month estimation is just a fear mongering excuse to stick with privacy reselling model.
On the side note, Google should start to wonder what drive the double digit growth of Apple services revenues. iTools was an experiment, .Mac was clumsy, MobileMe was a setback... But I think Apple pretty much nailed it with iCloud.
Apple gets something like $9bn a year to let Google be the default search engine. That's revenue for Apple, coming directly from Google's wish to get more data. If you remove that, will iphones be 10-20% more expensive?
But I should be able to buy a car without the vendor tracking me everywhere I go, or a phone without it becoming a beacon that stores use to follow me around as I do my shopping, or a TV that just lets me watch a show without phoning home to tell the manufacturer all about it. None of the data sharing in these cases is in any way essential to the device I've bought, it's just being added because it can be, as an extra revenue stream at the expense of my privacy and potentially security.
I'm not so sure about it being added just because they can make a few extra bucks. I believe it becomes part of the revenue system and drives down the margin they make on the actual product. Once somebody starts, everybody has to follow or they can't compete because their product is expensive.
With privacy minded people being a small minority, it probably doesn't make sense financially to cater to them in many markets. Emails is relatively simple, building a cell phone, or running a cell network, is not, so you don't do it for a handful of users.
I doubt many users are fine with a price increase, and for some it may be prohibitive, and they'll not be happy to no longer be able to afford a smart phone. If your electricity provider only offered affordable rates in exchange for giving up a certain amount of privacy, I'm sure most people would still go for it. Most people need electricity much more than they need privacy.
But it doesn't have to be this way. We need new players in the market that aren't that sleazy.
Unless you force everybody to not just dump toxic chemicals into the river, the company that doesn't will have to charge a lot more, and customers will go with those that do (if they live far enough from the river, or upstream from the dump site).
I'd like to think -- believe if you will -- that things are changing. Many people want a safer environment for their kids and are thus more politically active.
Sadly they are a drop in the ocean still.
Even with that however, this crazed consumerism cannot last forever. Things will change. Not sure you and I will live to see it though.
- Cloudflare
- Google (several domains, fonts, Google proper, JS)
- https://segment.com (I read the landing page and don't understand what they do)
- wordpress.com
12 other domains are blocked
I think it goes beyond behavioral tracking data use cases as well.
If I can't read time.com, that's their loss, not mine. If they are blocking EU users, that can only mean they were using ad bidding exchanges that violate users privacy and I want nothing to do with such publications.
Who knows.
Also the data protection authorities are there for guidance too, not just for giving fines. You don’t need to hire lawyers, you can just contact your local DPA. And if you do that, and take steps to be compliant, you’re acting in good faith.
Fact of the matter is most publishers are not compliant because most publishers use bidding exchanges and the bidding exchanges currently leak user data in a way that cannot be GDPR-compliant, even with user consent.
But in such a case it is naive to blame the GDPR. We are talking about an entire industry built on profiling users based on leaked data and that needs to change.
Apple's products already respect my privacy; they don't need to be "fixed." Further, it is absurd to contend that there will be a net gain in privacy by letting the unwashed masses choose random shit they found on the internet to control the core of their devices. After all, installing random shit from the internet has totally never been a problem for privacy, ever.
Once MS was forced to deal with their monopoly IE issues Firefox and then Chrome took off. Now to the point that Chrome is number 1 by user choice even if you remove Android from the picture.
It would most likely be number one on iOS as well if Apple actually allowed Devs to implement a browser engine because Chrome follows 10s possibly even 100s of standards that Safari is dropping the ball on.
The only single reason Apple can get away with this is their control over the platform and not allowing competition in that space.
That's not just bad for iOS users and lack of choice (Chrome is provably more secure than Safari so by not allowing it Apple is not allowing users to choose a more secure browser ... see vulnerability lists), it's also bad for the entire web at large. By Apple controlling all iOS users access to the internet they have an effective stranglehold on what standards get adopted.
What's the point of a "more secure" web browser that encourages you to sign in to the entire browser application with your Google account and leak huge amounts of your browsing habits to a company that derives incredible profits from your tracking your activities?
You’re going to have to back this up with evidence. Both browsers are similarly secure, which is to say, they are probably good enough that you probably have other things to worry about than how secure your browser is.
I went almost full Apple 14 months ago and I am yet to find a single website that I need that's not working at all or even well enough in Safari, desktop or mobile.
The only argument I've seen so far is "but standard X is new, we need it!" without ever saying why do you need it.
Care to elaborate?
Give me an example of Safari users getting significantly worse experience in a web service that they need in their everyday lives.
This isn't a particulary great argument, since web developers are generally forced to adopt the lowest common denominator of what popular browsers implement.
God no. MS abandoning their browser for a decade is the reason for why alternatives became dominant.
Can apple do that? Or are you going to simply trust?
Otherwise you are ultimately forced to trust someone—probably many someones—and I'd rather place that trust in as few entities as possible.
For myself I've chosen an entity that I believe has an economic incentive to respect my privacy and has proven with their actions that they deserve my trust.
Having an additional entity the failure of which would lead to a failure of the system/product is an additional weak point. Obviously, you want as few of those as possible that you have to trust.
Having an additional entity that watches/checks what is going on is an additional verifier. Obviously, you want as many of those as possible that you can build your trust on.
You argument is essentially that you want fewer verifiers in order to have fewer weak points. That's just nonsense. By the same logic, you should prefer an intransparent dictatorship to a transparent democracy, because there are "fewer poeple to trust".
These things seem simple for us because we deal with them every day. We understand how to interpret the components of a URL. We understand the reason why these critical downloads are paired with sha256 hashes.
For most people on Earth, understanding computer security and the modes of trust in open source software is as likely as speaking Esperanto.
AOSP has been around for 10 years. People choose the Android model every day, and it droves higher than they choose the iOS model.
The world is full of devices that are not open platforms for alternative operating systems. If you don't like Apple's choice in focusing on their particular solution which involves intimate software-hardware integration, the answer is to buy from a competitor. There are lots of them and they make an extremely diverse array of alternatives.
Personally I'm pleased that Apple is making the product the way they do. If Apple changed to suit your needs, that would come at the expense of my needs.
Not really, if apple locks down iOS devices by default, and would create the ability to opt-out for developers/people who want to be able to create/install their own code, nothing changes for you/most people. Much like how SIP works on macOS, enabled by default, ability to disable if needed.
Your following statement is roughly equivalent to saying the following, which I don't endorse: "If you don't like Google's choice in focusing on their particular solution which involves intimate user-data integration for more intelligent assistance, the answer is to buy from a competitor."
You can buy from a competitor to avoid data privacy issues as well. However, to some people that doesn't justify offering and marketing an option that compromises that value.
No, that's exactly right.
Competitors exist. Using them makes them stronger.
update: I compare it to computing slavery.
https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/18/02/24/apple-to-m...
Who is forcing Google to buy copies of everyone's credit card transaction data so they can expand the surveillance of their users in their offline life?
>Google has been able to track your location using Google Maps for a long time. Since 2014, it has used that information to provide advertisers with information on how often people visit their stores. But store visits aren’t purchases, so, as Google said in a blog post on its new service for marketers, it has partnered with “third parties” that give them access to 70 percent of all credit and debit card purchases.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607938/google-now-tracks-...
From the article: "Apple to move Chinese iCloud keys to China servers...Once on Chinese soil, government agencies will be able to request information through the Chinese legal system, which lacks the transparency, checks or oversight of its American counterpart."
If you think the US Government would never act without transparency, checks or oversight, you are being delusional. And factually wrong.
Apple is complying with the local laws, just as it does in all other countries. The suggestion that Apple should breach these laws—or exit the market entirely—is absurd and unproductive.
Companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft are free to challenge court orders from the US or other friendly governments, even those ordered in secret, and they regularly do so. You don't hear about it, but it's pretty common. And these cases do get the scrutiny of many eyes, following similar legal paths as more traditional court challenges, only without all the news coverage.
"Federal Clearinghouse"
Where users can
"Correct and delete personal data online"
How does that not definitionally centralize data...
Straight into Governments' view?
For example, when he says companies should avoid collecting identifiable data is he arguing against companies that collect user "content" (e.g., a cache of googleusercontent webpages, or a backup of photos stored in an Apple iCloud datacenter)?
Or is he arguing against promoting user "accounts" where users identify themselves to companies to receieve the "benefits of signing in" or perhaps as a absolute requirement for access to "content" created by someone else via the company middleman?
Much of the "data" that concerns privacy activists is what they might call "metadata". It is not the collection of "content" that alarms them, and no doubt the companies collecting it would remind us this content has been voluntarily shared.
However... without the collection of "content" first by a middleman, there is no metadata for these companies to collect.
We could have a debate about regulating the middlemen. We could try to define what their obligations should be toward users. A more interesting conversation IMO would be about how we can use technology to eliminate the middleman.
Privacy is not “hiding.” I shouldn’t have to hide to keep my business, well, my business. I believe I have the right to carry on with my life without this all-seeing eye recording every part of me and using it to con me into buying, or selling it to the highest bidder.
I was such an idealist about freeing information and empowering people. And I’m no fan of government regulation. But we know business won’t regulate itself when it’s either the bottom line or what’s best for people.
Yes, it’s time for action.
suprisingly few people have been burned badly enough for anyone other than Apple to take this stance on privacy. Apple is doing a good deed fighting for privacy and data control being returned to the consumers but its a fight against human laziness and the willingness to go with the easier option, instead of chosing the platform that actually respects their privacy and rights to data.
Apple by definition is in the minority when it comes to fighting for privacy and at this point its a little too late for anyone to care other than tech savvy apple users who intentionally chose apple for privacy. The rest of the market has traded privacy for all you can eat buffets of information and content. And people actually like all you can eat buffets, who would've thought?
I'm not sure that's a fair criticism. Among my non-technical friends, several have expressed concern or even active disapproval about things they know are happening in this area. They just don't see that they have any alternative. How do you buy any modern phone or participate in any modern social networks or buy any modern car -- all things most regular people need to integrate with society and live a normal life today -- without surrendering huge amounts of your personal privacy and potentially security?
On macOS it is at least easy to do using third-party applications (e.g. Little Snitch or TripMode).
Well yes, they haven't. Not in a convenient way anyway. I've had a sysadmin friend explaining me the lenghts you have to go to to achieve such results. To him it was easy. I just said "feck that".
The fact that every single app isn't sandboxed is also pretty disappointing.
unshare -nDisallowing 3G/4G to apps is not enough.
But of course nobody is gonna do it since ads are served in hundreds of thousands of Bejeweled clones and Apple/Google wouldn't want displeased app developers letting that ad revenue dry up. :(
Now I agree that when you want to achieve something, there is nothing to be gained from questioning the motivations of powerful allies (which in this case I think are more about attacking the competition than guenine concerns about privacy). But it does mean that Apple’s stance could change quickly if its business interest evolves.
Not complaining, I am all for privacy regulations, merely a word of caution.
- Introduction iAd: 2010
- Introduction of iMessage with end-to-end encryption: 2011
- Introduction of the secure enclave: 2013 (iPhone 5s). Remember that Apple plans several years ahead, so the secure enclave was probably already in the cards ~2011.
- Shutdown iAd: 2016
The timelines just don't match up. Apple has been pursuing a focus on encryption and privacy since at least 2011. Remember that Apple was the first to roll out an end-to-end encrypted messenger to hunderds of million users, years before WhatsApp.
(I am not contesting that their focus on privacy is for marketing reasons. We don't know, it could be or Tim Cook has strong beliefs on this topic.)
>Apple has a lot of knowledge regarding its users,but what it doesn’t do with that data is share it with advertisers very freely. That makes Madison Avenue very mad.
>rather than offering a cookie-based ad-tracking and targeting mechanism, it essentially requires partners to tell it what kind of audience it needs to reach, and then trust that Apple will handle the rest, AdAge says. And it’s well worth noting that Apple prioritizes customer privacy here over a big potential upside in ad revenue.
>what it doesn’t do is hand over the keys to all that data and let advertisers plug into it directly with their own data-mining and targeting software. That’s not standard for the ad industry and that’s likely the reason a few Madison Avenue feathers are ruffled over their approach.
https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/18/advertisers-not-thrilled-w...
It's not impossible to sell ads without spying on users on behalf of your advertising customers, it's just less profitable.
We don't need a watered-down definition that plays to your current business model and leaves out bits that don't.
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protectio...