Comment by m45t3r | Hacker News Reader

Comment by m45t3r | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> At least with macOS its all "encrypted" and has sane defaults with a consistent user interface and when some settings are turned off, they stay completely off.

Wait, what. You can completely disable any "phone-home" features of Ubuntu. Actually, you can make sure that this feature is disabled by removing the corresponding package of your system, something that isn't possible in macOS. And you can also audit the code, because all this code is actually open-source [1].

Also, this controversial feature of Amazon search could be disabled quite easily [2], and this motd can also be disabled [3].

So sorry, Ubuntu may have some controversial features, however saying that using macOS is more privacy-respecting than Ubuntu is a lie. They are at least at the same level, however considering that I can't get the source code of macOS and make sure that turning off a knob will stop spying on me, I still think Ubuntu is better than macOS in this point.

[1]: https://launchpad.net/unity-lens-shopping

[2]: https://www.howtogeek.com/126995/how-to-disable-the-amazon-s...

[3]: https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Disable_dynamic_motd_and_motd...

I very much disagree with this position.

Privacy is not a super-set of Open Source. They're two different things; somewhat correlated, but only insomuch as the auditability and self-correction of any claims to privacy may be.

Auditability is important, but most people won't do it, and even those who do miss things; OpenSSL is fully auditable, yet security bugs are discovered every year. Its not the same thing, but its in the same vein; just becuase we're capable of catching a needle among the haystack of a million lines of code doesn't mean we will (in the case of the MOTD, its less of a needle and more of a giagantic pile of crap just laying on top).

Self-Correction is important, but even fewer people will do it. Defaults Matter. People just don't dive into VSCode and rip out Microsoft's analytics tracking code en mass. It doesn't happen. People use the defaults.

In the face of these two assertions; Open Source is important in the fight for Privacy, there's no doubt about that. But even more important than that is Trust. Its not enough to see the code; its important that the organization and people writing it have a demonstrated history of caring about the privacy of their users, and that they've taken both "table-stakes" and "above and beyond" steps to assert their position on the matter on behalf of those users.

Canonical does not have this demonstrated history. They barely lurch in the right direction, against their collective wills, when we care enough to crusade across the internet to convince them that they're wrong. By comparison; Apple does care. You can complain that its in the interest of their profit margins (OF COURSE IT IS) or that its genuine (I'd bet my net worth that this is also true); it doesn't matter. They productized full disk encryption with hardware security modules. They don't just support hardware MFA; they make it the default. When they realized phones wouldn't have the power to do natural-language processing on voice in the same way servers do, they didn't just throw their hands up and move everything to the server like Google did; they made better silicon. That's their history; Canonical's history is sending keystrokes to Amazon so they can sell you more expensive toilet paper. The most knowledgeable Ubuntu users turn this off; the most vulnerable won't even know its happening.

Everyone is welcome to their own opinion on this, and you're also welcome to place the value of open source above the value of privacy; but I take the stance that Privacy isn't negotiable, and its more important than a product being open source or having privacy if you tweak the knobs in just the right way.

> Self-Correction is important, but even fewer people will do it. Defaults Matter. People just don't dive into VSCode and rip out Microsoft's analytics tracking code en mass. It doesn't happen. People use the defaults.

I concur, defaults matter. I am not saying that Ubuntu is a distro for privacy conscious people, however by default macOS and Ubuntu should have similar levels of tracking (however I do believe that Apple OS phone home much more than Ubuntu, AFAIK the actual tracking/telemetry of Ubuntu is minimal while macOS has the standard for a proprietary OS [1]). That is, much better than Android or Windows, however worse than a distro like Debian, for example.

> In the face of these two assertions; Open Source is important in the fight for Privacy, there's no doubt about that. But even more important than that is Trust.

Sorry, there is no way to trust closed source software. I really think it is strange people claiming that Apple are respecting their privacy and when Apple does things that are controversial to privacy (like the time they're got tracking GPS in iOS devices) they just say "hey, Apple does respect my privacy so it is fine".

For another example, Apple must receive everything you type in Spotlight so they can show search suggestions, exactly the same as the Ubuntu case, however in Apple case it is fine for some reason. Go figure.

I think you're right that you shouldn't trust Canonical, however you shouldn't trust Apple either just because they say in public that they love privacy and because of some of the things they divulge to public, because in the end this is all propaganda: while it is really nice that they have things like encryption by default (BTW, encryption does not increase privacy because if Apple wants they could still read every file in your system), you can't trust Apple that they don't do other nefarious things.

Just to conclude, I think Apple is more trustful than say, Google or Microsoft. However I wouldn't put macOS as a more privacy OS than even Ubuntu (since like I said, the amount of telemetry in Ubuntu should be minimal compared to macOS, and we can never know because it is closed source), and Debian and other Linux distros is really above anything macOS can offer in terms of privacy [2].

[1]: I don't know macOS, however I have an iPadOS and by default it enables by all kinds of analytics, and also generates a unique track ID for ads (you can disable both, however this is the default and at least the option to disable track ID for ads is not shown in the Welcome Wizard, maybe the analytics is shown however I don't remember).

BTW, just looking at the information that Apple makes available in iPadOS about "Analytics Data" it has WAY more information than anything that was said in Ubuntu in this thread (if you want to check just go to Settings->Privacy->Analytics Data). I think macOS should have something similar, but maybe someone else can confirm to me.

[2]: Privacy, not security or other things. Security is something questionable, however I do think most recents version of macOS seems more secure than your traditional Linux distro.

> I don't know macOS, however I have an iPadOS and by default it enables by all kinds of analytics, and also generates a unique track ID for ads

1) Apple aggressively asks about analytics, doesn’t “default on”. Every major update to the OS it asks you again, so your claim Apple does as Ubuntu there is flat wrong.

2) the unique tracking ID is app specific and resets on user request or app uninstall. This is far better than what was there before on a privacy front.

1) Saying "I want to enable analytics" and marking all options to send analytics by default (since they know most users don't read anyway) is what I am saying that Apple "defaults on". This is still better than other OSes, however if you really are a "privacy first company" is not enough.

However sure, I didn't explain correctly and I don't remember the last time I setup my iPad (this is the only Apple device I have so this will what I will be using for comparison).

2) It still shouldn't exist, or at least they should ask in Wizard because this option I am sure they did not ask because I had to search on how to disable it (and the way to disable it isn't obvious either).

> I don't remember the last time I setup my iPad

Then you must not be up to date then, because at least iOS 12 and iOS 13 both re-asked after updating.

> It still shouldn't exist

In a utopian world, I agree. But there are legitimate business needs for something like this to exist, and if you don’t provide a method with an acceptable compromise (neither side likes it, but that’s usually the case with a “compromise”) between user privacy and business need and mandate only it’s usage (which Apple did), then apps will do far worse. Just look at the shenanigans pulled on the web.

> Then you must not be up to date then, because at least iOS 12 and iOS 13 both re-asked after updating.

I am up-to-date to iOS 13, however since iOS 13 was basically my worst recent experience with an OS update (tons of things broken and took a while to fix it) you will have to excuse me that I don't remember they asking my privacy settings.

> But there are legitimate business needs for something like this to exist

I didn't say it shouldn't, because I understand. However if Apple is really privacy, they should put this option in wizard with default off, and say something like "if you want personalized ads turn this on". The fact that they turns this on by default and don't show in wizard is my point.

> However if Apple is really privacy, they should put this option in wizard

I agree with you in theory, but read my point again. If everyone disabled it, then app developers would find a worse way (privacy wise) to accomplish the same goal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com