Plus people forget that if they use iCloud Apple can also see all your data in the same way Google can if you use a Google account
They can see your encrypted data. Whatās the issue with that?
Only to say it's the same with Google. The data is also encrypted. So they want to point the finger and say how much Google collects, but so do they.
Not exactly true. If you enable "Advanced Data Protection" not even apple can look at your data (with the exception of data which has to be interoperable like calendars and mail)
I'm sure the Google is also encrypting the data with the exception of the interoperable data. So there's no difference. Why point fingers when Apple do the same?
Apple also know your browsing history. They also know your app usage. They also store your contacts, calendar, photos - just like Google. I don't see the difference.
Apple already canāt look at most of your data. Advanced Data Protection makes it so they canāt see any of it.
Apple is 100% correct. It's the entire reason Android exists.
Then again, Apple also does a fair bit of data collection. I hate that Apple has been able to market themselves as some kind of bastion of privacy. They aren't.
Apple is 100% correct. Itās the entire reason Android exists.
Then again, Apple also does a fair bit of data collection. I hate that Apple has been able to market themselves as some kind of bastion of privacy. They arenāt.
So Apple is not 100% correct. They are 50% correct because the second half of their claim is that Apple is somehow different and not tracking its users...
When the pot calls the kettle black, it is technically correct.
Actually, the reason Android exists isn't so one-dimensional.
The company Android was initially concerned more with Microsoft dominating phones like they did computers at the time, before being bought by Google
They created two prototype chains initially, one touch, one that was more akin to BlackBerry
iPhone came out, they ditched the BlackBerry-esque one and focused on what became now Android
Google was mostly just doing what all tech companies were doing at the time, trying to compete in a mobile arms race for dominance. The data tracking was just a bonus. Appeasing shareholders is paramount. Look at how Apple created an Alexa speaker just because they had to as another example of this type of behavior.
Also, Apple actually has a long history of tracking user behavior that predates both Android and the iPhone.
Apple apps since some time shortly after the inception of OS X would (and likely still do) phone home to configuration.apple.com to send apple metrics on usage. Earlier variations of LittleSnitch could actually block this collection behavior.
Apple has since reconfigured the network stack to guarantee that direct encrypted connections to Apple are always possible above any VPN, or other type of network filter connection. So there's no way to prevent communication with Apple on an Apple product at all now short of keeping it off the Internet or blocking DNS to 17.* IP addresses, which would only work on a network one has control over.
I believe the reason Google acquired Android was to make sure that Apple didn't dominate the mobile device landscape, which would be a threat to their ad business. The data collection was just a nice side-effect, from their perspective.
I think you underestimate how early Google acquired Android. In 2005, Apple wasn't even in the mobile device market. Nokia were the dominant handset in those days.
This. If anything, they wanted to claw back some of that Blackberry market. Apple wasn't even on anybody's mind yet on the mobile side of things.
All cell phones are tracking devices. Unless you faraday cage them. But yes, both apple and Android phones give out way more information than just that. And I definitely would not say that I would trust Apple more with data that I would Google.
Genuine question: in what ways do Apple track iOS users (that cannot be turned off)?
Iām of the viewpoint that most tracking can be rather easily be turned off, and that android plays in a totally other ballpark here. But I might very well be wrong.
They both track you fairly closely. There are no winners if you are primarily concerned about privacy. Google is simply more open about it, and provides more access to that data to you (like timeline and takeout).
Is Apple trying to convince me that the Health app, Apple maps or Siri doesn't track me?
Is Apple trying to convince me that the Health app, Apple maps or Siri doesnāt track me?
No, they are trying to convince themselves. It's an internal brainwashing presentation after all, not for external PR.
Their slide seems to list Siri, Maps, and iAd not being tied to the user's Apple ID as a pro. I didn't realize this was the case.
Apple has very explicitly stated in very clear terms that the health app does not share data with other apps or devices unless you give permission. And as someone who has given that permission (twice, once to give a meal tracker write permission and once to link to my doctors officeās application for read and write) itās for every application. Itās not a āhey you need to let everyone have access or no oneā. You can get fairly granular.
Thereās always the possibility of lying but usually when a company goes that hard on saying the same thing is so many different ways itās legit. They donāt commit like that unless they know they wonāt get in trouble. Those kinds of statements could open them to false advertising claims if it got out they were taking your health data.
I'll stand corrected on my original comment then. I hope that with Google being dragged through the courts at the moment, perhaps it may inspire more interest and conversation about how our data is handled and how it pertains to the implications around privacy.
Health app has encrypted data that doesnāt go to Apple without explicit permission
Huh I wonder how is that different from Samsung Health or Google Fit.
Google doesn't make money off of those so its OK.
One damn iPhone in my home network makes most calls home out of anything in my home network. I cn see it in AdGuard Home log.
I also can see this on router with Gargoyle firmware
Yeah, but Android doesn't make me constantly enter my password to do basic things. Also, Apple takes away a lot of control from their consumers.
I'll take the phone that isn't dumbed down tyvm
Ideally you shouldn't have to compromise. GrapheneOS without Google is an option.
It literally isn't - Graphene only supports Google Pixel phones.
You've apparently missed the point. Graphene exists solely to harden security and privacy by disabling the googly parts of the phone. That is clearly what was meant by "without Google"
You can do that without Graphene though
And?
Graphene is is way over hyped. You can basically the same thing with lineage os. The key is just not using gsf
But then you can't use any apps that require Play Services. The killer feature of GrapheneOS is letting you run Play Services in a sandbox.
But that is unethical. Don't run proprietary software when there are good alternatives. I don't want google anywhere near my devices
Microg will most jobs tho
Why would you even do that in a sandbox? Aren't you sending your personal data to Google servers all the same?
Unlocked bootloader is considered a vulnerability tho
But if your threats model is toxic Tim, satya and sundar, it will do the job just fine.
You can relock the bootloader though can't you?
Genuine question. I used to be an avid ROMer back int day until I got really really annoyed at all the hoops I had to jump through to use Google Wallet.
Now I have a Pixel 7a and I'm considering ROMs again. So I am wondering if I can just relock the bootloader once I find a ROM I like and it'll pass all the Safety net bullshit and allow me to use my phone like it should be, just with a custom ROM on it.
Graphene and calyx would work for you
most phones nowadays don't support relocking the bootloader, they will brick
And how do you know there aren't hardware level trackers in Google's chips? The kind Graphene can't override? Do you trust Google not to do that?
Because this will get .001% more total data considering the low number of GrapheneOS users. Besides, this is highly illegal and would result in significant public outcry and legal consequences far greater in cost than any potential benefits.
And if you cannot trust Google with their processors, you cannot trust any other company either.
Because all of that has stopped OEMs in the past...oh wait! No it hasn't (looks at Lenovo)
The people who install Graphene and other modified Android variants on their devices are a lot more likely to be monitoring packets sent from their devices.
Believe me, we'd know the same day an android device that had been de-Googled called home. That would make worldwide news.
Yeah I trust them not to do it. Cause when it was found out not if when it would hurt them.
Ultimately you can't know everything. At some point you have to trust someone. The graphene people seem to know they are doing imo. Ultimately everything is flawed, you just have to know when to say "good enough ". The pixel hardware is pretty great imo and they are often cheap, so I think it's worth considering them given that they can be hardened in various ways.
Or literally and other custom ROM based on aosc or lineage os
+1 for Lineage, been using them since they forked from cyanogenmod
Very true.
GrapheneOS still takes away a bit of control though. Mainly in that it's locked down for privacy in some ways that you can't disable
@soulfirethewolf@ijeff its biggest lockdown is the security model, which even though it won't disallow you from doing anything you couldn't otherwise do (if you're motivated enough), it draws the line of tradeoffs to make. I gave up rooting and a lot of stuff (like contactless payments) for it's security and stability, and I'm fine with that, but you should ask yourself if that's worth it for you. If you have to go out of your way to break the security model, even once, then it isn't for you.
Buying or updating an app requires system-wide sign in
Only if one uses the official play store. Which apple does not understand, ofc.
does not understand
Does not want to understand
Oh irony, thy name is Apple.
Pot, meet kettle
Lol. Best comment.
They are not wrong
I used to sell apple gear at a reseller. They literally used to send messages to our customers for applecare.
The difference is that Apple simply uses the data for it's own benefit and competes against everyone (including people developing for their system)
Apple simply uses the data for it's own benefit
So... like Google
Definitely not saying Google is any better.
But don't forget, Apple gets billions of dollars from Google too, to be default webpage.. So they're totally complicit, and in practice, they're effectively selling your user data to google.
The biggest issue with Apple has always been their dodgy marketing. 20 years ago, they were living off the incorrect claim that "MacOS can't get Viruses", and now, seems to be just as dodgy with privacy.
At the end of the day, being as big as they are makes both of them malicious, manipulative and exploitative per default, otherwise they wouldn't be multi-billion or even trillion dollar companies in the first place.
Google, the famous advertising company is using its hardware,software and infrastructure to watch everything we are doing?
I'm shocked.
Apple, ruthlessly opposing standards any time it can make them a buck no matter how many people have to suffer the consequences.
I'm shocked.
Apple got shit on when they went all in on USB on the Mac. People complained they couldnāt use their mice and keyboards anymore.
They shit on FireWire and thunderbolt and called them proprietary, even those were both industry standard ports. Same for DisplayPort.
They switched to USB-C exclusively and then people complained that they had to buy dongles.
In the modern era, they have had maybe 3 or 4 proprietary ports.
It doesnāt seem so ruthless to me.
Which is why iMessage is open source and supported on all platforms, right? ;)
They should have switched to USB c years ago, they only did it because the EU forced them
Apple gets far less hate than it deserves. Fucking garbage company
Did the EU force Apple to switch the iPad to USB-C? For that matter, didn't Apple have like 20 or so engineers on the USB-C spec?
I don't know how much more hate Apple can get, their mere existence enables an entire tech-journalism ecosystem dedicated to laying out their evils and predicting their demise. It's good for the economy!
Interesting perspective. Apple did not roll it out on their phones for reasons of greed like I said. Their team being involved in the spec only makes it more frustrating that they refused to fucking adopt it universally.
I don't know how much more hate Apple can get
I would say I don't know how much corporate cock can be sucked by the public. This is the world's first trillion dollar company for fuck's sake
As I understand it, Apple was frustrated with micro-USB, pushed the development of C and released Lighting for the meantime.
The fact that after years of USB C on the market, they still needed to be legally forced to use the spec they wanted to happen so badly...
Apple didnāt make enough off of Lightning for greed to be a factor. Hell the majority of Lightning cables sold were unlicensed knockoffs from Amazon and the grocery checkout aisle.
The reason Apple is so rich is that Apple isnāt really dominant in any of the markets they compete at this point(save for the tablet and watch, and that dominance is basically due to the incompetence of Microsoft(surface sucked and Android makers exited the market)) and Google(wearOS evaporated for like 3 years)).
Apple is rich because aside from a few high profile failures, they sell premium products that are competent in targeted categories, and their competitors sell a wide variety products of varying quality in every market category imaginable. What happens then is if Apple releases a new ithing, you can probably buy it and be good, so one Apple purchase leads to another, and they all sync, so might as well pay for iCloud, etc.
If I knew you IRL after this conversation I would assume that any statement you made was the precise opposite of what is true.
You're also sounding a bit like a shitty LLM that isn't really making sense.
The funny part is its coming from Apple
"only when it provides a better customer service" Hahaha. That's so vague that it is completely meaningless.
Yes, but if you put graphene on a pixel it's miles beyond an iphone
Congratulations to you and the other 0.000000001% of Android users then.
0.000000001%
This implies the existence of 100 billion Android users, that is roughly 13 times the number of people alive.
I would like to think that the percentage of users who have grapheneOS is maybe 5% of the pixel population. I'm just pulling a number out of my ass right now but basically a lot of people who want the very best privacy and security go for graphene which is limited to only Pixels even though there are more cool phones like the fp5.
Lineage is by far the most popular custom ROM and it has about 3.2 million active devices. Which is about nothing in comparison to 1.22 billion smartphones sold alone in 2022. Barely anyone uses third party ROMs.
There are some people who use other roms like Lineage without the google apps. It's not as good as Graphene but it's better than the OEM version that comes with the phones.
They're not wrong. Its just they aren't the perfect solution
I don't think they want to be. I just think they want to fragment Android. I agree with them.
The fall of android would be the fall of the only reliable open os for phones. I'm not seeing many custom roms for privacy based on iOS.
Opening a space for an OS fork led by a consortium of mobile phone manufacturers that don't have a vested interest in supporting their ad and tracking business would be an overall benefit. Google sees value in android only for that, and that's a major problem.
Clearly this was before Apple became one of the largest advertising companies.
Well, it's not like Apple doesn't also collect pretty hair-raising information on you. Go digging through some of the sqlite databases on your machine and you'll find eg. a social graph that even supports labels for things like political affiliations (I think this db was the one used by their ominously named "intelligence platform" service). Another db (which I think was for the knowledged daemon) has an incredibly detailed log of everything you do on your computer and phone, including eg. web URLs and millisecond granularity events on when you interact with your devices. Whether that social graph or all that other stuff ever leaves your devices is unknown (although eg. the knowledged stuff definitely does since I can see events for my phone on my laptop), but I wouldn't count on it not being sent to Apple ā regardless of what they claim.
And yeah, sure, this is all to make "customer experience" better, but do you seriously believe that's all they will be used for?
Edit: and just as a side note, I'm not basing these claims on stuff I read online, but on actually having looked at the contents of those databases myself
Could you cite the source for those dbs?
Sure! ~/Library/IntelligencePlatform (associated with intelligenceplatformd) has a bunch with graph.db being the social graph, but with others like behaviors.db and eventLog.db also likely being relevant, and I think ontology.db was the one where they kept more information on the tags available for the social graph. ~/Library/Application\ Support/Knowledge/knowledgeC.db (associated with Spotlight's knowledgeconstructiond, which I think used to be called knowledged in earlier versions) has the other stuff I mentioned.
There's also some system-level things in eg. /var/db/knowledgegraphd/ but I haven't bothered looking into those yet because it'd require disabling SIP.
Ok, I'm just gonna come out and say it - I messed up.
I clearly have no idea what you're saying, and I don't even know why I expected anything even remotely simple to understand.
I apologise for wasting your time, but thank you so much for this comment, however pointless it may seem now.
Oh you didn't waste my time at all, no worries. It's not like copy-pasting those paths from my terminal was all that much work, and it'd definitely have been better if I'd included that info right from the start. Unfortunately I couldn't give any blog posts etc as a source, because as I said it was all based on my own poking around in those databases, but at least I could say where the databases were so others could do some poking around of their own if they wanted to
Makes sense... Thanks alot for the nice response š«”.
was this old (the google logo is the old one so i'm not sure) or was apple just uninformed?
you can have all sorts of multiple accounts in the control panel, mail and calendar all have on device log ons, you can update apps outside of the app store or use the google play store with your google account the same way you do with your apple account.
Given how they operate internally at the engineering level, probably just Apple being uninformed. The internal culture is total brainwash. Apple tech is the only tech. It is partly why they genuinely think they created technologies. They never stick their head out of the fruit to see what the world around them has, and they have a habit of buy, cheat, or steal to ensure their monopoly continues.
Maybe an interesting sociological experiment? How technology evolves in a cult versus outside the cult back in the real world?
Lol at Apple trying to wiggle its way into everything trying to fool people that they are privacy champs and everyone else using Android is a chump. I have no doubt in my mind that Apple has terabytes of data on every user. And Google maps can be used without signing in, making their argument a moot point
It is worth remembering incentives though. Apple is primarily a hardware company. Most of their revenue comes from iPhones. Google is primarily an ad company that makes money selling ads, and your data.
This obviously doesn't make Apple a privacy champion , but it should be considered. Apple is at least theoretically in a position to push for the privacy of their users, while Google is not.
Apple is also trying to expand is advertising division. It might be nessecary to force companies like this to split but I doubt we will ever get such regulation.
Apple also makes a fair bit of money from its software services such as the Apple subscriptions, which are massive wells of data. I do not find it strange that they care about harvesting data from their users. Every company who offers software services does the same thing.
Google doesnāt sell shit. They sell and target ads. If they sold your data why would people come to them to purchase ads? What advantage would they have?
Apple is a huge software company, what are you talking about lol
Closed source is always privacy invasive by default.
Don't forget our vehicles are also tracking us. Soon our Ai trainers will have enough data to guide us in their path and we'll love what they tell us we should do.
My vehicle does not track me. I will take my old car to my grave
This logic is so short sighted... You are one accident away from being in this shiti market.
How do people not understand this simple concept?
You ain't opting out of jack shit peasant.
I have never had an accident in my life and I hope to continue that trend. However, if I need to replace my car I'll just get something else old and used. I'm fine working on my own car and I don't need a fancy set of wheels
Still missing the point...
One more advantage of the used cars I buy: the cell network they can connect to doesn't exist anymore (the radios don't exist, the company itself exists, but they have upgraded towers to not support older cell connections).
Not mine the fuse to my modem has the leg cut off. Itās a triple leg fuse.
Says them.
Theyāre not wrong.
Apple has a better stance on data privacy than google because their profit model is being a premium consumer device whereas googles profit model is being a provider of ads.
Appleās incentives are closer to the consumer since they want to make the consumer happy while googles incentives are aligned with the trackers because that improves ad revenue.
This changes the DNA of the OS.
Plus the integration of googles data insecure services with android mean that as a matter of actual reality then discussing the security of android really means discussing the data security of those integrated services. Itās unavoidable.
Donāt trust either of course but I simply do have more confidence my apple data isnāt being exploited as much as my google data simply because Apple doesnāt stand as much to gain and stands more to lose from being embarrassed on the issue.
And pointing to custom android roms that replace google services with FOSS alternatives is a technically correct but still wrong answer to this because it doesnāt reflect the reality of the overwhelming majority of android users.
That is what they publicly say. However more than one company has discovered they can double dip: sell their premium devices and still track them. So long as they are not caught they get more $$$. I don't know if Apple is, but it is a risk.
I think the emphasis on better is key here. They're better than Google on this front but not necessarily great.
Naive view of apple lol
My ads got way less creepily targeted when i switched back to iphone. Itās not perfect but itās the best option for people who donāt want tofuck around with degoogling and all that.
Hypocrites!
Does this also go for custom roms like GrapheneOS?
Nope. It's just in reference to Google login being used across the board.
The real question when it comes to privacy is how much you can modify the device and os to get rid of the tracking.
That's an old Google logo
I use android and yeah, it is.
Apple has been donwgraded to an asswipe. Android != Android.
x
And that's just the last three years!
Juan, YOU are the man! šŖ
Plus people forget that if they use iCloud Apple can also see all your data in the same way Google can if you use a Google account
They can see your encrypted data. Whatās the issue with that?
Only to say it's the same with Google. The data is also encrypted. So they want to point the finger and say how much Google collects, but so do they.
Not exactly true. If you enable "Advanced Data Protection" not even apple can look at your data (with the exception of data which has to be interoperable like calendars and mail)
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303
I'm sure the Google is also encrypting the data with the exception of the interoperable data. So there's no difference. Why point fingers when Apple do the same?
Apple also know your browsing history. They also know your app usage. They also store your contacts, calendar, photos - just like Google. I don't see the difference.
Apple already canāt look at most of your data. Advanced Data Protection makes it so they canāt see any of it.
Apple is 100% correct. It's the entire reason Android exists.
Then again, Apple also does a fair bit of data collection. I hate that Apple has been able to market themselves as some kind of bastion of privacy. They aren't.
So Apple is not 100% correct. They are 50% correct because the second half of their claim is that Apple is somehow different and not tracking its users...
When the pot calls the kettle black, it is technically correct.
Actually, the reason Android exists isn't so one-dimensional.
Google was mostly just doing what all tech companies were doing at the time, trying to compete in a mobile arms race for dominance. The data tracking was just a bonus. Appeasing shareholders is paramount. Look at how Apple created an Alexa speaker just because they had to as another example of this type of behavior.
Also, Apple actually has a long history of tracking user behavior that predates both Android and the iPhone.
Apple apps since some time shortly after the inception of OS X would (and likely still do) phone home to configuration.apple.com to send apple metrics on usage. Earlier variations of LittleSnitch could actually block this collection behavior.
Apple has since reconfigured the network stack to guarantee that direct encrypted connections to Apple are always possible above any VPN, or other type of network filter connection. So there's no way to prevent communication with Apple on an Apple product at all now short of keeping it off the Internet or blocking DNS to 17.* IP addresses, which would only work on a network one has control over.
I believe the reason Google acquired Android was to make sure that Apple didn't dominate the mobile device landscape, which would be a threat to their ad business. The data collection was just a nice side-effect, from their perspective.
I think you underestimate how early Google acquired Android. In 2005, Apple wasn't even in the mobile device market. Nokia were the dominant handset in those days.
This. If anything, they wanted to claw back some of that Blackberry market. Apple wasn't even on anybody's mind yet on the mobile side of things.
All cell phones are tracking devices. Unless you faraday cage them. But yes, both apple and Android phones give out way more information than just that. And I definitely would not say that I would trust Apple more with data that I would Google.
Genuine question: in what ways do Apple track iOS users (that cannot be turned off)?
Iām of the viewpoint that most tracking can be rather easily be turned off, and that android plays in a totally other ballpark here. But I might very well be wrong.
They both track you fairly closely. There are no winners if you are primarily concerned about privacy. Google is simply more open about it, and provides more access to that data to you (like timeline and takeout).
A list from elsewhere in the thread: https://lemdro.id/comment/3314038
Yeah yeah, wake me up when you can unlock the bootloader on apple phones.
Yup, the logic people use to call Apple phones secure would put Fisher Price toy phones at the S-Tier of security.
Is Apple trying to convince me that the Health app, Apple maps or Siri doesn't track me?
No, they are trying to convince themselves. It's an internal brainwashing presentation after all, not for external PR.
Their slide seems to list Siri, Maps, and iAd not being tied to the user's Apple ID as a pro. I didn't realize this was the case.
Apple has very explicitly stated in very clear terms that the health app does not share data with other apps or devices unless you give permission. And as someone who has given that permission (twice, once to give a meal tracker write permission and once to link to my doctors officeās application for read and write) itās for every application. Itās not a āhey you need to let everyone have access or no oneā. You can get fairly granular.
Thereās always the possibility of lying but usually when a company goes that hard on saying the same thing is so many different ways itās legit. They donāt commit like that unless they know they wonāt get in trouble. Those kinds of statements could open them to false advertising claims if it got out they were taking your health data.
Hereās a link to their privacy document which reviewed a good bit of info: https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Health\_Privacy\_White\_Paper\_May\_2023.pdf
I'll stand corrected on my original comment then. I hope that with Google being dragged through the courts at the moment, perhaps it may inspire more interest and conversation about how our data is handled and how it pertains to the implications around privacy.
Health app has encrypted data that doesnāt go to Apple without explicit permission
Huh I wonder how is that different from Samsung Health or Google Fit.
Google doesn't make money off of those so its OK.
One damn iPhone in my home network makes most calls home out of anything in my home network. I cn see it in AdGuard Home log.
I also can see this on router with Gargoyle firmware
Yeah, but Android doesn't make me constantly enter my password to do basic things. Also, Apple takes away a lot of control from their consumers.
I'll take the phone that isn't dumbed down tyvm
Ideally you shouldn't have to compromise. GrapheneOS without Google is an option.
It literally isn't - Graphene only supports Google Pixel phones.
You've apparently missed the point. Graphene exists solely to harden security and privacy by disabling the googly parts of the phone. That is clearly what was meant by "without Google"
You can do that without Graphene though
And?
Graphene is is way over hyped. You can basically the same thing with lineage os. The key is just not using gsf
But then you can't use any apps that require Play Services. The killer feature of GrapheneOS is letting you run Play Services in a sandbox.
But that is unethical. Don't run proprietary software when there are good alternatives. I don't want google anywhere near my devices
Microg will most jobs tho
Why would you even do that in a sandbox? Aren't you sending your personal data to Google servers all the same?
Unlocked bootloader is considered a vulnerability tho
But if your threats model is toxic Tim, satya and sundar, it will do the job just fine.
You can relock the bootloader though can't you?
Genuine question. I used to be an avid ROMer back int day until I got really really annoyed at all the hoops I had to jump through to use Google Wallet.
Now I have a Pixel 7a and I'm considering ROMs again. So I am wondering if I can just relock the bootloader once I find a ROM I like and it'll pass all the Safety net bullshit and allow me to use my phone like it should be, just with a custom ROM on it.
Graphene and calyx would work for you
most phones nowadays don't support relocking the bootloader, they will brick
pixel does support it still
Thanks for this info
The kids need to use their buzzwords though
And how do you know there aren't hardware level trackers in Google's chips? The kind Graphene can't override? Do you trust Google not to do that?
Because this will get .001% more total data considering the low number of GrapheneOS users. Besides, this is highly illegal and would result in significant public outcry and legal consequences far greater in cost than any potential benefits.
And if you cannot trust Google with their processors, you cannot trust any other company either.
Because all of that has stopped OEMs in the past...oh wait! No it hasn't (looks at Lenovo)
The people who install Graphene and other modified Android variants on their devices are a lot more likely to be monitoring packets sent from their devices.
Believe me, we'd know the same day an android device that had been de-Googled called home. That would make worldwide news.
Yeah I trust them not to do it. Cause when it was found out not if when it would hurt them.
Ultimately you can't know everything. At some point you have to trust someone. The graphene people seem to know they are doing imo. Ultimately everything is flawed, you just have to know when to say "good enough ". The pixel hardware is pretty great imo and they are often cheap, so I think it's worth considering them given that they can be hardened in various ways.
Just use Lineage os
I want to like Lineage, but while it doesn't come with extra bloat, the system itself doesn't do a whole lot of degoogling core services
Or literally and other custom ROM based on aosc or lineage os
+1 for Lineage, been using them since they forked from cyanogenmod
Very true.
GrapheneOS still takes away a bit of control though. Mainly in that it's locked down for privacy in some ways that you can't disable
@soulfirethewolf @ijeff its biggest lockdown is the security model, which even though it won't disallow you from doing anything you couldn't otherwise do (if you're motivated enough), it draws the line of tradeoffs to make. I gave up rooting and a lot of stuff (like contactless payments) for it's security and stability, and I'm fine with that, but you should ask yourself if that's worth it for you. If you have to go out of your way to break the security model, even once, then it isn't for you.
Only if one uses the official play store. Which apple does not understand, ofc.
does not understandDoes not want to understand
Oh irony, thy name is Apple.
Pot, meet kettle
Lol. Best comment.
They are not wrong
I used to sell apple gear at a reseller. They literally used to send messages to our customers for applecare.
The difference is that Apple simply uses the data for it's own benefit and competes against everyone (including people developing for their system)
So... like Google
Definitely not saying Google is any better.
But don't forget, Apple gets billions of dollars from Google too, to be default webpage.. So they're totally complicit, and in practice, they're effectively selling your user data to google.
The biggest issue with Apple has always been their dodgy marketing. 20 years ago, they were living off the incorrect claim that "MacOS can't get Viruses", and now, seems to be just as dodgy with privacy.
At the end of the day, being as big as they are makes both of them malicious, manipulative and exploitative per default, otherwise they wouldn't be multi-billion or even trillion dollar companies in the first place.
Google, the famous advertising company is using its hardware,software and infrastructure to watch everything we are doing?
I'm shocked.
Apple, ruthlessly opposing standards any time it can make them a buck no matter how many people have to suffer the consequences.
I'm shocked.
Apple got shit on when they went all in on USB on the Mac. People complained they couldnāt use their mice and keyboards anymore.
They shit on FireWire and thunderbolt and called them proprietary, even those were both industry standard ports. Same for DisplayPort.
They switched to USB-C exclusively and then people complained that they had to buy dongles.
In the modern era, they have had maybe 3 or 4 proprietary ports.
It doesnāt seem so ruthless to me.
Which is why iMessage is open source and supported on all platforms, right? ;)
They should have switched to USB c years ago, they only did it because the EU forced them
Apple gets far less hate than it deserves. Fucking garbage company
Did the EU force Apple to switch the iPad to USB-C? For that matter, didn't Apple have like 20 or so engineers on the USB-C spec?
I don't know how much more hate Apple can get, their mere existence enables an entire tech-journalism ecosystem dedicated to laying out their evils and predicting their demise. It's good for the economy!
Interesting perspective. Apple did not roll it out on their phones for reasons of greed like I said. Their team being involved in the spec only makes it more frustrating that they refused to fucking adopt it universally.
I would say I don't know how much corporate cock can be sucked by the public. This is the world's first trillion dollar company for fuck's sake
As I understand it, Apple was frustrated with micro-USB, pushed the development of C and released Lighting for the meantime.
The fact that after years of USB C on the market, they still needed to be legally forced to use the spec they wanted to happen so badly...
Apple didnāt make enough off of Lightning for greed to be a factor. Hell the majority of Lightning cables sold were unlicensed knockoffs from Amazon and the grocery checkout aisle.
The reason Apple is so rich is that Apple isnāt really dominant in any of the markets they compete at this point(save for the tablet and watch, and that dominance is basically due to the incompetence of Microsoft(surface sucked and Android makers exited the market)) and Google(wearOS evaporated for like 3 years)).
Apple is rich because aside from a few high profile failures, they sell premium products that are competent in targeted categories, and their competitors sell a wide variety products of varying quality in every market category imaginable. What happens then is if Apple releases a new ithing, you can probably buy it and be good, so one Apple purchase leads to another, and they all sync, so might as well pay for iCloud, etc.
If I knew you IRL after this conversation I would assume that any statement you made was the precise opposite of what is true.
You're also sounding a bit like a shitty LLM that isn't really making sense.
The funny part is its coming from Apple
"only when it provides a better customer service" Hahaha. That's so vague that it is completely meaningless.
Yes, but if you put graphene on a pixel it's miles beyond an iphone
Congratulations to you and the other 0.000000001% of Android users then.
This implies the existence of 100 billion Android users, that is roughly 13 times the number of people alive.
I would like to think that the percentage of users who have grapheneOS is maybe 5% of the pixel population. I'm just pulling a number out of my ass right now but basically a lot of people who want the very best privacy and security go for graphene which is limited to only Pixels even though there are more cool phones like the fp5.
Lineage is by far the most popular custom ROM and it has about 3.2 million active devices. Which is about nothing in comparison to 1.22 billion smartphones sold alone in 2022. Barely anyone uses third party ROMs.
There are some people who use other roms like Lineage without the google apps. It's not as good as Graphene but it's better than the OEM version that comes with the phones.
They're not wrong. Its just they aren't the perfect solution
I don't think they want to be. I just think they want to fragment Android. I agree with them.
The fall of android would be the fall of the only reliable open os for phones. I'm not seeing many custom roms for privacy based on iOS.
Opening a space for an OS fork led by a consortium of mobile phone manufacturers that don't have a vested interest in supporting their ad and tracking business would be an overall benefit. Google sees value in android only for that, and that's a major problem.
Clearly this was before Apple became one of the largest advertising companies.
Well, it's not like Apple doesn't also collect pretty hair-raising information on you. Go digging through some of the sqlite databases on your machine and you'll find eg. a social graph that even supports labels for things like political affiliations (I think this db was the one used by their ominously named "intelligence platform" service). Another db (which I think was for the
knowledgeddaemon) has an incredibly detailed log of everything you do on your computer and phone, including eg. web URLs and millisecond granularity events on when you interact with your devices. Whether that social graph or all that other stuff ever leaves your devices is unknown (although eg. theknowledgedstuff definitely does since I can see events for my phone on my laptop), but I wouldn't count on it not being sent to Apple ā regardless of what they claim.And yeah, sure, this is all to make "customer experience" better, but do you seriously believe that's all they will be used for?
Edit: and just as a side note, I'm not basing these claims on stuff I read online, but on actually having looked at the contents of those databases myself
Could you cite the source for those dbs?
Sure!
~/Library/IntelligencePlatform(associated withintelligenceplatformd) has a bunch withgraph.dbbeing the social graph, but with others likebehaviors.dbandeventLog.dbalso likely being relevant, and I thinkontology.dbwas the one where they kept more information on the tags available for the social graph.~/Library/Application\ Support/Knowledge/knowledgeC.db(associated with Spotlight'sknowledgeconstructiond, which I think used to be calledknowledgedin earlier versions) has the other stuff I mentioned.There's also some system-level things in eg.
/var/db/knowledgegraphd/but I haven't bothered looking into those yet because it'd require disabling SIP.Ok, I'm just gonna come out and say it - I messed up.
I clearly have no idea what you're saying, and I don't even know why I expected anything even remotely simple to understand.
I apologise for wasting your time, but thank you so much for this comment, however pointless it may seem now.
Oh you didn't waste my time at all, no worries. It's not like copy-pasting those paths from my terminal was all that much work, and it'd definitely have been better if I'd included that info right from the start. Unfortunately I couldn't give any blog posts etc as a source, because as I said it was all based on my own poking around in those databases, but at least I could say where the databases were so others could do some poking around of their own if they wanted to
Makes sense... Thanks alot for the nice response š«”.
was this old (the google logo is the old one so i'm not sure) or was apple just uninformed?
you can have all sorts of multiple accounts in the control panel, mail and calendar all have on device log ons, you can update apps outside of the app store or use the google play store with your google account the same way you do with your apple account.
Five words into the article says
Literally at the top under TL;DR
Given how they operate internally at the engineering level, probably just Apple being uninformed. The internal culture is total brainwash. Apple tech is the only tech. It is partly why they genuinely think they created technologies. They never stick their head out of the fruit to see what the world around them has, and they have a habit of buy, cheat, or steal to ensure their monopoly continues.
Maybe an interesting sociological experiment? How technology evolves in a cult versus outside the cult back in the real world?
:spidermanpointing1: :spidermanpointing2:
Lol at DoJ just releasing it, thanks I suppose.
Lol at Apple trying to wiggle its way into everything trying to fool people that they are privacy champs and everyone else using Android is a chump. I have no doubt in my mind that Apple has terabytes of data on every user. And Google maps can be used without signing in, making their argument a moot point
It is worth remembering incentives though. Apple is primarily a hardware company. Most of their revenue comes from iPhones. Google is primarily an ad company that makes money selling ads, and your data.
This obviously doesn't make Apple a privacy champion , but it should be considered. Apple is at least theoretically in a position to push for the privacy of their users, while Google is not.
Apple is also trying to expand is advertising division. It might be nessecary to force companies like this to split but I doubt we will ever get such regulation.
Apple also makes a fair bit of money from its software services such as the Apple subscriptions, which are massive wells of data. I do not find it strange that they care about harvesting data from their users. Every company who offers software services does the same thing.
Google doesnāt sell shit. They sell and target ads. If they sold your data why would people come to them to purchase ads? What advantage would they have?
Apple is a huge software company, what are you talking about lol
Closed source is always privacy invasive by default.
Don't forget our vehicles are also tracking us. Soon our Ai trainers will have enough data to guide us in their path and we'll love what they tell us we should do.
My vehicle does not track me. I will take my old car to my grave
This logic is so short sighted... You are one accident away from being in this shiti market.
How do people not understand this simple concept?
You ain't opting out of jack shit peasant.
I have never had an accident in my life and I hope to continue that trend. However, if I need to replace my car I'll just get something else old and used. I'm fine working on my own car and I don't need a fancy set of wheels
Still missing the point...
One more advantage of the used cars I buy: the cell network they can connect to doesn't exist anymore (the radios don't exist, the company itself exists, but they have upgraded towers to not support older cell connections).
Not mine the fuse to my modem has the leg cut off. Itās a triple leg fuse.
Says them.
Theyāre not wrong.
Apple has a better stance on data privacy than google because their profit model is being a premium consumer device whereas googles profit model is being a provider of ads.
Appleās incentives are closer to the consumer since they want to make the consumer happy while googles incentives are aligned with the trackers because that improves ad revenue.
This changes the DNA of the OS.
Plus the integration of googles data insecure services with android mean that as a matter of actual reality then discussing the security of android really means discussing the data security of those integrated services. Itās unavoidable.
Donāt trust either of course but I simply do have more confidence my apple data isnāt being exploited as much as my google data simply because Apple doesnāt stand as much to gain and stands more to lose from being embarrassed on the issue.
And pointing to custom android roms that replace google services with FOSS alternatives is a technically correct but still wrong answer to this because it doesnāt reflect the reality of the overwhelming majority of android users.
That is what they publicly say. However more than one company has discovered they can double dip: sell their premium devices and still track them. So long as they are not caught they get more $$$. I don't know if Apple is, but it is a risk.
I think the emphasis on better is key here. They're better than Google on this front but not necessarily great.
Naive view of apple lol
My ads got way less creepily targeted when i switched back to iphone. Itās not perfect but itās the best option for people who donāt want tofuck around with degoogling and all that.
Hypocrites!
Does this also go for custom roms like GrapheneOS?
Nope. It's just in reference to Google login being used across the board.
The real question when it comes to privacy is how much you can modify the device and os to get rid of the tracking.
That's an old Google logo
I use android and yeah, it is.
Apple has been donwgraded to an asswipe. Android != Android.
Google+?
Slide is from 2013, per the article