Apple fined $8.5M for illegally collecting iPhone owners' data for ads

If anything compromises Apple products, in 90% of cases it's Apple's design philosophy or (stubborn?) ideals. Not a push from the spreadsheet bozos.

For better or worse, I think Tim managed to keep the product side of the company very close to what Steve wanted.

There have definitely been product missteps and the typical nickle and diming of storage but it hasn’t seemed like the quality has suffered too much as you’d expect if he was a true bozo.

It seems to be much less serious than the headline implies, as is common

we reserve the right to change the terms and conditions... blah, blah, fucking blah.

I'm very firmly of the opinion that an ad on the street, a billboard, or in a newspaper or magazine, or even a website (under certain conditions) is public and not private (as much as they are annoying), inasmuch as you can be filmed in public - it's a public space.

An ad on your phone is* private as it is 'yours', your number, your unique id, your puk etc. It is sent only to you, as the owner of the phone.

Unless you share your phone with several (quantity/ number to be debated) persons, which would have to be declared. But if Jenny or Jimmy from finance are looking at spicy underwear and I get the ad for more of the same when I'm on duty - then so be it! It would have had to have been declared a public phone (for such behavior to be acceptable/ accepted).

Uh [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–Apple_encryption_dispute

It's a case where a business motivations line up with their customers (like how FB and Google's motivations to collect data lined up with their customers motivations to get free stuff).

But if they're breaking that now, that's a huge problem.

I'm surprised every time I see an ad somewhere. TrackerControl seems to be an accidentally fantastic ad blocker (I got it just to block trackers) and it's super rare that an app doesn't use one of the known ad networks. It probably also helps to use apps from F-Droid whenever possible, which is surprisingly often (most of my apps are from F-Droid, some are stock like camera, dialer, and home screen, and then there's a couple like Spotify and NS/DB that are required for valid digital national rail tickets and I unfortunately can't get outside of Google Play).

I would love to use a Linux phone, but my bank's 2FA doesn't support any.

So in an obscure settings toggle, in one version of iOS that was immediately fixed, some developer probably unknowingly set a toggle default to a setting that contravened an EU law… and you think Tim Cook should go to prison??

I just finished reading a book where one of the chapters was about factories in north New York where the executives covered-up systematic leaking of dioxin into the local environment for decades.

But sure - Tim Cook should go to prison to appease your Apple hatred.

People talked as if Apple did not and would not ever do such things, which was obviously false. Both companies profit by the fact that we keep pointing fingers in this sadistic duopoly and not look at the actual issue of privacy. I wished people showed more interest when in was more "fashionable" to talk of such issues, but back when snowden/assange/smaller individuals did it, the discussion always ended up with ad homiminems and irrelevant points directed to the messenger. The only difference between back then & now are the perpetrators: it used to be the governments, nowadays is companies (and governments colluding with them, which is arguably worse as corporations cannot be as easily held accountable).

It seems like Apple clearly violated the policy it rightly should establish for any software on iOS. They deserve the penalty.

They chose to use tracking tokens in the first place. By default a computer does nothing, someone was tasked to write this. Apparently they did something wrong, maybe it was an honest mistake, but I find it a stretch to just assume or expect they are necessarily choosing what's best for users (and leaving money on the table) without more info than is public.

And this "arcane rule" is pretty much 50% of everything you read about GDPR (heard of cookie dialogs? they are not just banners anymore due to GDPR). Hardly arcane to me.

Apple's branding and marketing are too powerful for that to happen. An obscure court ruling matters to people on HN. To the average consumer, it never happened.

if the fine was huge, it would be news. but this fine is an amount that's easily ignored, so it will be.

Are they? Google is probably the most open company about what they collect and how they use it and I've never seen any evidence whatsoever that they ever sell you out ie. do more than simply link you to contextual ads.

All their apps and services also ask for permission pretty explicitly.

Really? Google spies on their users. But everybody knows that.

Apple lies to their users telling them they not spying on them despite doing exactly that.

So who's more dishonest?

(This question is independent from the question whether it's morally OK to spy on people in the first place.)

You say that, but a non-negligble number of comments here are outright defending Apple saying "just a wrong default setting", "nothingburger", etc.

Amazing number of people baying for prison time for this pretty trivial mis-step.

As I said in another comment, just finished reading a book where one of the chapters was about the Diamond Alkali works near Newark, where executives knowingly covered-up the intentional leaking of dioxin (the most lethal chemical known to man - the smallest dose will cause cancer) for decades.

But people on HN want to put Apple employees in prison for some trivial, minor EU law contravention.

The toast that tells you to use Safari when using another web browser.

Corporate fines should work similarly, any infraction no matter how small should be fined at a % of their cashflow. I think Apple, with their 2 Trillion(!!!!) Dollars can hire a lawyer or two to make sure they're not breaking any silly privacy laws, after all :)