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Comment by alt227 | Hacker News Reader

Its amusing that Apple itself is one of the biggest ad companies that exists, fed entirely from their own users private data. Yet by simply pointing the finger away from themselves and helping their customers block other ad companies efforts, they seem to have gained complete trust of all their users and most dont even know how much Apple are making in ad revenue from their own data.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/11/14/apples-4b-ad-busi...

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Yes, that is very true. Unfortunately, without a true non-Apple or non-Google OS, the ATT toggle is likely about as good as you can get. And it does stop the apps themselves getting raw access to your data, which is not something to sniff at.

A true non-Apple and non-Google OS already exists. Sent from my Librem 5 running GNU/Linux.

Wow, that is neat! I had never heard of that before. However, they still have a long way to go to even equal the capabilities of normal phones made by huge companies for a typical consumer. Whether that is normal app support or even just simple stuff like camera quality.

Although...that was likely never the main goal for that phone anyway.

I trust Apple with my private data. I don't trust Google with it, and I don't trust Joe Blow's Sketchy Ass Apps & Ads Service with it. Simple as.

Exactly. Amusing indeed.

Why do you trust Apple with your private data? Unless you enable ADP, iCloud backups are only encrypted at rest and not end-to-end. So, Apple, law enforcement, etc. can just read your iMessage or WhatsApp messages if needed. Did you enable ADP? Well good luck convincing everyone you communicate with to enable it as well, or their backups will still have all your chats without E2E encryption.

WhatsApp pulls a similar trick on Android. It's E2E encrypted, but by default backups (done to Google Drive) are not. I think most users never enable encrypted backups.

I wouldn't be surprised if there is a deal with law enforcement, where Apple and Meta can do and advertise E2E chats, but the defaults (which most users do not change) are such that law enforcement can still access them. But yeah, Apple and Google were part of PRISM too, so no big surprise I guess?

If you truly care about privacy, either completely disable iCloud backups or get a GrapheneOS phone. Also use Signal, because they exclude themselves from phone backups by default. So either chats are not backed up or they are backed up through Signal's own E2E backup service.

Use signal and disable notification previews… Apple saves even cleared notification text previews on device, which the feds just used in a recent case…

The article you cite refutes your claim, explicitly bringing up the lack of access to user data.

I frankly don’t care if the App Store has advertisements. I would care if my data is (1) available to Apple to read by virtue of not being e2e encrypted, and (2) used to train models and target those advertisements.

> I would care if my data is (1) available to Apple to read by virtue of not being e2e encrypted, and (2) used to train models and target those advertisements.

Here we go:

Apple fined $8.5M for illegally collecting iPhone owners' data for ads (gizmodo.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433

Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected (aalto.fi)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39927657

Apple silently uploads your passwords and keeps them (lapcatsoftware.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42014588

Watchdog ponders why Apple doesn't apply its strict app tracking rules to itself (theregister.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43047952

Apple memory holed its broken promise for an OCSP opt-out (lapcatsoftware.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41184153

Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS (therecord.media) [but Apple still collects a lot!]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261

I dont mean to be rude but you obviously dont do much research about companies you seem to care a lot about.

Apple have been caught time and time again undermining their users security and privacy, including syphoning off user data to government agencies etc.

The sibling post cites enough reading to be getting on with, but heres a few more of my favourites for good measure:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/11/12/apple-getting-sue...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-con...

https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/governments...

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