Apple sold out kids' privacy yesterday under the guise of “screen time” apps | Hacker News Reader

Apple sold out kids' privacy yesterday under the guise of “screen time” apps

androidpolice.com

11 pointsUltramanoid11 comments

I don't know - I feel this article is overselling how much privacy is compromised.

Specifically, the worst case is that parents can know everything their kids do (I think this is extreme, but seems plausibly possible given the available APIs?). I'm not 100% sold on parents needing this, but we quickly go down the rabbit hole of "raise your kids to know how not to be bullied, harassed, or kidnapped" vs "monitor what your kids do and protect them from bad decisions" (I've tried to be as neutral as possible here, but I know my bias is to the former and that colors my language)

I think it's important to distinguish the "selling out privacy" when providing that information to parents, vs the privacy abuse that comes from providing usage information to arbitrary third parties (google, facebook, ad servers, etc)

I agree, they are on completely separate planes of severity. Sharing information in the context of a real-life relationship, especially with someone who wields emotional, physical, or financial power over the subject, is far worse than sharing it with some impersonal corporate optimization algorithm. The main reason to be concerned about corporate surveillance datasets is that they could, someday leak or be weaponized into the subject's personal relationships. Surveillance explicitly for this purpose is beyond the pale.

Like most people I know, I had great parents who would have used this responsibly or not at all. Others were not so lucky. Whether it was homophobia, abuse, or simply overbearing parenting styles, some opacity in the parent-child relationship was critical to their sanity and survival as young adults. Particularly in college, where parents still have "power of the purse" (so could force their kids to accept MDM) but tend to back off out of logistical necessity (until now?).

I do forget just how much support college/uni students get from their parents in the US.

But even in the US I suspect pure financial support is not the norm - health insurance extending to “children” who live elsewhere is obviously super important in the US

Sticker price is for rich kids. Normal people require need-based financial aid to afford 4-year degrees. The federal government computes an "expected family contribution" based on your parent's finances, and your scholarships and loans are sized accordingly. An 18-year-old from a middle-class background would have an EFC far greater than she could pay out of pocket, and to borrow it she'd need her parents to cosign. Actually, without their cooperation she couldn't even get the EFC, since they need to open their books and sign the FAFSA. She'd be staring down sticker price on her own.

Not even emancipation can break the link. She'd have to provide a documented history of child abuse, serve in the military, get married, or wait until age 25. More likely, reduce her ambitions to a community college associate's degree she can afford at sticker price on her own part-time wages.

The fact that our government provides a number called "expected family contribution" is good evidence that, at least officially, contributing to children's educations is the norm.

I was always under the impression that messages and browsing history are off-limits even with MDM profiles.

Does anyone know how they got access to them? And is Apple really adding an API to access messages? This has been an unmitigated catastrophe on Android.

I'd imagine there must be some kind of access to messages and browser history for managed devices otherwise e.g. banks wouldn't be able to issue iPhones to employees since (AIUI) they need to be able to capture that to prevent fraud, etc.

Browser history can be achieved through routing everything through a VPN. Messages can be disabled and replaced with a compliant messenger.

Backups, apparently. According to the info provided by services mentioned in the article on how to set up tracking on iOS devices there seem to be two approaches to this:

One service says "In order to monitor device activity like texts (including some deleted ones!), web browsing, notes, and the camera roll on an Apple device, we'll need to perform regular backups to a computer. This is because of Apple's stringent security on their devices, which prevents regular apps from monitoring those activities. After the first-time setup, activities will be backed up wirelessly over Wi-Fi whenever your child and their devices are home."

The second one seems to be using iCloud backups, in the requirements on how to monitor iOS devices it says "Just iCloud ID & Password are required, iCloud backup should be enabled on the device."

Hopefully these parental surveillance tools will help to raise a generation that understands not to discuss anything of consequence near an electronic device.

Isn't that a ( "the" ? ) major problem with surveillance, though ? People will change their behaviour when they know they're being observed.

This becoming the new normal is not good.

I'm grudgingly accepting that cheap surveillance opportunities will always be taken. A population that learns opsec from the cradle seems more likely to flourish in this environment than one in denial or haplessly assuming benign intent.

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