New study shows that the default apps collect data even when supposedly disabled, and this is hard to switch off
In practice, protecting privacy on an Apple device requires persistent and expert clicking on each app individually. Apple's help falls short.
‘The online instructions for restricting data access are very complex and confusing, and the steps required are scattered in different places. There’s no clear direction on whether to go to the app settings, the central settings – or even both,’ says Amel Bourdoucen, a doctoral researcher at Aalto.
In addition, the instructions didn’t list all the necessary steps or explain how collected data is processed.
The researchers also demonstrated these problems experimentally. They interviewed users and asked them to try changing the settings.
‘It turned out that the participants weren’t able to prevent any of the apps from sharing their data with other applications or the service provider,’ Bourdoucen says.
Finding and adjusting privacy settings also took a lot of time. ‘When making adjustments, users don't get feedback on whether they’ve succeeded. They then get lost along the way, go backwards in the process and scroll randomly, not knowing if they've done enough,’ Bourdoucen says.
In the end, Bourdoucen explains, the participants were able to take one or two steps in the right direction, but none succeeded in following the whole procedure to protect their privacy.
Running out of options
If preventing data sharing is difficult, what does Apple do with all that data?
It’s not possible to be sure based on public documents, but Lindqvist says it’s possible to conclude that the data will be used to train the artificial intelligence system behind Siri and to provide personalised user experiences, among other things.
Many users are used to seamless multi-device interaction, which makes it difficult to move back to a time of more limited data sharing. However, Apple could inform users much more clearly than it does today, says Lindqvist. The study lists a number of detailed suggestions to clarify privacy settings and improve guidelines.
For individual apps, Lindqvist says that the problem can be solved to some extent by opting for a third-party service. For example, some participants in the study had switched from Safari to Firefox.
Lindqvist can’t comment directly on how Google's Android works in similar respects, as no one has yet done a similar mapping of its apps. But past research on third-party apps does not suggest that Google is any more privacy-conscious than Apple.
So what can be learned from all this – are users ultimately facing an almost impossible task?
‘Unfortunately, that's one lesson,’ says Lindqvist.
Read the original article
Comments
By walterbell 2024-04-049:487 reply Apple should provide an option to opt-out of Siri "learn from app" for ALL applications.
At present, this must be done individually for every app, https://www.imore.com/how-stop-siri-learning-how-you-use-app.... When you later install new apps after setting up the device, you have to remember to go into Settings and opt-out again, for every app, forever.
How many people know that iOS devices will default to Siri reading plaintext for all apps, including E2EE messengers?
It would be much better if I could just uninstall Siri. I don't want a voice assistant, and never have.
“Siri” (whatever it has morphed into) is a pervasive DWIM engine in iOS these days. When you do a search for an app Siri decides what to display (e.g. when I go to a certain location with a “smart” lock and pull down search, the app for that lock is always offered first, but never in other locations).
These days the voice part is just a UI mode. I use it on my watch and occasionally on my phone when I am wearing earbuds and my phone is in my pocket, but have it disabled on my Mac.
By user_7832 2024-04-0415:23 > DWIM
Thanks, learnt something new! (It stands for Do What I Mean).
Interesting pages:
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DWIM 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishmen...
By DaiPlusPlus 2024-04-0413:33 > DWIM
Siri is worse than Cortana in this respect…
By 1vuio0pswjnm7 2024-04-0421:111 reply "I don't want a voice assistant, and never have."
"It's not the customer's job to know what they want" -- Steve Jobs
By taneq 2024-04-051:10 I'd be happy to have a voice assistant that was actually smart. Every few months I ask Siri if it's powered by a language model yet. So far it hasn't even been able to understand the question.
By Gud 2024-04-0421:50 Absolutely. One extremely annoying anti-feature is that to use CarPlay you must have Siri enabled.
By throw0101c 2024-04-0411:022 reply > It would be much better if I could just uninstall Siri. I don't want a voice assistant, and never have.
I just don't turn it on and so never use it.
By walterbell 2024-04-0411:07 Per the article, you are still using "Siri" (non-voice features), even if you never enabled Siri-for-voice: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39928357
Car Play will not enable with Siri turned off (at least in my 2019 Subaru).
By lancesells 2024-04-0413:031 reply Same here. I do think it makes some sense in that case.
I'm also in the situation where I use Siri for nothing, but I want to use CarPlay. I don't use the voice control for anything, in the car or otherwise. How does it make sense to force me to have Siri enabled?
By kemayo 2024-04-0422:34 There's a bunch of parts of CarPlay which assume you can use Siri. Interacting with notifications, sending / responding-to messages, searching for things in maps, etc. Apple could disable everything that would kick itself out to a Siri-interaction for input, but that'd probably feel confusingly-broken.
By throw0101c 2024-04-0511:32 > Car Play will not enable with Siri turned off (at least in my 2019 Subaru).
I drive a 2003 Golf: there is no Car Play.
By traceroute66 2024-04-0411:021 reply > Apple should provide an option to opt-out of Siri "learn from app" for ALL applications.
You can.
Use the free Apple Configurator tool to generate a profile that has:
Apple Configuratior is great. You can disable all sorts of things, e.g. iCloud access.- "Allow Siri" unchecked - "Allow Siri Suggestions" uncheckedIf your iPhone is on $org MDM, you can do the same on MDM.
By herpdyderp 2024-04-0412:552 reply The Apple Configurator is only allowed for a Managed Apple ID.
By kayodelycaon 2024-04-0413:232 reply I was able to use Apple Configurator to put a phone into single app mode with a normal, non-developer ID.
Maybe there is a subset of things you can do?
By herpdyderp 2024-04-0419:30 The app won't even let me get past the login screen
By DaiPlusPlus 2024-04-0413:341 reply > single-app mode
Isn’t that what “guided access” is for?
By kayodelycaon 2024-04-0413:37 No. Guided access doesn’t work well for creating a control panel on a wall. I wanted it to boot into the app with no password.
Guided access is finicky and the failure modes are extremely bad for preventing random people from accessing things they shouldn’t.
By traceroute66 2024-04-0415:301 reply > The Apple Configurator is only allowed for a Managed Apple ID.
Huh ? Its available freely via the App Store.
No restrictions whatsoever on who may download and use it.
By herpdyderp 2024-04-0419:301 reply I downloaded it and it won't let me do anything. When I try to login it says I need a managed Apple ID.
By traceroute66 2024-04-0420:231 reply I've been using it for many years now, multiple installations on new macs and I've never seen such a thing.
I can only think it must be something specific to your setup.
Looking at the version I presently have installed, there is an Account menu and it says "sign in...", so I'm clearly not signed in.
Managed Apple ID seems to be some sort of MDM-style thing[1] , I've certainly never done that and no idea how it works ! I have always just used Apple Configurator in plain-vanilla mode.
[1] https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/managed-apple-ids...
By herpdyderp 2024-04-0421:29 Ah, I understand my confusion now. I was trying to use the iOS version of the app. I'm using the macOS version now with my iPhone connected and it's working. Thanks for the advice! :D
>How many people know that iOS devices will default to Siri reading plaintext for all apps, including E2EE messengers?
Is there more on what Siri "learn from app" actually does? Does it scrape entire screen contents? Or just metadata? Or only what the app developer decides to send?
By kemayo 2024-04-0414:14 My understanding is that the "learn from app" setting relates to it watching out for NSUserActivity, which is something the app developer has to explicitly send out. The app developer is motivated to do so because NSUserActivity powers a lot of system-integration features.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/nsusera...
By layer8 2024-04-0411:48 Apple can change this silently in the future, as long as it remains compatible with their T&C.
By apantel 2024-04-0414:04 Man I am really starting to hate these big tech companies. Everything they do is designed to be as invasive as possible.
And not one with dark patterns where you are asked to opt-in multiple times at inconvenient moments.
By izacus 2024-04-0414:46 Opt-in patterns are only for 3rd party apps, not for Apple themselves. One rules for me, others for thee.
I haven't setup an iPhone in a while, but last time I setup a Mac, it asked me to configure Siri or Skip/Later, etc. That's opt in to me.
From the article:
“The user is given the option to enable or not enable Siri, Apple's virtual assistant. But enabling only refers to whether you use Siri's voice control. Siri collects data in the background from other apps you use, regardless of your choice, unless you understand how to go into the settings and specifically change that”.
A concern with Siri is it sends your voice data to a server to parse. When Siri is disabled, what data is collected via third party apps? I would imagine any time you use voice as a command in an app the iPhone send the data to a server to parse, even in third party apps. Is that the concern, or is it other data?
By layer8 2024-04-0414:08 "Siri" is not just the voice assistant, Apple also uses that designation for other "intelligent" features, like "Siri Suggestions" [0]. The related personal information is shared across devices via Apple servers. Apple states that any analytics shared with Apple are anonymized [1], but users may still prefer to not share analytics in the first place. However, that can't be opted out globally, it can only be disabled per app [0]. Except maybe by turning off Siri in iCloud [2]? It's not clear. That's the criticism, it's difficult for users to understand what settings are enabling or disabling what exactly. It's quite complicated overall, and difficult to tell what you are and aren't sharing.
[0] https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/about-siri-suggestion...
[1] https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/siri-suggestions...
[2] https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/tell-siri-about-yours...
By walterbell 2024-04-049:562 reply Excellent. Then Apple can provide one-click, one-time opt out for all apps, instead of consuming CPU cycles, battery life and hundreds of avoidable and unwanted user actions over the lifetime of a phone.
> It never gets sent to Apple and no other application can read it.
Malware can read it. See the list of Apple iOS Security Updates.
If Apple doesn't receive the data and the user doesn't want the data, let's avoid collecting it.
By fkyoureadthedoc 2024-04-0413:302 reply Then malware can just turn it back on and then read it? You really don't want the malware to begin with I'm thinking.
By walterbell 2024-04-0415:06 Perhaps we can go beyond "disable" and have the ability to DELETE all application code related to Siri?
Similar to Microsoft having to separate/unbundle their web browser from their operating system.
that's like saying cars shouldn't have seatbelts, they should be designed to not be in accidents in the first place
By fkyoureadthedoc 2024-04-0415:14 It's really not at all. Just stay away from using analogies in public until you have more practice with them.
Users want to be able to search for apps, contacts, mail etc which is why it’s a standard feature of every operating system.
The idea that there is this demand to fully disable it is bizarre to me.
And if you have malware that can access the entire file system then reading a Siri search index is the least of your troubles.
By walterbell 2024-04-0410:36 > The idea that there is this demand to fully disable it is bizarre to me.
Apple provides a setting to disable Siri. It does not function as users expect. Either remove the setting and state that users are forced to use Siri, or improve the usability.
> Users want to be able to search for apps, contacts, mail etc which is why it’s a standard feature of every operating system.
Typically an optional feature with one setting to disable it, e.g. people have long disabled Windows Indexing to improve performance and battery life. Or to use a 3rd-party search tool. Why was Siri ("AI") conflated with Spotlight (search) on iOS?
> If you have malware that can access the entire file system then reading a Siri search index is the least of your troubles.
With malware that can access the entire file system, we don't want to provide a gift-wrapped search and user behavior index that has been quietly collected by Apple. Let malware do its own CPU-intensive rummaging through each app, increasing the odds of detection.
I never use this on Android really. If I look for a mail I search within outlook. And in fact emails in outlook don't show up in the global search, I just looked.
Same with contacts in the phone app. If I look for an app I just find the icon in the list because I don't have so many.
A global search is a cool feature for people who don't know where to look but it's not something that everyone would want.
By fkyoureadthedoc 2024-04-0415:25 I'm the opposite, universal search for everything. Want to open an app? Pull down and search. Want to find a message someone sent me? Pull down and search. Want to search the web? Pull down and search.
> A global search is a cool feature for people who don't know where to look
Not sure these people exist in enough numbers to justify a mention, or that the feature is primarily used by or useful to these supposed users.
By eviks 2024-04-0410:58 People who know that "never leaves your device" is a not a weak guarantee
By johnisgood 2024-04-0410:331 reply What is the purpose of collecting it?
By matheusmoreira 2024-04-0411:31 > that personalised information never leaves your device
Doubt. Show me the source code and prove to me that the binaries currently executing were derived from it. Then I might believe such a claim.
You can just disable Siri if you're that concerned?
Edit: Turns out — you can't! See the reply below.
By walterbell 2024-04-049:512 reply From the article:
The user is given the option to enable or not enable Siri, Apple's virtual assistant. But enabling only refers to whether you use Siri's voice control. Siri collects data in the background from other apps you use, regardless of your choice, unless you understand how to go into the settings and specifically change that,’ says Lindqvist.By klausa 2024-04-0410:01 You're right, I somehow missed that paragraph — I swear I read the article before commenting.
By willvarfar 2024-04-0410:152 reply Not condoning or anything, but perhaps the thinking is that, if the user can re-enabling siri at a later date, they don't want siri to start with no memory?
By pbasista 2024-04-0410:26 Why would you think that?
If I enable some personal assistant at some point in time, I absolutely do expect it to start with no memory.
By walterbell 2024-04-0410:21 If/when a user actively consents to "learn from app", it's no different than setting up a new device, e.g. mail downloaded from IMAP server, data transferred from old device, or from cloud services.
Now imagining a EULA for Helpful Pre-Stalking..
By madeofpalk 2024-04-0410:421 reply The problem is that 'Siri' is a pretty ill-defined term that Apple sprinkles onto a bunch of unrelated features if they have anything that sort of looks like 'learning' if you squint hard enough.
By thejohnconway 2024-04-0412:30 It’s so strange they do that, given that Siri doesn’t have good rep!
By diggan 2024-04-0412:38 > You can just disable Siri if you're that concerned?
Apple fights you from disabling Siri as much as they can. I've tried to disable Siri multiple times, but it turns off other unrelated features/services, so it's basically impossible.
For example, if you're using CarPlay, it's required that Siri is enabled, even if you don't use the voice controls.
I remain shocked anyone trusts Meta, Google, or Apple marketing on privacy.
These companies are all fundamentally similar in that their proprietary software collects an insane amount of data that will end up in the hands of your enemies either by sale, court order, or security compromise.
It is relatively easy to opt out of all of these companies and take some actual control over your privacy.
They are fundamentally different in that two of them derive revenue solely* from exploiting your data, and one of them doesn't.
* by-and-large
They became as successful as they are by collecting massive amounts of data to learn to effectively psychologically manipulate people into buying their products, convincing them they are the most secure, fastest, most private option that will make people like them more for using.
Apple is above all else a data driven marketing and advertising firm just like Google and Meta. They are profitable because they are effective at using data to change user purchasing behavior.
By MatthiasPortzel 2024-04-0413:02 Wild to assert that Steve “I never rely on marketing research” Jobs was successfully only because he did better market research than his competitors.
By lern_too_spel 2024-04-0416:03 The other one derives revenue from keeping users captive, so they can't turn off data collection even if they wanted to.
it seems Apple's hardware revenue have started to plateau, and their services revenue is in jeopardy with the new EU changes to the App Store
it wouldn't surprise me if Apple started ramping up their data revenue in the near future to compensate
> and their services revenue is in jeopardy with the new EU changes to the App Store
the services revenue is at an all time high and keeps climbing:
https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/14629/apple-services-reve...
re. app store, the EU market represents just 7% of their worldwide app store revenues, most probably due to the fact the EU market is 65% android:
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/01/apple-says-eu-represents-7...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/639928/market-share-mobi....
I was considering less how their revenue is now and more how it will be when the EU regulations hit and they lose the guaranteed 30/15% cut on all iOS apps
I know the US govt is hitting them with a similar anti-trust lawsuit, so it might happen over there too
If Apple lose their walled garden, and the 30/15% cut with it, both in EU and US, I think that could be a massive problem for them
Whether or not that will actually happen, or if Apple will find a way to compensate for the lost revenue, I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised if it was causing big discussions inside the company though, and I wouldn't be surprised if people become more bearish on Apple until they show they've found a solution
> Apple lose their walled garden, and the 30/15% cut with it
This could be fantasy talking. How does the walled garden around Steam affect their 30% cut? Oh, there is no wall, and it's... 30%.
So wait, if non-walled-garden stores cost 30% in an open market -- are we sure this is going to work out getting to use the world's most valuable app store shelf space for free?
It doesn't work that way at Walmart...
By alickz 2024-04-075:49 > This could be fantasy talking. How does the walled garden around Steam affect their 30% cut? Oh, there is no wall, and it's... 30%.
Steam isn't both the OS manufacturer and the sole vendor of games on PC, unlike Apple and iOS
I can release a game for PC or macOS and never pay Steam or Apple a dime, can't say the same for iOS
A better comparison is the (derelict) Mac App Store. Apple still continues to charge their 30%, and their most professional developers and customers continue to avoid their store. Adobe doesn't sell full-fat Photoshop through Apple's storefront, Avid doesn't bother with it for Pro Tools, Ableton, Bitwig, Sony, U-HE, Sonar, Spectrasonics, and even Panic don't fully commit to Apple's offerings. Nevermind the fact that ubiquitous components of modern professional software development (git, bash, grep, make, the lot) isn't even allowed to be distributed under their own terms on the App Store. If nothing changes, Apple will become Lord of the Flies.
If Apple wants to be Steam, let them play Steam's game and see how far their philosophy takes them.
By alickz 2024-04-075:49 if only they put macOS on the iPhone, this would all be avoided
By izacus 2024-04-0414:48 Which one is the third one? All three operate advertising networks with significant revenue and run massive data collection services (e.g. find device networks, ad networks, personal health data collection, etc.)
By tremarley 2024-04-0410:42 Apple’s PR team is remarkable. They get away with nearly everything
I know it's crazy but I trust Apple a lot more than I would Google or Meta when it comes to my data.
By Synaesthesia 2024-04-0414:263 reply Snowden revealed the PRISM program which shows that the US government works with Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft etc to surveil the public.
By alemanek 2024-04-0415:11 I don’t expect to be able to have privacy in the face of a state actor.
I just want the company to keep my data private from other commercial players. Like don’t sell all my data to anyone who asks or use it to create an invasive model to then advertise/manipulate me.
I think it is reasonable to say that Apple is better on that front than Meta or Google.
By lern_too_spel 2024-04-0416:022 reply No, the PRISM program shows they surveil specific foreigners living outside the US with a court order.
By snowpid 2024-04-0421:25 Most of the world are foreigners living outside the US.
By hk1337 2024-04-0414:31 Yeah, I don't fully trust Apple, just more than Google and Meta. I would expect the government can get information from just about any company if they really want it.
By Angostura 2024-04-0411:55 There's no suggestion that I can see that Apple collects this for marketing. It's collected on-device for suggestions. The exceptions are adverts in the App Store and News
What is the easiest way to get comparable smartphone experience with some actual control over your privacy?
There is no comparable option.
I have not carried a phone in 3+ years. In spite of what some would have you believe, it is actually relatively easy to live an active and socially engaged life in the modern world without a phone.
Major mental health wins from being offline when you are away from your desk too.
By jjulius 2024-04-0414:48 >In spite of what some would have you believe, it is actually relatively easy to live an active and socially engaged life in the modern world without a phone.
Right? This is completely anecdotal, but I've occasionally seen people lament, "You have to bank, as well as manage health and travel stuff on your phone". My follow up is always, "What can I do with those apps on my phone that I can't do via a laptop or desktop?" I am typically met with silence.
Seriously - beyond SMS 2FA, there's nothing I can do on my phone that I can't do on my desktop, and I sure as hell don't need to have constant access to all of that when I'm out and about.
By laniakean 2024-04-0412:11 I would say to get an android phone and flash Graphene OS (Pixel phones) on it.
By lern_too_spel 2024-04-0416:05 Practically any Android phone from a reputable vendor. The default apps might share more data than you might like, but it does give you actual control to turn that off. You don't have to send your location to anybody any time an app requests it like iPhones send your location to Apple. You don't have to tell anyone you installed an app like iPhones tell Apple.
Your choices are very limited, but you can get an android phone supported by LineageOS or other alternative roms.
I have tried, a long time ago, LineageOS on Samsung Galaxy S3 and S4. The both of the ports were so buggy, that by those experiences I could not trust the maintainers to be capable of securing the system. It may have been a false assumption, but I had to think stability/bugs and security must correlate at some levels.
By lrvick 2024-04-0413:24 Actually if you link popular software with a hardened memory allocator, apps will just crash a lot instead of allowing buffer overflows that are shockingly common.
YOLO mallocs most operating systems ship allow an application to -feel- faster and more stable at the expense of security.
If you want software to be stable in a strict malloc environment, write it in rust :)
To be fair though, LineageOS security is actually terrible. Do not use it. If you must have an Android device CalyxOS is the least bad option today.
For privacy-conscious people, the authors certainly picked an outlet with plenty of cookies and trackers - this is what the popup shows me when I pick "customise":
This kind of thing makes the article seem... ridiculous, really. Their site is much worse at privacy than Apple.17 necessary cookies 7 functional 34 statistics 49 marketing 10 unclassifiedThe authors appear to be associated the university which hosts the site. I doubt they are responsible for the engineering decisions behind the site, or that they "picked the outlet" per se. Authors tend not to have carte blanche control over the platforms on which they publish.
I don't know why you would judge the content of the article based on that, rather than its own merits, particularly given that the subject of the article isn't the security of web pages or cookies. If anything, what the article does discuss has far more egregious security implications than website cookies.
The article also has a number of incorrect assumptions regarding how Siri works and what kind of data Apple collects. They do not mention Apple's differential privacy approach, for instance, nor do they seem aware of many iOS improvements in that regard over the past few years. So I don't really consider it a thoroughly researched piece...
This is the criticism you should have posted originally, instead of considering the article ridiculous because it was hosted on a site that used cookies.
By maxwellito 2024-04-0411:281 reply At least they have a "Reject all" button, easy to access (it should be the norm). Not some dodgy dark pattern that takes a good minute to find.
By cruano 2024-04-0413:09 I think that's just GDPR?
> The requirement to offer a 'Reject All' button next to an 'Accept All' button follows indirectly from the consent requirements in the GDPR; consent must be as easy to revoke as it is to give.
https://www.dataguidance.com/opinion/eu-cookie-banners-and-u...
By __alexs 2024-04-0411:45 I feel like you might want to consider the scale of data collection involved here purely from the perspective of Apple being one of the largest companies in the world, and this being a medium-sized university in Finland.
By ByQuyzzy 2024-04-0411:26 Heh, don't like some aspect of society, kiddo? Well you have no right to criticize it - you're IN a society!
By AlecSchueler 2024-04-0411:191 reply Who is "management?" The author of the article is listed as the university's communications manager so they wouldn't be totally without a voice in these decisions.
By nicce 2024-04-0411:32 It can get quite high in the chain. This is a financial decision - extract value (money) with the cost of other values (principles) and users' privacy.
By klyrs 2024-04-0414:50 If you're using cookie-count to determine the degree of invasiveness, you're missing the fact that Apple has exclusive root access to your phone.
By dingdingdang 2024-04-0411:42 Come on, no one is running all their private data through the website. But I do agree that the web should not be browsed without ublock as is at the moment - there's something fundamentally wrong with the current approach
Sorry, but that's a fallacy:
That article explains what it is, but doesn't explain why it is wrong.
If you're arguing for more privacy but you're participating in removing privacy, why isn't that hypocritical and makes the argument for privacy weaker from that person?
I agree that it's off-topic to the discussion as a whole, for this particular submission, as it doesn't argue against the content of the article but rather talks about how the content is hosted.
By amelius 2024-04-0415:38 It does not make the argument weaker, that's the point. To think otherwise is a fallacy.
If someone writes that it is healthier to stop smoking, but then someone finds out that the author is a heavy smoker, does that make smoking somehow ok?
The point is that there are so many commentators who assert that Apple is great on privacy issues, so that many people (including me) automatically believed that buying (expensive) Apple products will automatically lead to improved privacy vs other vendors. This post is calling that BS. Attacking the article/website for have cookies, is a distraction from the actual point.
And anyway if you want to see tracking cookies with a browse you only have to use Option + ⌘ + J (on macOS), or Shift + CTRL + J (on Windows/Linux). Easy. It is much more difficult to see if you are being tracked and what data is being tracked and how it is being used on your mac or iphone.
By cout 2024-04-0411:32 I am as concerned about security as I am about privacy, and Apple has the best track record for long-lived devices that are still receiving security updates.
As for privacy I don't know any major vendor that is privacy-focused. Not only is it a hard technical problem to solve, it's also leaving money on the table. I don't see things changing any time soon.
By Someone 2024-04-0411:43 > Apple products will automatically lead to improved privacy vs other vendors. This post is calling that BS.
Where does it do that? It explicitly doesn’t compare Apple’s products with other products:
“Lindqvist can’t comment directly on how Google's Android works in similar respects, as no one has yet done a similar mapping of its apps.”
Also, IMO the post is flame-bait in saying “Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected”. AFAICT, the paper (https://acris.aalto.fi/ws/portalfiles/portal/141787684/Priva...) is not about Apple breaking privacy at all; it solely is about the difficulty of the UI for various privacy settings and of user understanding of what settings do.
They don’t claim, for example, that Apple makes these settings so convoluted to confuse or wear down users so that they close down less stuff (they may or may not, but the paper doesn’t discuss it)
