Your (Apple) Computer Isn't Yours

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.... Apple is collecting more info than it likely needs...
When I was sixteen, I went to work for a newspaper in Hong Kong. It was a rag, but the editor taught me one important lesson. The key to a great story is not who, or what, or when, but why.
 
I also read recently that both macOS and iOS can bypass VPNs. There's basically no safe OS to use at this point.
 
When I was sixteen, I went to work for a newspaper in Hong Kong. It was a rag, but the editor taught me one important lesson. The key to a great story is not who, or what, or when, but why.
Oh, I'm definitely aware of that. But you also have to find a "why" that holds up under scrutiny. I've been seeing a lot of speculation and extrapolation that's based more on anti-Apple fantasies than anything substantive.
 
That sound like opposite (Bilderberg is quite the capitalist affair no ?), the kind of meeting the Margaret Thatcher, Stephen Harper, Clinton, Jared Kushner, Lindsay Graham, Pompeo, etc... type goes.
Yes - the 'ist at the end doesn't really matter when referring to the group since they are part of the global manipulation and control cabal. But as an individual he is and it is reflected in his er.... Jobs' er.... Cook's new version of Apple business model
 
I also read recently that both macOS and iOS can bypass VPNs. There's basically no safe OS to use at this point.

Shoganai
Thats when you set up the VPN tunnel at the router level, but even then why bother, you likely have so much other personal info associated and visible to the OS, hardware finger prints, et cetera, just changing your I wont do anything
 
Shoganai
Thats when you set up the VPN tunnel at the router level, but even then why bother, you likely have so much other personal info associated and visible to the OS, hardware finger prints, et cetera, just changing your I wont do anything
Exactly. I've just kind of given up on privacy at this point. I guess I'll just keep my VPN around to see geo-locked content.
 
True privacy is basically over. At least if you wish to live in a technology rich society. I mean, you could go out in the woods and hunt snakes, but that wouldn't be much fun I don't think.

However, there are still choices you can make now that could make a difference. For example, using Linux, but usually that entails some inconvenience.
 
True privacy is basically over. At least if you wish to live in a technology rich society. I mean, you could go out in the woods and hunt snakes, but that wouldn't be much fun I don't think.

However, there are still choices you can make now that could make a difference. For example, using Linux, but usually that entails some inconvenience.

No inconvenience here. For a good ~70% of the population there would be no inconvenience.

In fact, it would be safe to say, I find Linux more conveniant.
 
The funny thing: 1_rick just said he didn't see anyone making claims about Apple using this for ads or spying... and sure enough, you wander in making unsupported claims about ads and spying.

The larger issue, if this holds up, is that Apple is collecting more info than it likely needs and transmitting it without encryption. There's no evidence to suggest anything else. In fact, here's a piece noting that Apple doesn't send a hash every time you run apps, and that it might send some "opaque" data.
If you read my post I said "assuming its just for marketing use".. That is a far cry from an 'unsupported claim'.

I consider targeted ads the 'less severe' reasoning behind doing whatever they are doing. Other choices are... 'more severe'.

And yet again I am glad I do not own(rent?) their devices.

Apple Fanboys, nothing to see here, move along, move along.
 
If you read my post I said "assuming its just for marketing use".. That is a far cry from an 'unsupported claim'.

I consider targeted ads the 'less severe' reasoning behind doing whatever they are doing. Other choices are... 'more severe'.

And yet again I am glad I do not own(rent?) their devices.

Apple Fanboys, nothing to see here, move along, move along.
But that's not the reasoning; you're speculating at best. Gatekeeper has been around for years, and there's no evidence the data has been used for anything other than app security. The article also misrepresents how often Apple collects info.

This is what's frustrating -- there are reasons for concern, but people are destroying any semblance of nuance because they project their own beliefs. Either Apple is a monster (as you claim) or a completely innocent victim (I don't believe that's true). The truth is likely in between, where Apple made mistakes but wasn't intending to abuse the data.
 
https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/

"This means that Apple knows when you’re at home. When you’re at work. What apps you open there, and how often. They know when you open Premiere over at a friend’s house on their Wi-Fi, and they know when you open Tor Browser in a hotel on a trip to another city."

A slow-running server not delivering timely responses caused it so that NO third-party apps could be run if you were connected to the internet. "No problem, I'll just firewall it." In Big Sur, the OS can bypass firewalls.
George Orwell got it wrong, Big Brother is not government it is Big Tech. It is here now and more intrusive and more powerful than he could ever imagine.
 
Can I be a voice of caution here?

This has the whiff of the classic overhyped security issue, where people latch on to one story that makes unsupported assumptions about malice or overstates the severity. We've already seen people leap from "Apple is collecting more data than it really needs" to "omg Apple is spying on everything you do all the time." Is Gatekeeper grabbing too much info, or handling it in an insecure way? Quite possibly. Is Apple trying to track the habits of every single user? Not likely. This sounds more like an oversight (if a potentially serious one) than a sinister plot.
IF the data is being collected, it is already over and unacceptable. Motivations and promises from the actor are of no relevance.
Besides, there's a tremendous irony to people who blast Apple for this yet eagerly chain themselves to Google and Microsoft, which collect plenty of data (and often more) on their own. If you're actually that worried about privacy, move every computer you use to Linux. And if you respond with "but I need Windows/Android/G Suite/etc. to run X..." then phoning home clearly isn't that much of a problem.
This is just whataboutism which doesn't make the potential transgression any less offensive.
 
Right. Of course they're going to do the right thing after they get busted.
Well assuming this really is about certificate validation requests then the original article was off track.

Obviously it’s impossible for an outsider to know how some data leaving the device will end up being used, but coming up with a worst case scenario that misunderstands some things, connects some dots that are not connected etc. does not mean they were doing the wrong thing in the first place.

- they are not sending applications, rather just certificates that signed the application
- the purpose is not necassarily spying, rather just following a standard protocol https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Certificate_Status_Protocol
- the reason for using plaintext is that the protocol is plaintext, not to expose that data to the NSA (I’m sure the NSA don’t mind)

They have done this (OCSP validation in clear text) for a long time, and nobody considered anything malicious. Windows also does the same thing, as that is how the protocol works. The difference in Big Sur is that now operating system traffic is excluded from third party tools. Now, the people that wanted to reduce security to increase privacy (ie block checks of expired certs to stop leaking what vendors app is being used) suddenly lost the chance to do so.

I really don’t know why Apple changed the way they handle their own network connections. To me it still seems really unlikely that these items are related in any way from an Apple decision making point of view. Now when some privacy concerned people bring to attention that this affects them they say they’ll give a button to turn it off. That sounds like a company listening to their customers.

Or what exactly were they busted for? Will Microsoft now change their behavior as I also bust them for doing unencrypted OCSP requests? Of course not, as we need an update to the protocol rather then all vendors inventing their own.
 
Under Linux it's all my decision, my choice.
For now. It's only a matter of time before the corporate overlords at IBM and Microsoft figure out a way to kill that. Only Corporate Approved Linux will have drivers written and usable programs compatible. Google already figured out how to do it with Android, it's only a matter of time before Desktop Linux follows the same path.
 
Well assuming this really is about certificate validation requests then the original article was off track.

Does it really matter whether it's an app hash or a cert hash, when you can't run any 3rd-party applications at all because the server that's validating whatever it is, is not responding? Sometimes we can't see the forest for the trees.
 
For now. It's only a matter of time before the corporate overlords at IBM and Microsoft figure out a way to kill that. Only Corporate Approved Linux will have drivers written and usable programs compatible. Google already figured out how to do it with Android, it's only a matter of time before Desktop Linux follows the same path.
If/when that happens, it will be time to move to *BSD.
 
If/when that happens, it will be time to move to *BSD.
I'm already working on that. Unfortunately, BSD's trail behind Linux in many ways, especially driver support. If apps and drivers aren't open enough on Linux, getting them to work on BSD with no hardware vendor support at the Linux level will not be much easier. But if there was a mass migration from Linux to BSD now, then some vendors who don't want to be controlled by IBM, MS, and Google may put some more resources there and stave off the coming apocalypse. As far as the OP goes, (to not get into too off-topic territory) Apple is making some moves that may take them back to mid-1990's territory as far as relevance goes. They'll still sell lots of phones, but their computers are becoming a harder sell all the time.
 
George Orwell got it wrong, Big Brother is not government it is Big Tech. It is here now and more intrusive and more powerful than he could ever imagine.
And instead of watching everything you do for signs of discontent to remove those people from society instead they hammer you with ads to buy things!
 
They'll still sell lots of phones, but their computers are becoming a harder sell all the time.

It’s going to hinge on how well Rosetta 2 works and how many software companies they can convince to move over. They should have aimed prices lower for the first gen though to bring more converts into the pool.
 
This is just whataboutism which doesn't make the potential transgression any less offensive.
I'm criticizing those people who use this to justify their refusal to use Macs while enthusiastically backing platforms that collect as much or more data. It's fine to criticize Apple, although its response suggests the article got some things wrong; hypocrisy on principles is not.
 
Some of us have been warning about this for years upon years. Unfortunately, many people who don't outright dismiss for one reason or another start to think "Well, unless I either escape to the woods somewhere and live off the grid and/or operate as a cyberpunk stereotype level of op-sec , "they" will get me anyway therefore there's no point". No! Its all a form of harm reduction! Yes, most people aren't going to have the skills, patience, wherewithal, or even necessity etc.... in order to pretend a Tier 1 state level actor's TLA's are after you, but that doesn't mean there's no value in both making personal changes and pushing for a massive change to regulatory compliance. Choose Linux for you OS, seek out open source software wherever possible, reduce or eliminate your dependence on centralized proprietary social media (substitution with "fediverse" alternatives is a good option ) be wary of your buying decisions on every level (not just tech, but other areas - especially food - are equally important).

Zara's correct that this isn't ever going to be "won" on a larger scale by individual action. Its simply too big and profitable in our current system and legal status quo. As I've said time and time again, we need to entirely restructure our privacy laws from the ground up to serve the modern globalized world. I'm not going to spit out a long history lesson here, a large series of circa 2000-ish era policies became the start of things rocketing off the wrong way, such as the post 9/11 PATRIOT Act and other privacy/security elements. The mere idea that the 4th Amendment has been ruled not to apply to digital property on the Internet because A) either either not "papers and effects" or B) Its stored, even ostensibly securely only for your use on the "cloud"/a server/some other machine and therefore isn't "yours" etc... should have been a huge warning! While some gov't rules and implementations are certainly part of the problem, the bigger issue is what the corporate world has done (and financed) with them, including the rise of proprietary social media, the "shrinking of the Web" to a handful of corporate overlords a la FAANG owning/controlling services used by most, and of course the rise of the "attention economy" and "surveillance capitalism". Those from Noam Chomsky to bloody Hideo Kojima have shown this to be predictable, but for a variety of reasons it was unlikely that the average person would make the changes necessary to really fight against these developments.

This will need to take an approach from both sides, the personal and the societal. While people ideally move for better choices in their personal sphere - what software to use, what to support, what to buy, what to advocate towards etc... that can be turned into a movement to revamp society's relationships with technology (and other concepts of the status quo). Privacy by design is a good start. By law, you can only gather the minimum amount of information necessary in order to perform a requested service, keep it under maximum safeguards and for the minimum time, and purge it when it is no longer necessary. This is the only way we can avoid the "dark cyberpunk future" element we're moving towards while still making use of technological benefits. You may think I'm being alarmist, but consider something like home automation or the "AI Assistant". Its full potential is only if it benefits and focuses on the user, whereas it is a disaster when the user is treated as an impediment or worse, the "product" from which to harvest data ; and both of those technologies already exist! (Note: Some ethical alternatives to the big names are the open source projects OpenHAB and MycroftAI , respectively. ) .

Of course we'll run into opposition. The entire industry right now is predicated on "out of sight, out of mind" big data collection exploitation. Its too easy to give tacit consent for huge amounts of near-limitless data mining in order to use any bit of software or hardware. Data and metadata from this can be extrapolated, correlated, exchanged, sold, traded and weaponized in ways that even a highly technical much less an average person would not be able to track! Existing laws on privacy are appreciated as most of the market operates without them, but projects in the EU and California are bandages on a more grievous wound - definitely beneficial, but not enough. None of what I propose is some technical impossibility, but we'll run into all sorts of screaming and attempts to blight both laws/projects to do so and those asking for them because frankly its too much easy money status quo. However, what worries me the most is that they'll weaponize the very data-gathering and analysis powers they have in order to defeat the threat to their bottom line; this is nothing new, just disappointing and frustrating.

If you want this to change, then start supporting those working for it. Back the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Free Software Foundation. Read works by Chomsky, Zuboff, and Snowden (among many others) about the dangers and what to do about them ; get friends and family to watch the Netflix documentary "The Social Dilemma", and similarly more accessible elements. When that came out, suddenly people who I've tried to talk about online privacy, the dangers of proprietary social media etc..for years suddenly came to me like they just figured out a great truth - which I of course encouraged them to share.. Also, be wary of attempts to divide and conquer - the industry laughs at you if you will be willing to stop supporting lots of legislators and activists who are most interested and likely to push for actual policies like those above when shouting talking heads (often industry funded "new media" ) call them "SJWs" et al, for instance. There's a road forward here, but it won't be easy or smooth. It will take multiple paths both personal and in terms of legislation in order to make real progress, while the "enemies" in this case are - as in most "good for the people, but not profitable for those exploiting them" situations - are extremely well funded and ready to manipulate the conversation. Be ready.



The ACLU of 2020 is 1984 on Steroids.
 
That sound like opposite (Bilderberg is quite the capitalist affair no ?), the kind of meeting the Margaret Thatcher, Stephen Harper, Clinton, Jared Kushner, Lindsay Graham, Pompeo, etc... type goes.


NO, more like a dystopian Authoritarian Crony Capitalism at best,and once the 'Great Reset' kicks in very soon,it'll be:

"You'll own NOTHING,and LOVE it" The psychopaths at WEF/Bilderburger are using Agenda 2030 to plan out our literal control and depopulation. Watch the "Computing Forever' video on Agenda 2030 and the World Economic Forum's plans for next year onward I posted in "Micro chipping Humans" thread ,all already in play,unless we en masse push back and not consent to the 1984 on steroids insanity,those like Klaus Schwab want to ram down societies throat. These newer Apple devices are clearly cut from that exact jib "You'll own NOTHING,and LOVE it"
 
Mates, it's safer for the society. For example, if the terrorists use apple iPhones, which they probably would; all their information is stored. When government needs information, they simply ask google or apple for it nd they know everything about the terrorists!

You have to give up some privacy for the greater good nd safety of the society.:) there is no other way.


Who decides who the "Terrorists" are ,and what will the definition of that term be??
Do you trust Tim Cook to help be the decider.
 
Apple long ago became a phone company that sells computers on the side.
They sell more computers now, and have a bigger market share of the laptop/desktop computer market than ever before. Sure, it's still a small percentage of the overall desktop computer market, and a miniscule part of Apple's revenue, and I sometimes wonder why Apple hasn't totally given up on the desktop platform for many years. When pressing MacBook fans about what it is specifically that is so much "easier" to use than Windows, it almost always boils down to "the ecosystem" - how easy it is for all the Apple devices to work seamlessly together (of course that all requires an Apple ID tied to each device). These users are going to either realize that they don't need to spend >$1000 for a device that does nothing more than what their phone already does, or if they really need a desktop platform (I use it in the sense that includes laptops and more traditional desktop computers) the compromises and ever restrictive environment of the MacBook isn't going to allow them to do what they need to do.
 
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