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Comment by stephenr | Hacker News Reader

> All these companies are in it to win your private information,

The companies he Tim Cook described, that offer "free" services and data-mine/aggregate/sell your personal information to fund the business? Yes.

Apple has a vested interest in not collecting, analysing, aggregating and using the vast amounts of private information other companies do: they're seen by many as a premium brand, where you pay a bit more and get a better product/experience. Part of that is not getting "maybe you'd like X" emails from the App Store, or "Hey do you need a new printer for that Mac you just bought on Apple.com" type shit.

> and we are all prepared to give them some of our private information if what we get in return is worth it.

You might be. "We" are not all prepared to hand over private information.

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Part of that is not getting "maybe you'd like X" emails from the App Store

I use a fair variety of google products on a couple of different platforms and have for years. Google has never sent me a suggest-sell email. They don't hide the fact that they're in the advertising and marketing business, but they're not that unsubtle.

Perhaps other people get suggest-sell emails from Google, but it's not something I've seen (or heard people complain about).

> Google has never sent me a suggest-sell email.

Did I say it was Google doing this?

Yes, you did. You referenced the companies Cook was talking about, and he was primarily talking about Google. Google also operates the only software market that's close to the App Store in size, apart from the niche-market case of Steam.

One of my pet hates is people who imply something, then use "but I didn't LITERALLY write the exact words that say that". You can play that game forever - for instance, where in my first reply to you did I explicitly mention that you did say it? I never said you did.

Isn't implication a wonderfully deniable building-block of human communication?

Tim Cook specifically LITERALLY says that he is talking about multiple companies:

> I’m speaking to you from Silicon Valley, where some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information

> where in my first reply to you did I explicitly mention that you did say it

You were the one who brought Google into the conversation. I said Apple don't send spamvertising emails based on App Store purchases, because that's a very easy concept to understand how apple could use the private data they do have (i.e. my purchase/download history of iOS apps) as a revenue stream.

I think Google should be avoided whenever possible, but I'm not stupid enough to think they're the only company with skeevy data collection policies at the core of their business model.

The fact that you say you can't pick up that the major target in Cook's speech is Google simply means that either you're lying to save face, or you're incapable of picking up subtext in what people say. Cook's talking about 'data on our devices' and 'free services' and 'having your email, search history, and now family photos'. Who the hell do you think he's referring to here? Second in his firing line is Facebook, but it's clearly squarely aimed at the Goog, because Facebook has had your family photos for years.

And just in case you are enough of a naif that you missed that 'subtext', if it can be called that subtle, the article even explicitly highlights that it was a swipe against Google and spends a paragraph explaining why. Cook was the one who brought Google into the conversation, not me. He just didn't say the word 'google'.

And besides, what kind of counter is "these were the literal words" to someone whose argument is "there is more to communication than literal words"?

But hey, "I never said you did".

> Apple has a vested interest in not collecting, analysing

Do you seriously believe that? They are doing this non stop. Not a month goes by without my iPad requesting my iCloud password so it can back up my entire tablet, even though I've repeatedly declined to provide it.

They are collecting and analysing PII data all the time. They need it because it's an arms' race. They will only stop if compelled to do so by governments or by a privacy scandal.

> "We" are not all prepared to hand over private information.

Unless you tell me you never, ever use a search engine (not just Google, could be Bing or Yahoo or whatever), I am pretty sure you are in denial about that compromise. You are giving away private information all the time, you just don't realize it, or you are okay with the fact that "Getting good search results for this query is worth Google logging my IP".

> Not a month goes by without my iPad requesting my iCloud password so it can back up my entire tablet

It sounds like you have Settings -> iCloud -> Backup -> iCloud Backup turned on.

> They are collecting and analysing PII data all the time.

What sort of evidence do you have to support this?

How about Apple has admitting they do exactly that?

http://www.imore.com/yosemite-ios-8-spotlight-and-privacy-wh...

Yes, they say they properly anonymize and location-scrub this personal information before they store, aggregate and analyze it (and I have no reason to doubt that they're doing that, at least for their own use), but they are clearly collecting it. And if you're going to talk about things like vulnerability to government surveillance, just collecting it in the first place is more than enough to open that door.

Apple obviously needs PII because they are billing you for purchases.

You don't need to supply any of it.

> Not a month goes by without my iPad requesting my iCloud password so it can back up my entire tablet, even though I've repeatedly declined to provide it.

Apple prompts you to backup your data... so they must be analysing your data? Can I get whatever brand of space cakes you're snacking on?

> They need it because it's an arms' race

Google/etc are dependant on that information - without it they have almost no revenue at all.

Apple sells physical and digital products, and provides services. Almost all of these cost money to use, and the amount of data personal information required from the customer to provide those services is close to zero.

So tell me again why apple "needs" the data which they have repeatedly said they don't collect and don't want to collect?

> Unless you tell me you never, ever use a search engine

I refer you to https://duckduckgo.com/privacy & http://donttrack.us

> Not a month goes by without my iPad requesting my iCloud password so it can back up my entire tablet, even though I've repeatedly declined to provide it.

Settings -> iCloud -> Backup -> switch slider to off.

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