> iMessage has a privacy statement now, and it's much shorter than whatsapp's
Or there.
I wonder how effective these things really will be. Most people aren't going to scroll through these so the average person is going to ignore the everything below the fold. It's like the required disclaimers on medicines which people ignore. Once you get past the first few, nobody pays attention.
It's really hard to tell with Facebook if they understand that their massive data collection is at least morally questionable, and they business plan is simply a calculated risk. Given that most people seem to care more about free services, than they do about privacy, Facebook may see privacy labelling is a pointless exercise that won't change anything anyway.
Or perhaps we are back at Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." and Facebook as an organisation is simply unable to acknowledge the problem, because doing so would ruin them.
If Facebook charged 2$ a month for their services, would they not make more than their operational costs? They choose to exploit and straddle areas that are morally and legally dubious because they want more money.
Well, you can't undelete data you didn't collect. So I think there's this natural tendency toward omnivorous data collection in every tech company.
Then we rationalize it by telling ourselves that we use it ethically. It's almost always true . . . except when it's not. If 99% of the time the data is used ethically, it's easy to write off that 1% even when the 1% is all that matters.
> Given that most people seem to care more about free services, than they do about privacy,
What a backwards analysis.
A social platform that is not already popular is worthless to most people. They have no use for it. Hence they are definitely unwilling to pay for it before it gets popular; there is absolutely no incentive to. And, of course, once a social media platform _already_ is popular, it must have gotten to that point by operating at a loss.
iMessage seems to be a bit dishonest, because Apple, the owner, has way more information about you through iCloud and Apple ID - contacts, location, payment data, phone number, etc.
Forcing Facebook to clearly list all of this for the facebook account is great, but then failing to disclose this for their own account seems like double standard.
Just like having their own separate Ad Tracking switch which is on by default. (And even hidden under "System Services" on macOS!)
On iOS your location data, as far as Apple has it, is not associated with you or your device but with an identifier that is changed weekly.
If you choose to use iCloud to store your contacts (and you can choose any other service that implements the carddav standard) Apple declares the information is transmitted and stored encrypted and can’t be used for any other purpose.
>iMessage seems to be a bit dishonest, because Apple, the owner, has way more information about you through iCloud and Apple ID - contacts, location, payment data, phone number, etc.
But do they bring all that data together, correlate it, and sell it?
To me, its not listing all the things that the company knows about you, its listing all the information that app reads about you.
In other terms, this is what Apple knows when I disable the iCloud and only use iMessage. And this is what Facebook knows when I only use it though that messenger and nothing else.
Claims that company x oversteps privacy boundaries is often met with oh yeah? But Apple isn’t perfect. I agree, and I think there is room to push Apple to be a bigger advocate for privacy. Currently I think they are arguably doing the best job of this, however and pointing the finger at other people doing the same or similar behavior is not really an excuse. Pointing out hypocrisy doesn’t excuse bad behavior.
Those have nothing to do with iMessage though. If they aded them to the iMessage list people would naturally think that if they didn't use iMessage those things would be disabled, which is not true, so what you're asking for would be highly misleading and disingenuous.
The data listed for FB Messenger is taken directly from your phone and explicitly used for advertising and “other purposes”. If you added what Facebook has access to from your account it would cover two entire pages. Apples and.. blueberries?
I don't entirely agree with you here, but I do agree that Apple should be leading by example here and putting their privacy warnings exactly where they expect everyone else to. I want to be prompted for whether iMessage can be tied to data collected from other apps, or whether I should allow “Find my” to “continue accessing location in the background”.
For me, it would go a long way towards seeing Apple as not just trying to leverage their platform to be anti-competitive, but as a company who is honestly protecting my privacy.
I’m not an apologist or shill, but as a user I feel like I understand what I’m giving to Apple (or Microsoft/Google/$OS_VENDOR) when I am using their OS _AND_ enabling any kind of cloud sync. Maybe they’re taking more or less than I expected, but if I’m syncing my entire contact list I just have to assume now they have my contact list- and I accepted that when I enabled the functionality.
Some feature flags/settings across all the OSes get hidden, are non-obvious, on by default, or are flat out using dark patterns (looking at you Win10) but in general I assume the default state (for all OSes) is a combination of reducing support incidents, easiest on-boarding, and trying to push some corporate strategic objective summed up as keep the average user happy enough to stick around and possibly give us more money.
Any app I install on said OS, may want to access this information but without all the permissions explainers I have no idea what it’s going to want or why.
Again, I assume the OS has access to all of this because it’s the OS it either needs it or is the manager of the info and access broker.
To sum up my thought, I guess I agree that there’s a double standard but disagree that it’s necessarily bad or shady- but that’s because I already had a double standard in mind when I think about OS vs App.
Specific to ad-tracking and Apple: I have no proof for my belief but I believe Apple who primarily wants to sell me hardware and has made public acknowledgements of the importance of privacy, including making noticeable improvements to their OS, is significantly less likely to abuse my privacy than any other OS vendor out there.
I’m not saying this as a whataboutism, I just base it on my perceptions given all the things you just flat out can’t turn off in Win10 and that Google literally makes their money off of getting ads to your eyeballs and Android’s permissions are a dumpster fire nightmare for privacy.
I feel (again, no real proof) that the Apple eco-system is providing me the best _mainstream and low-effort_ steps to privacy protection vs the others, but I concede that it’s probably not good enough in many ways.
I am not a fan of FB. Lord knows they are arseholes.
I _do_ like these labels, I think they are good.
but
It is dishonest to say the least that imessenger only has access to just those details. To use imessenger, you need an icloud account.
Tie that to the location services and any payment information, Apple knows everything about you, even more than FB.
The issue is about trust. rightly people don't trust FB with their data. However I don't think we should be letting apple off so lightly, especially when they are pointing the blame at other people.
If only Apple didn't have a monopoly on the App Store on the iPhone. Then we wouldn't have to know this information because we could get it from a different App Store where Facebook doesn't have to share this info!
Ironic — the article shows up obscured by a full-page overlay and a banner with my favorite phrase "We value your privacy" (I read this as "your data has value to us"), that goes on to say:
"We and our store and/or access information [...] and process personal data, such as unique identifiers and standard information sent by a device for personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, and audience insights [...]
With your permission we and our partners may use precise geolocation data and identification through device scanning. You may click to consent to our and our partners’ processing as described above. Alternatively you may access more detailed information and change your preferences before consenting or to refuse consenting. Please note that some processing of your personal data may not require your consent, but you have a right to object to such processing."
I can then click "MORE OPTIONS" to enter the deceptive dialog, where you think everything is off, but really everything is hidden under "LEGITIMATE INTEREST" (another one of my favorite sneaky phrases). I don't know how you can really turn the tracking off.
Well it's not entirely a fair comparison since iMessage doesn't support in-app services and purchasing like Facebook Marketplace, as WhatsApp does. For which naturally it has to gather additonal data.
Also until iMessage is available on other platforms, what it slurps or doesn't slurp is academic for most users of WhatsApp.
We should understand Facabook was the best platform to advertise mobile game apps and etc, for almost 10 years. Apple took 30% of all that revenue without any objection.
Now Apple has its own ad infrastructure, and this is a perfect strategic move by Apple.
This is cute and all but so long as Android (and to a lesser extent Windows/Linux PCs) cannot run iMessage... what does any of this matter? Yeah iMessage is great between me and anyone I talk to with an iPhone, but it's still largely an Android world and in the best case scenario I can convince an Android user to install Signal, but usually not.
Well, that's the point from Apple's standpoint, right? It's marketing for them to convince you to convince your friends to buy iPhones. And in the mean time they'll keep blocking out apps like Signal from integrating in iOS the way they can in Android.
Like many other unpleasant facts it is one thing to know something is happening and another to have it proven to your face in an indisputable format.
However I have to ask, will this become another surgeon generals warning or calorie labeling of restaurant menu experience? By that I simply mean, people will not only click through it but also accept it as they don't see any real cost.
Eventually as with everything presented under dire warnings you drown your audience to the point they tune it all out and go right back their blissfully attitude of just accepting it under the guise of its not going to matter
YMMV, but I actually do look at the calories before ordering at a restaurant. There are times when I have ordered something else because of the number of calories was too high in what I wanted.
If it’s impossible/forbidden/very costly for the vendor to put poison in the food, then they won’t do it. Nobody will come and say „I would like to have this extra fatty extreme glucose meal, please“.
This is why we need opt-in instead of opt-out as default.
In the EU (and UK), it's some fairly minor changes to do with business messaging.
Outside of the EU, it is much more significant, merging your WhatsApp data with your Facebook data (including the phantom profiles FB create for users who don't have accounts). They can't do this in the EU (yet) due to privacy laws.
I am flabbergasted that this author attributed to 9to5 mac the privacy labels of different apps in the screenshot, when tracing the sources shows it was Zak Doffman at Forbes who created it. Poor journalism.
Expect more of this pushing competitors out as Apple transitions further into the 'services' business model by monetizing their vast trove of user data.
MSFT and GOOG have been doing this too for years ofcourse.
While GOOG has had to be content only with what they can read from emails/calendars, texts, web searches, calls/voicemail, maps/location data and anything else that they can scrape from an Android device.
MSFT has had all of that a much, much more since they own the whole OS for workstation/server class devices where actual work gets done. MSFT will claim that all that data is for quality control and now security services but ofcourse they are going to squeeze every last drop of money they can from it. To expect otherwise would be like asking an alcoholic to guard a brewery and never sample the product, completely ridiculous. The US has no serious legal repercussions for doing so. Probably because the US intelligence community depends on that data since IT is forbidden from collecting it from Americans on its own.
Problem is that most people already have WhatsApp installed and won’t be looking at that label anytime soon. Even if they had to reinstall it, they would likely never look past the download button
[+] [-] nottorp|5 years ago|reply
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/01/05/google-hasnt-updated-io...
I really wonder why :)
And apparently iMessage has a privacy statement now, and it's much shorter than whatsapp's:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2021/01/03/whatsapp-...
(This is posted on HN too).
[+] [-] radley|5 years ago|reply
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205223
[+] [-] m463|5 years ago|reply
If they don't update the apps, do they have to update the privacy policy?
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ogre_codes|5 years ago|reply
No big mystery there.
> iMessage has a privacy statement now, and it's much shorter than whatsapp's
Or there.
I wonder how effective these things really will be. Most people aren't going to scroll through these so the average person is going to ignore the everything below the fold. It's like the required disclaimers on medicines which people ignore. Once you get past the first few, nobody pays attention.
[+] [-] mrweasel|5 years ago|reply
Or perhaps we are back at Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." and Facebook as an organisation is simply unable to acknowledge the problem, because doing so would ruin them.
[+] [-] DSingularity|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhntr3|5 years ago|reply
Then we rationalize it by telling ourselves that we use it ethically. It's almost always true . . . except when it's not. If 99% of the time the data is used ethically, it's easy to write off that 1% even when the 1% is all that matters.
[+] [-] yrimaxi|5 years ago|reply
What a backwards analysis.
A social platform that is not already popular is worthless to most people. They have no use for it. Hence they are definitely unwilling to pay for it before it gets popular; there is absolutely no incentive to. And, of course, once a social media platform _already_ is popular, it must have gotten to that point by operating at a loss.
[+] [-] jliptzin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chiefalchemist|5 years ago|reply
This should help. I immediately bought the book.
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/living-und...
[+] [-] izacus|5 years ago|reply
Forcing Facebook to clearly list all of this for the facebook account is great, but then failing to disclose this for their own account seems like double standard.
Just like having their own separate Ad Tracking switch which is on by default. (And even hidden under "System Services" on macOS!)
[+] [-] tinus_hn|5 years ago|reply
If you choose to use iCloud to store your contacts (and you can choose any other service that implements the carddav standard) Apple declares the information is transmitted and stored encrypted and can’t be used for any other purpose.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303
[+] [-] everdrive|5 years ago|reply
But do they bring all that data together, correlate it, and sell it?
[+] [-] shoo_pl|5 years ago|reply
Maybe I misinterpret the idea behind this list.
To me, its not listing all the things that the company knows about you, its listing all the information that app reads about you.
In other terms, this is what Apple knows when I disable the iCloud and only use iMessage. And this is what Facebook knows when I only use it though that messenger and nothing else.
[+] [-] S_A_P|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] katbyte|5 years ago|reply
Unlike others os/phones where such things are turned on at every opportunity
[+] [-] jiofih|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pram|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshspankit|5 years ago|reply
For me, it would go a long way towards seeing Apple as not just trying to leverage their platform to be anti-competitive, but as a company who is honestly protecting my privacy.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] manyxcxi|5 years ago|reply
Some feature flags/settings across all the OSes get hidden, are non-obvious, on by default, or are flat out using dark patterns (looking at you Win10) but in general I assume the default state (for all OSes) is a combination of reducing support incidents, easiest on-boarding, and trying to push some corporate strategic objective summed up as keep the average user happy enough to stick around and possibly give us more money.
Any app I install on said OS, may want to access this information but without all the permissions explainers I have no idea what it’s going to want or why.
Again, I assume the OS has access to all of this because it’s the OS it either needs it or is the manager of the info and access broker.
To sum up my thought, I guess I agree that there’s a double standard but disagree that it’s necessarily bad or shady- but that’s because I already had a double standard in mind when I think about OS vs App.
Specific to ad-tracking and Apple: I have no proof for my belief but I believe Apple who primarily wants to sell me hardware and has made public acknowledgements of the importance of privacy, including making noticeable improvements to their OS, is significantly less likely to abuse my privacy than any other OS vendor out there.
I’m not saying this as a whataboutism, I just base it on my perceptions given all the things you just flat out can’t turn off in Win10 and that Google literally makes their money off of getting ads to your eyeballs and Android’s permissions are a dumpster fire nightmare for privacy.
I feel (again, no real proof) that the Apple eco-system is providing me the best _mainstream and low-effort_ steps to privacy protection vs the others, but I concede that it’s probably not good enough in many ways.
[+] [-] jiveturkey|5 years ago|reply
i like to call it end to end to end encryption. i came up with that for zoom but it applies to iMessage as well.
[+] [-] mtgx|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] KaiserPro|5 years ago|reply
I _do_ like these labels, I think they are good.
but
It is dishonest to say the least that imessenger only has access to just those details. To use imessenger, you need an icloud account.
Tie that to the location services and any payment information, Apple knows everything about you, even more than FB.
The issue is about trust. rightly people don't trust FB with their data. However I don't think we should be letting apple off so lightly, especially when they are pointing the blame at other people.
[+] [-] ericmay|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jwr|5 years ago|reply
"We and our store and/or access information [...] and process personal data, such as unique identifiers and standard information sent by a device for personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, and audience insights [...]
With your permission we and our partners may use precise geolocation data and identification through device scanning. You may click to consent to our and our partners’ processing as described above. Alternatively you may access more detailed information and change your preferences before consenting or to refuse consenting. Please note that some processing of your personal data may not require your consent, but you have a right to object to such processing."
I can then click "MORE OPTIONS" to enter the deceptive dialog, where you think everything is off, but really everything is hidden under "LEGITIMATE INTEREST" (another one of my favorite sneaky phrases). I don't know how you can really turn the tracking off.
[+] [-] surround|5 years ago|reply
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2021/01/03/whatsapp-...
[+] [-] xoa|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matsemann|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dingaling|5 years ago|reply
Also until iMessage is available on other platforms, what it slurps or doesn't slurp is academic for most users of WhatsApp.
[+] [-] halukakin|5 years ago|reply
Now Apple has its own ad infrastructure, and this is a perfect strategic move by Apple.
[+] [-] refracture|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevehawk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shivetya|5 years ago|reply
However I have to ask, will this become another surgeon generals warning or calorie labeling of restaurant menu experience? By that I simply mean, people will not only click through it but also accept it as they don't see any real cost.
Eventually as with everything presented under dire warnings you drown your audience to the point they tune it all out and go right back their blissfully attitude of just accepting it under the guise of its not going to matter
[+] [-] parthdesai|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] protoman3000|5 years ago|reply
This is why we need opt-in instead of opt-out as default.
[+] [-] hugi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aachen|5 years ago|reply
https://exodus-privacy.eu.org/
https://f-droid.org/packages/org.eu.exodus_privacy.exoduspri...
[+] [-] timwis|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] intellirogue|5 years ago|reply
In the EU (and UK), it's some fairly minor changes to do with business messaging.
Outside of the EU, it is much more significant, merging your WhatsApp data with your Facebook data (including the phantom profiles FB create for users who don't have accounts). They can't do this in the EU (yet) due to privacy laws.
[+] [-] ub|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Guereric|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tempfs|5 years ago|reply
MSFT and GOOG have been doing this too for years ofcourse.
While GOOG has had to be content only with what they can read from emails/calendars, texts, web searches, calls/voicemail, maps/location data and anything else that they can scrape from an Android device.
MSFT has had all of that a much, much more since they own the whole OS for workstation/server class devices where actual work gets done. MSFT will claim that all that data is for quality control and now security services but ofcourse they are going to squeeze every last drop of money they can from it. To expect otherwise would be like asking an alcoholic to guard a brewery and never sample the product, completely ridiculous. The US has no serious legal repercussions for doing so. Probably because the US intelligence community depends on that data since IT is forbidden from collecting it from Americans on its own.
Gee, I wonder why...
[+] [-] lalos|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] themark|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m3kw9|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dancemethis|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tobyhinloopen|5 years ago|reply