I study Apple's Privacy Nutrition Labels religiously every time I consider installing an app.
I like the ones with "Data Not Collected".
Here's a good overview of the problem: https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.02658v3
Reminds me of meat processing regulations. I can sell my animals whole to buyers through a custom processing exemption, but they must go pick up their meat from the butcher. The law says I cannot pick up and deliver it, but it is trivial to find people advertising that extra service. Reporting them does not result in any obvious action.
In both of our cases, our honesty is a liability in the marketplace, because people are ignorant of such laws (or simply don’t care). Really, they simply want the product that they want, as conveniently as possible. We are then forced to compete in the marketplace with liars and cheats.
I am sure our peers here can find countless examples in other areas where this flavor of dishonesty prevails. Hell, I would love to hear some counter examples, because I cannot help but view this state of affairs as intentional at this point.
The purpose of system is what it does (or, in this case, does not do).
I can't help but feel the whole Apple privacy PR will be blown in the future where some report will come out that Apple has been logging and sharing user data with NSA since 2001.
Screen real estate is precious on phones, so being able to permanently block "Install our app!" and even entire navigation categories (shorts on LinkedIn) is quite valuable.
Then you can "install" the site on your home screen or simply place it in collection folders so it's sitting ready on your "New Tab" page.
If you want an actual private Firefox Browser use a fork like Mullvad Browser, LibreWolf and Tor Browser.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/sponsor-privacy
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-and-google-sign-...
The only one trying to convince themselves is you...
I dropped their .com into a Home Screen icon, and this completely stopped (at least as far as I’ve observed). It’s definitely more janky from an experience perspective, but still easier than driving to the store.
While browsing, there are also popups offering the app approximately every third link I click. Some of them are telling me to install the app.
Unless the situation has changed recently, it's not perfectly fine, it is unusable on purpose.
"The app is great because the website is heavily degraded".
For example, seemingly a bunch of places in Europe/elsewhere has disabled old.reddit.com unless you're logged in, but seemingly a bunch of people in other places can use it just fine. I'm sure what both of you are seeing is both correct, there is just something changing the experience that gets served to each of you.
Log in to use old Reddit
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It went into effect 2 months ago, there is no bypass for it by design.
As the sibling poster mentioned, might depend on location, but it DOES happen.
They are compared / contrasted. Nobody is saying one is concretely related to the other.
Is it one of these HN usual "ChInA BaD" psychosis ?
Similar to how I use Amazon Prime but would never order something I ingest, put on my skin, or (usually) wear from it.
Not elitest.
Elitism has nothing to do with refusing to buy products made with slavery.
A lot of people are critical of historic slavery whilst happily buying from Temu. That’s scummy as hell.
On Amazon I never see products like that. That's why I prefer Amazon (and Coolblue and bol.com in Belgium).
Case in point, fake 2TB Sandisk ExtremePro microSD:
- £17 on eBay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/336728033240 - even the images prove it's a fake (also $570 on sandisk.com)
Agreed, there's more of that on AliExpress but Amazon is not free from that either.
Not a £1 tat, and not one off. Not that AliExpress is my choice, no, far from it. Sometimes it's better, closer to the manufacturer, that's all.
Amazon, in my experience, does arbitrate disputes about returns and defects, but the important point is that from a legal perspective, I don't think they have to, so you're at their mercy.
You can't even be sure that VAT is handled correctly, which local retailers can usually not get around.
Translation: They are able to mine your personal data more completely with an app installed vs the website which they can sell for pure profit. They promoted installing it to extract more value from you.
But there is another, slightly less evil, explanation that I know at least some companies have pushed their apps because of: the thinking is that if you're on their website, there is less friction to open a new tab and search for a lower price from their competitors, than if you're in their app. Obviously it's hardly any different - opening a new app (the web browser) vs. opening a new tab in the app you're already in - but the theory is that there's a slight psychological difference.
Of course I'm not saying that trying to prevent your customers from searching for better deals is a nice thing to do. Just adding that data mining isn't the only reason for some companies to want people to use their apps.
Should you ever need someone in a foreign country to do something for you, it's good to have as much information as possible at your disposal about them.
At least Aliexpress doesn't have all the fake slot machine type games that temu has that always end in variations of "get $200 of discounts for your next order if you order x items from this list"
So I would register a new account for each order -- 10 USD is quite a lot of money in my country -- and saved at least a hundred on buying dev boards and other components.
What, I suddenly need to buy Alibaba crap and I can't wait to get to a laptop browser?
"Why would anyone install a random app"
"Why would anyone use a phone to make a purchase"
--
Globally, more than half of all eCommerce purchases are made on a phone or tablet.
For no good reason in places where the phone is not the exclusive access many have to the internet (like it's for many people in the poorer places in Africa for example).
(And the number likely includes things like food delivery and digital goods like game assets and apps themselves)
The fact that all uneducated crash test dummies are purchasing via dubious apps doesn't mean a seemingly educated population about computer hygiene as I would expect is visiting hn would do that as well.
And it is not about purchasing from mobile, but app vs web browser.
This should be illegal
Companies are not going to hire a mobile dev team to create an app to give you a way to pay them less for a good.
They hire a mobile dev team to create an app to give you a way to hand over data that you otherwise wouldn't, is technically impossible to do through a web browser, and is worth more than the discount that they give you for using the app.
Using my computer just now, I looked at one of the emails that AliExpress sent about this order. It had a clickable tracking number displayed; I clicked it.
That brought me to their website, where I landed on a page that included the last update for my order and also a link to "View Details".
That works for me. It was very easy to where along the line my stuff is (and that it is not in the US yet).
---
Meanwhile: I also copied the tracking number from the email. I pasted that tracking number into the box at usps.com.
The USPS knows of my tracking number and they do not have my item yet. Fair enough.
I ticked some boxes and told them to send me updates, which I'm sure they'll do once they have updates to send -- just as they have done for ~decades now.
This also works for me.
Like a white van with FREE CANDY written on it...
....and yes, many HN'ers were clearly happy to give there precise GNSS coordinates to some random scrote who askes for them.
b) Browser fingerprinting and the like links this position to me and my activities.
Do you not find it bizarre that many people see nothing wrong in routinely giving their precise location to anybody who asks for it?
For instance, Meta and Google publish 'free' iOS libraries that firehose surveillance data back to them. The libraries are popular, so apps that use them must be allowed into the store despite taking them as dependencies.
If you can get access to .ipa files (I think you'd need to jailbreak -- apparently this stuff is encrypted by Apple) or packet sniffer, then you can get an idea of how bad it is for the apps you use.
This tool claims to do the sort of analysis I'm talking about (among other things), but I've never tried:
edit: quantity qualifier