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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

All that tracking data will be sent back to the mothership. First, Apple will deny that there's data collection. Then they will say they're keeping the data private. Then they will say it's being only being used for "anonymous tracking". Then it will come out it's being sold for marketing purposes.

"It will even offer "All Day People Discovery," which will track the user's proximity to others, drawing distinctions between work colleagues and friends."

That could be really useful for tracking down illegal immigrants, gays, and politicians meeting with lobbyists.

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>All that tracking data will be sent back to the mothership. First, Apple will deny that there's data collection. Then they will say they're keeping the data private. Then they will say it's being only being used for "anonymous tracking". Then it will come out it's being sold for marketing purposes.

Do we have any records of Apple doing this previously?

Its basically the MO of the entire tech industry since internet connectivity became ubiquitous.

You’re not answering the question are you?

Yes.[1][2][3]

[1] https://fossbytes.com/apple-data-collection-explained/

[2] https://www.wired.com/story/apple-privacy-data-collection/

[3] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/14/apple_data_collection...

"Now that we’ve established that Apple collects and uses your data to serve ads, does it sell your data too? Turns out the answer is No, Apple doesn’t sell your data to third-party advertisers."

Thanks for providing your own refutations. Now stop lying.

A lot of people seem to define “selling your data” to mean “selling ads that are measured with your data”. If it’s “selling your data” when FB does that, the same is true when it’s Apple.

If you can run an ad aimed at a specific group via Apple, as the advertiser you can track who gets the ad and thus track who is in that group. It's inherent in ad tracking.

Google doesn't sell your data, either, and neither does Facebook. That's a technicality that doesn't mean much.

The whole privacy thing started because of FB selling user data to Cambridge Analytica and it getting leaked.

What? Not at all, from what I recall. When did it come out that FB sold the data to Cambridge Analytica? I thought they mostly abused/misused a "loophole"

They didn't sell any data to Cambridge Analytica. CA just ran apps (quizzes) on Facebook at a time where such apps would be given too many permissions by default. In particular they'd have access to the user's friend list. Much like apps on iPhones back in the day.

Ah I see. So the data that FB collected was leaked to 3rd parties because of the systems they put in place exposed it. That's not much better.

The end result was the same, and it let to a wave of privacy resulting in Apple locking down their app permissions further, and FB throwing a fit about it.

I think it let everyone to really lock down their APIs. I used to meet startup founders who unironically told me their monetization plan was to mine users contacts and other information and sell it on. "Everybody's doing it" they'd tell me.

I think people are only annoyed at Apple because they use that same locked down information for their own services, including their ad network. Though of course Facebook does that too.

>They didn't sell any data to Cambridge Analytica

It is somewhat strange to sell how HN has shifted again. Somewhere along 2022, most of the extreme left, also the Anti Facebook, Anti Ads, group are gone or disappeared.

You can now actually say They didn't sell any data to Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook profited handsomely from the truly fucked up ad targeting they offered CA, quite literally segmenting populations based on things like personality, political beliefs, traits that define protected classes, racist/antisemetic/etc beliefs, whether they were friends with people who were/had either of those things, if they were mentally ill, etc. Their API also exposed their users' private data, including things like location, likes, follows, comments, friends, their posts, etc.

Facebook's API allowed CA to harvest a lot of data, which allowed them to conduct psychological profiling and targeting research, and analysis on massive troves of FB's data. All of that allowed them to develop tailored ads for specific segments of the population they chose to turn elections. Based on the profiling they did, for example, they were able to determine that if they were able to show 1,000 narrowly chosen people in one neighborhood, say, racist ads, CA's statistics show that they will be able to turn a tight election. CA was able to do this because of the data Facebook provided them, as well as the advertising platform Facebook provides that allowed CA to pinpoint segments of the public that are susceptible to their particular brand of psychological and political exploitation.

However, the data that CA mined was provided by Facebook's API, and anyone with a free API key could have mined it. FB technically didn't sell them the data, but they certainly sold them the means to manipulate elections and violate the privacy of millions of people. And as I said, that's a technicality that doesn't mean much.

Facebook's targeting, down to segmenting people who believe in the "white genocide conspiracy theory" into their own category[1], that allowed CA to laser pinpoint groups of people to show ads to[2], was a key part of the scandal, as was the fact that Facebook's API "leaked" information about users. I say "leaked", because it was the same kind of data a lot of APIs offered at the time and still do[3]. That data was offered for free to anyone with an API key.

[1] https://theintercept.com/2018/11/02/facebook-ads-white-supre...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/23/leaked-cambr...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...

None of them included anything that is not almost a technical requirement. The first one is especially biased against apple, it lists a bunch of basic things comparing apple and google showing how “they are the same”, but it’s only things like transactional information.. like how else do you even pay otherwise in the AppStore? Age is required for any Family feature.

Google is eons worse, but for some reason more interesting categories were not listed at all.

Well I dont disagree with most of the points, considering I was the first few on HN to rally about their so called privacy stand / fundamental human right, but

>Then it will come out it's being sold for marketing purposes

I seriously seriously doubt. As much as I like to shit on Apple, I think the worst they do is to hold all the Data for themselves and build an Advertising platform. Unless that is what you mean by being sold for marketing purposes, which is what most of HN thinks during 2017 - 2022. And that is a generalisation of US / Free World only. They might very likely hand those Data to some government.

It will, most definitely, be end to end encrypted along with the rest of user data in the iCloud ecosystem.

Unless you live in China*.

* https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351

iCloud user data that’s not end-to-end encrypted: name, home address, work address, who you talk to and when, where you go and when, what you buy and when…

iCloud user data that’s not end-to-end encrypted unless you find and change multiple different settings that few people know about: files, photos, notes, texts, full copies of laptop’s and phone’s storage…

I’d take a bet that 99% of the time Apple or a local regime wants to read iCloud user data, they can.

I’m almost sure that billing informations are required by law in plenty jurisdictions to be stored, where you go and when is a feature for Find My, what you buy and when is again, first point. What if I tell you that literally any physical supermarket will also have this data?

That's kinda the problem. This "required by law" bit obviously conflicts with their "privacy is a human right" shtick. Just look through their transparency page[0], where Apple confirms that device and account data is turned over by the thousands annually. Despotic nations like China get 93% of device access requests granted. Apple doesn't even have control over Chinese iCloud servers, their allegiance to the government directly prevents them from protecting their users.

> What if I tell you that literally any physical supermarket will also have this data?

Great, now we're comparing iPhone privacy to a supermarket. Wasn't Apple supposed to care about this stuff?

[0] https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/

We are talking about China, that straight up just replaced Google with their own thing.

You are either doing business with China at their own rules, or you don’t do anything. Apple has different iCloud settings for the rest of the world, and while it does suck for Chinese people, the alternative would be some domestic OS with much much more involved privacy violations.

Also, why should a company be above local law? Sure it sucks when the local law is bad and apple should not make the job easier, but if they do lawfully request some data then I don’t see why Apple should not fulfill it.

> or you don’t do anything.

This was the ethical abstention that the rest of FAANG pursued. At least, the ones who didn't have vested manufacturing contracts in the China mainland. Let them replace it with their own thing, it's a better alternative than compromising every iPhone "just in case". It's not only about domestic security, it's about how it devalues the meaning of Apple's privacy worldwide.

> Also, why should a company be above local law?

Because their principles of privacy and security supersede their interest in moneymaking? If the local law is unjust, you don't do business there. That's what Microsoft, Google, Netflix and

> I don’t see why Apple should not fulfill it.

Your phone shouldn't have a backdoor in the first place. Letting Apple have this much vertical authority over their platform is why we're here now, trying to decide if America's largest corporation is right for sleeping with the enemy. It's obviously wrong (as you note), but we're also helpless to resist it (as you also note). The best path of recourse is legislation that dilutes Apple's absolute authority and forces them to play ball with the industry. It's attractive to legislators, regulators, and the common people.

> it's a better alternative than compromising every iPhone "just in case"

But that’s absolutely not what happens - do you have any sort of citation for that?

How do you think Apple is granting device access to law enforcement?

So when it’s Google doing this it’s evil, but when it’s Apple, it’s ok if it a feature uses it, or if some nation wanted it, or if somebody else did it too?

I do think that a lot of these are hard problems to truly tackle, I was just commenting on this cognitive dissonance where people say things like “iCloud user data is private”, while in fact iCloud user data is this huge trove of very personal information that’s not private, and we don’t act like those ideas are in conflict.

Besides, Apple’s not doing the most they can within the confines of user wishes and local law. Neither one requires using dark patterns to ensure that 95% of users have privacy turned off. They’re also tracking every interaction for ad purposes on the App Store. I’m not trying to call them an evil boogeyman, but I think they’re trying to have their cake and eat it too: have users buy more because they think it’s private, while not disadvantaging themselves or pissing off local regimes by actually preventing data access in the majority of cases.

> Then it will come out it's being sold for marketing purposes

You forgot the last part: then we'll learn Apple has been granting near-automatic access to any three-letter agency that wants to read your journal.

Wouldn't it be useful for tracking down any human being?

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