this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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I'm not even an Apple user but somehow I still feel like Apple is one of the very last companies where privacy and the security of your data is more worth than a dime.
Nope, Apple sells your data just as much as Google does: https://www.insiderintelligence.com/content/apple-ad-revenues-skyrocket-amid-its-privacy-changes https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/12/22/23513061/apple-iphone-app-store-ads-privacy-antitrust#luMMel
While people noticed their new policies against 3rd party apps, that masked the fact that those policies carved out an exception for first party apps, meaning they collect (anonymous) data on you through Health, Journal, Music, etc. just like every other company. "Trusting them more" is simply a result of you and everyone else getting hit with their privacy ads recently.
Edit: "just like every other company" meant Google and Microsoft, i.e. the other big equivalent tech companies, my fault for not being specific.
While I’m all for calling out companies for abusing your privacy, your own links show that they don’t collect as much data as google. They could (and should) be better though.
Nope apple is literally worse than hitler, spez, and elon musk confirmed. Tim apple fucked my wife in front of me.
You lucky sonofabitch. You got to witness the ol Apple Pie with your own two eyes.
Anonymous data is actually pretty different to the data everyone else collects, which literally has your name and picture
Apple’s data is useful for trends but it can’t be used to study who I am.
This comment needs to be further up rather than the idiotic takes that don’t understand the difference between anonymized data collection (Apple) vs identifiable data collection (Meta/Google/most other tech).
Well, then there's also the people that don't realize that there are all sorts of programs out there that will try to take that "anonymized" data and then tie it right back to a persons profile.
For example, you can anonymize GPS location data, but just because you strip away identifying information doesn't mean that you're truly anonymous. It can still be obvious where you live and where you work. And once you figure out where they live (again based on anonymous data) you can tie that information right back into their profile and continue to track them as if nothing has changed. https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a15927450/identify-individual-users-with-stravas-heatmap/
That won’t work on Apples data - they group all the data into cohorts, so the anonymising isn’t reversible.
Not all anonymization techniques are created equal? I’m pretty sure this is fairly obvious at this point to anybody remotely familiar with how data collection works when it comes to privacy and device metrics.
So, how is this relevant to this conversation besides adding more FUD and misinformation?
As much as Google? Likely not. Does their carefully curated pro-privacy image actually match their practices? Also likely not.
I feel like wuth the amount of stuff done on device and not in the cloud with iPhones and other Apple products, saying that Apple sells just as much as Google is at the very least disingenuous…
Why? They gather data locally on your device rather than on a cloud service. Why do you feel the locality where they gather your data makes the comment disingenuous?
Did you read the article you posted? Apple serve you ads, they don’t sell your data. And they allow you to opt out of tracking. It’s all right there in your article.
Any company that obfuscates all their security practices, refuses to give statistics on security risks and counter measures, and boils their product security down to "Trust us, bro.", doesn't actually give a fuck about your security. They're just the last company who is still able to keeps everything secret so they can make shit up as they go along. Apple's security is a joke and they're just as bad as any other manufacturer on the market, the only difference is they have successfully kept their shit secret for all these years and spent decades convincing people they actually give a fuck about security.
I still remember a few years ago having a conversation with a coworker about her iphone and she bragged about Apple never being hacked and this was right after I had just got done reading an article about a large scale hack on their network. Of course Apple never said a damned thing about it, so I forwarded her the article. IIRC she mumbled something about how the article was probably not accurate. Apple fanatics do some crazy mental gymnastics to justify them spending thousands on a phone thats probably worth about $300 at best(their hardware is on average 1-2 generations behind other devices on the market).
Did you know that most celebrity phone hacks are thru apple accounts?
Apple processors outperform flagship android phones on benchmarks every generation. Where are you getting your information?
Sadly it’s tribalism. It’s “apple = bad” so anything mentioned about apple isn’t looked at logically but rather with an “us vs them” mentality. It’s common across the spectrum of thinking critically nowadays, but I felt I had to refute all points because it’s dumb and doesn’t help anyone.
More security is good. Hating on apple because they are convinced that it’s an overpriced conspiracy is stupid. Every tech company deserves some hate, Apple included, but making that your identity instead of thinking critical does nothing to advance the work being done.