Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The Problem with Apple’s “Anti-Tracking” iOS Feature”.
Next and last topic: should we go over the disabling iOS anti-tracking thing, or should we just hit merge messages? I can leave this up to you. I can do the iOS anti-tracking pretty quickly. I think it’s it’s not it’s not as complicated as maybe it looks. Um wait: where’d, it go okay there, it is yeah yeah Anthony filled this out um. Basically, so, basically, the Apple released.
This um anti-tracking app tracking transparency feature in iOS 14.5 uh. It’S a prompt that asks if users would like to allow the allow apps like individual apps it pops up uh. It asks you if you want to allow the app to track your activities across the internet and other companies apps. A mass of 96 of us users opted out in the earliest days of the features released.
Uh, and you know, Facebook and apple had a big fight about this. They at Facebook lost a bunch of money and apple was, like you know, Screw you, because this is what we have to do to protect people’s privacy um and it’s becoming apparent that what Apple was doing was basically basically kind of making a play to be. Google. In the sense that they want to supercharge their own ad Services, now you guys have talked about this.
I think a little bit before in the wind show, with with various topics that have come up, but the key detail about this. One is the fact that when you go to disable uh the settings in iOS that are meant to, where is it, I want to say the the actual thing um disabled. I think one of them is personalized ads and the other one is suggestions.
Do not try device Analytics, yeah, Anthony Anthony, said the like uh a lot more technical uh way to describe it, but basically there are two toggles on uh, your iPhone that you can go and toggle off. One is per one says, allow personalized ads and you can say no, I don’t want personalized ads, which is uh. It’S ostensibly saying that don’t track me and don’t collect my data. Just give me the the generic ads uh, which means you don’t need my data and then there’s another one. That says, do not track and that’s like involving sending a do not track request in like various other situations, and you can turn both of those off. And these are these developers uh app developers, Tommy misk and talal Hodge bakri, who work together under the name misc.
That’S their development team uh revealed that Apple’s app tracking transparency um. When you turn these off, it still collects the data in Apple apps, so in non-apple apps it will turn it or it will stop them from collecting data on you, but in Apple apps, and not every Apple app, but a good. Many of them, including the App Store itself uh, collects all kinds of information, uh profile, IDs Hardware, IDs and info keyboard language metrics about apps, viewed with timestamps and durations for viewing all actions taken within the apps, including, like you tapping on things and how long you’re. Looking at things a massive amount of data describing subscription statuses and installed apps, this is all collected and sent to Apple and it’s used uh to well. I don’t know if they found that it’s used to personalize the ads.
I don’t know if they can get that far, but they can. They know that it’s being collected and sent to Apple. So, like I don’t honestly there’s a part of me that I’m like is this as big of a deal, because it’s not like there’s one part of me. That’S like this is kind of crazy apple is saying: whatever happens on your iPhone stays in your iPhone and at the same time, uh.
It is a big deal because they get they put these buttons on your phone that don’t do anything when it comes to Apple’s own apps aggressively misleading people about privacies like super, not okay, so I I think it’s a big deal yeah. So, like we made this the title story on Tech link the other day out of the original title I put on there was these buttons do nothing or these buttons don’t work because they don’t do anything. You can slap that it’s like you know when you open Facebook or whatever the prompt will come up being like do you want to Facebook to track you and you say no and that works in that app, but in an Apple app, so um I mean, I Think you guys looked into this and when you open an Apple app, you don’t get the prompt. You can set it at a at a system level, but but it doesn’t do anything so anyways um discussion question. How can we trust anything? Any company says about respecting your privacy yeah. So, like that’s kind of it’s the same thing, you can’t uh. We live in the current uh year and it’s bad. It’S bad news for privacy um. Should companies making privacy claims be required to independently audit their practices? Yes, yeah but like, but they won’t. We won’t.
If you look at the the 2008 housing crisis, the independent auditing houses um, I shouldn’t say, houses to that context. The the independent auditing firms or whatever um, we’re all just playing the game right. So they would just get paid by the companies that they were supposed to be auditing and just put stamps on things be like yup, looks good, yeah all the time because they were just making tons of money. That’S just gon na happen again, so like yeah. That should probably happen, but it’s just going to have endless amounts of corruption. Anyways, did you ever have a question for you Luke? Did you ever believe, because I I know that you care about uh, stupid things like facts and uh evidence, but on previous Wan shows it seems like you, you know, um have wanted to kind of like hey. Let say like: let’s, let’s hold on, let’s only say things that we’re absolutely confident of when it comes to Apple and privacy. When this topic has come up before um did you have an actual did you have? Was it did any part of? You actually believe that apple actually was talking uh walking the walk a little bit when it came to privacy.
They say we care about your privacy. Did you believe them a little bit? Not that there’s no reason to believe them on anything anymore. I’M just saying yeah pre-all of this, I I did to a certain degree.
I thought an iOS device was more secure, um and I think it was at that time. Um when this landed. I had concerns it didn’t it didn’t seem like they were 100 playing ball in the way that they wanted people to think they were. But I didn’t have a particular reason to think that they weren’t, like I’m the opposite of shocked, that this topic is in the dock, and this is a thing. That’S what I didn’t want to say it until it happens right right, because I think you, I think, there’s a lot of danger. There uh, when you criticize things or people or corporations or whatever uh, for something that you don’t know, is legit or potentially isn’t legit. That makes it so that when you do want to criticize them for something that is legit, it adds question to your criticism.
Right. Um, so I always want to be want to be careful about that. Yeah no, and I I mean I I completely agree – I I will say that uh I, in the absence of any hard evidence that Apple did anything differently. I you know it’s. It seemed like they did care about privacy uh, you know and – and I think that, like it made sort of business sense too, to have that as a differentiating factor in a world where absolutely everyone is collecting everything about you that they can yeah apple comes out Here and is like guess what we don’t have a huge ads business.
We we get all our money from hardware and and software to a certain degree, but but it’s mostly iPhone sales Max sales, like that. That’S where they’re making a lot of their money and they’re and now with Services as well, they’re selling, subscription services and all this stuff, but and that’s huge um, but it hasn’t been like a data collection. You know we’re we’re serving you ads and that’s how we make money.
That’S been Google’s thing, so I was willing to believe to a certain extent, in the absence of evidence that Apple did care about or not. I don’t want to say care about your privacy, but that they had chosen to not do this type of collection, but I was hoping that was the case. I just I wasn’t 100 confident yeah. I just I feel like the the place that I find this to be. The most egregious is in the political realm. Um is when you have people attacking people that they don’t agree with politically um, for, like uh, like physical features or aesthetic reasons like I don’t like this person’s hair or uh the way they dress or something like that um. Not only does it usually just uh bolster and steal the resolve of the other side because they’re, like that’s a stupid reason, to attack my person um, but it’s not accomplishing anything and it makes all your other accusations just seem lame. Um. So, like it’s you’re, not you’re, not helping anything by throwing these these uh criticisms out there that don’t actually matter right.
So I try to keep it try to keep it legit. .