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Comment by deepstack | Hacker News Reader

Why is safari/webkit not in there. It my understanding that it's the most privacy respecting browser in the area of finger printing.

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Apple collects your browsing history, something which I have yet to find a good explanation for. https://apps.apple.com/zm/app/safari/id1146562112

It says the collected browsing data is not linked to the user's identity. Still a bad move by Apple.

Your statement seems to leave away some important "details", so here is the full text from your link:

The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity: Location Browsing History Usage Data Diagnostics

Wouldn’t most peoples browsing history plus location pretty much narrow them down to one person?

That link is to Safari on iOS and it says that your browsing history may be collected but it’s not linked to your identity.

Is it a privacy problem if Apple collects aggregate browsing history from iOS users?

And is this relevant to a thread about desktop browsers?

Unless sufficiently anonymized - and I don't know how much is actually sufficient - your browsing history can be used to identify you.

I visit my HN comments page almost daily. There’s no way this can be anonymized away from me as the url contains my userid and can be linked back to me.

Even anonymized, data can be used in negative ways against me (eg, trying to alter my purchase behavior through ads).

Safari history and tabs are end-to-end encrypted: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

And Apple provides iCloud+ members with a VPN which does not tie browsing history to users by separating ingress and egress traffic and using encrypted forwarding (similar to onion routing): https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/iCloud_Private_Relay_Over...

>Safari history and tabs are end-to-end encrypted: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

They are for iCloud backup, which is not the same as the data collected by the App AFAIK.

iCloud backup is not end to end encrypted. iCloud sync of Safari History, Tab Groups, and iCloud Tabs is. The data collection the app page mentioned sounds like a 3rd thing. Or even E2EE is considered data collection for App Store purposes.

I agree with you. In the present time, even as a profit grubbing corporation, Apple does a decent job privacy and security. This might change in the future, but I hope not.

I now use ProtonMail as my backup email even though I am a long term paying customer. This is obviously a personal decision, but I consider Apple’s email service to be good enough in terms of privacy and usability. Also, every company I have worked for in the last decade uses Google Workplace and I find having work material in Google and my stuff in Apple’s ecosystem leads to a good separation of work vs. my life.

Librewolf wins those competitions by a mile.

So does ArkenFox that works within Firefox and hardens it without a new clone of the browser

Because brave/firefox is better, and its not based on the new IE engine(WebKIT) which is incompatible with anything that improves user experience to the point it competes with Mobile apps.

Yes its better than chrome, but its worse than anything which claims good privacy.

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