Comment by jiggawatts | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jiggawatts | Hacker News Reader

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Meanwhile a friend of mine flat refused to even consider buying any such device, from any vendor, because he's concerned about being spied on.

He cited several real incidents where vendors like Amazon had been caught listening in and sending audio clips to random subcontractors for analysis.

Several huge companies, including Facebook, Google, and Amazon have made it their business to maximally violate the privacy of the general public.

This rubs off on companies like Apple that treat customer privacy seriously.

The "free market" doesn't stop rampant abuse, and doesn't stop damage to unlucky bystanders. If everyone cheats, then the incentive will be to cheat also. If everyone violates privacy, then there will be little to no benefit in not also violating privacy. Certainly not if consumers simply won't believe you.

It's the same logic as: "Every politician is corrupt, so why should I vote for you Mr Honest Guy? You must be corrupt also! I'd rather vote for Mr Clearly On the Take, I like the way he smiles".

Apple did too... : https://seekingalpha.com/news/3482463-siri-sends-sensitive-r...

Everyone is cheating (they’re adtech companies) but Apple isn’t. Apple doesn’t have to cheat. They just charge it upfront, sure Siri won’t ever catch up because of the lack of data (knowledge graph like Google), but I’m fine with a crappy Siri than evil smart Alexa.

That is a naive (and demonstrably false) assertion.

Apple's privacy stance is really just marketing, like "There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it."

You don't have to use an apple device for more than a minute to realize this.

For example, you cannot use a new apple iphone without activating it with apple.

In the first screen or two, you are presented with their privacy policy, with is literally hundreds of pages long.

The rest of the setup is full of dark patterns, and even though it is GDPR compliant, it is very hard not to come out of the process without signing in or allowing them access to your data.

I think all of this comes from "business common sense" which is based on fear. They want data (and control) because it is an easier and more guaranteed way to make and sell things.

The only way out of this (for all of us) is actually robust competition by someone who will do it right and not collect data in the first place. (hint: it will help if they use rounded corners, gradients and transparency)

I’m not convinced. Fundamentally, Apple is a services and a hardware company. They have no business in advertisement. Do you follow Stratechery (Ben Thompson)? He writes about Apple’s privacy fundamentalism here (midway through the post): https://stratechery.com/2019/privacy-fundamentalism/

Aside from the fact that Apple DOES do advertising, you have to understand that even outside this - your data is valuable to apple and they take steps to keep it turned on. In some cases they are contractually obligated to collect the data.

Here's the thing -- by circumstance they are like arms dealers stuck selling arms to both sides. They must entice app developers to develop for their platform, and they must also entice consumers to buy their products.

Personally I think if apple was concerned about privacy, they would let you see what your phone is doing, and let you firewall your phone (one that could block apple traffic).

What good is it to bombard a non-technical user with packet dumps and firewall settings that probably only break apps?

Apple certainly does have an advertising platform for the App Store and Apple News. They describe their privacy stance here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205223

Maybe this is better in practice than other ad platforms, but they explicitly say that they use information about you to serve you targeted ads such as: location, age, gender, purchases from the App Store, what news you read, etc etc.

You are funny. According to this article Apple makes a great deal of money from search and advertisement:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/08/apple-c...

Please note that is is a blog post and not an "actual" Forbes article.

see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24782678

this WTF happened to me few weeks ago https://twitter.com/cztomsik/status/1309377749962960897

there's no way to delete photos from icloud immediately and I was also googling a bit and there's some article from infosec company and they were able to recover deleted photos few months after they should be deleted forever (I was googling about how to delete those photos immediately).

now, I don't have anything useful there but it pissed me off a lot and I'm definitely not going to use devices from one company, no matter what they say I'm missing

>Meanwhile a friend of mine flat refused to even consider buying any such device, from any vendor, because he's concerned about being spied on.

I solved this problem for my HomePod by denying it outgoing internet access on my router. Bonjour-based AirPlay support works great, and if Siri somehow became activated by accident despite my disabling it on the device, nothing could be sent to Apple.

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