Apple iOS privacy clampdown 'did little' to reduce tracking

theregister.com

22 points·asymmetric··9 comments

Here's the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.03556

I don't get it. How do you fingerprint iPhones, which are some of the most standard devices on the planet? With Android I can think of atleast 20 parameters that will have unique enough combinations to identify specific devices fairly accurately, but iPhones are vastly less "unique" in this sense.

>I don't get it. How do you fingerprint iPhones,

Your IP, which gives your ISP, Location. Your iPhone Model, iOS Version, iOS Locale. Some iOS features which you may have turned on or off. Along with Apps installed, could easily reduce down a low single digit percentage.

33 bits. That's how many bits of information it takes to identify you out of anyone on the planet, more or less. If your hometown contains about 100,000, for instance, knowing it would count as about 16 bits worth of info toward that 33 bits. Computerphile did a really good video on de-anonymization a while back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puQvpyf0W-M

See also Gwern’s classic article: https://www.gwern.net/Death-Note-Anonymity

Does Apple make any claims re: cohort tracking? Their communications seem to focus on individual tracking.

So facebook lost 2bil in value over nothing?

There are two possibilities as far as I can tell.

1) Facebook was kayfabing it up when they complained about these measures and already knew they’d be able to route around them via fingerprinting.

2) While not capable of fully blocking tracking, Apple put more of a dent in trackers’ ability to function — at least temporarily — than articles like this would lead you to believe.

Or 3) The article is a pile of crapola

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