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Apple's Find My Is 'Super Creepy Surveillance Tech' That Shouldn't Exist, Says Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney
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If you don’t want me to see where you are, maybe don’t steal my phone? People have a right to privacy as much as I have a right to not having my things stolen. Nothing about Find My is creepy or surveillance more than the technologies like GPS and the internet that allow it.
I can't believe this theft tracking software knows where the thing is!
PC for privacy?
Microsoft ask me every single day to sign in with a Microsoft account so they give me additional functionality a.k.a 'track me to Antarctica' And that is on a virtual machine too
One of the biggest problems is that it does not notify the person being located. Why is that? Wouldn't you like to know if someone is querying your location? Apple probably decided not to implement that because it would reveal how creepy the feature is. A lot of people probably don't even realize they are being tracked. If people started getting notifications that 'SoandSo snooped your location.' a lot of people would turn off location sharing.
What a db.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney today commented on Apple's Find My service, referring to it as "super creepy surveillance tech" that "shouldn't exist."
Sweeney went on to explain that several years ago, "a kid" stole a Mac laptop out of his car. Years later, Sweeney was checking Find My, and as the Mac was still connected to his Apple ID account, it showed him the location where the thief lived.
Sweeney's take is curious, because providing the location of a lost or stolen device is exactly what the Find My service is meant to do. Apple devices remain tied to a user's account if not removed, a feature that is meant to thwart theft.
After confusion from his Twitter followers over his comments, Sweeney said that the location of a device in someone's possession can't be tracked without tracking the person, and "people have a right to privacy." He claims that detection and recovery of a lost or stolen device should be "mediated by due process of law" and not exposed to the device owner "in vigilante fashion."
When Sweeney saw how Find My worked, he said he turned off the feature on all of his devices.
While Apple's AirTag item trackers have been criticized for their use by stalkers, the Find My service has not been the target of similar complaints. Find My and Activation Lock have been important theft deterrents, cutting down on iPhone theft. Apple recently expanded Activation Lock to include iPhone components to prevent them from being disassembled for parts.
Article Link: Apple's Find My Is 'Super Creepy Surveillance Tech' That Shouldn't Exist, Says Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney
The more he talks the more I think I’ll never give his company another cent.
Very weird how one exercising freedom of choice triggers the Apple hivemind
Who's snooping on their spouse and children, unbeknownst to them? Don't like it? Turn it off. Very easy to do. "Legitimately" bought used laptops will be reformatted sitting at the Welcome screen; no Find My would be turned on. You shouldn't make excuses for crappy behavior, of which this is more of from Sweeney.
Not really, no. It's a feature that can be turned off just as easily as it's turned on; it's not at all hidden "surveillance-ware".
No. The 2 people who can locate me are my wife and kid; I don't have to know if they check to see where I am, and between texts and e-mails my iPhone vibrates enough as it is. I'm not slipping around doing anything I need to hide.
Of course, I didn't steal my Apple devices. If I were a thief I might want to know...
Agree.
If you bought the hardware and didnt let the person use their own AppleID (but used yours) than of course you can see their device...
But Sweeney seems to be complaining he can see his own (stolen) device.
It's hardly a breach of privacy or surveillance
He's an idiot.
And if your family/friends are worried about you tracking them (via their devices) there's probably some behaviour/trust issues that are outside the tech world issues...
And how is that a strawman when no one actually responded to my comment in any form except by disliking it? Almost like they were the ones with no argument because they were taking offense to a simple choice (which also had nothing to do with them)
Respond how, to what? You turned off the ability to find your items if they are lost for no stated reason, and announced that decision on this thread. What response did you anticipate?
You purposely disable a useful feature in the instance your stuff is stolen, without saying what the reasoning is, and then make a BS comment about a “hive mind”.
“thumbs down” means “disagree” here. A lot of people disagree with your choice. No reason to get your knickers in a twist.
Sweeney opinions about Apple fail the trustwothy test and the common sense test. Sweeney bites the feeding hand, then whines. Whatever. Find My and AirTags serve super useful purposes. Yep, bad people can abuse them. But my friend found his lost toddler in a crowd because he AirTagged her. Sweeney needs to grow up.
To people downgrading my post, please start reading and studying GDPR (https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/data-protection-eu_en, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679).
Thank you.
It seems to me the owner is finding the location 'data' of his own property (so it's not someone else's data). That a criminal has wrongly caused that stolen property to be near himself shouldn't change that. For that matter, it's possible the stolen property could turn up in a pawn shop. The idea that I should be rendered unable to find my own stolen property because the thief might be nearby is...insane. And deeply morally wrong.
I'm not insinuating the European Union is incapable of doing insane or morally wrong things, of course. Not sure how they'd handle this situation in their jurisdiction.
Richard.
Sweeney is a "parallel", a hired-gun who corrupts legitimate arguments other people are making (so, after flaming out, he takes them down too). For example, in his OP tweet, he could have brought up the very real prospect of an enraged owner tracking down and harming someone who may be several owners downstream of the original purported thief. Or he could have brought up Apple's by-now-common-knowledge lickspittle relationship with the NSA, and that such feature almost certainly exists for the covert ulterior motive of intelligence entities tracking every customer (and potentially sending furtive telemetry even while 'off'), with said "feature" being surface-marketed as a theft-prevention widget. --But he didn't do any of that. Instead, he makes a bonehead troll comment that gets immediately shot down (while Apple and its spy agency patrons silently chortle in the background).
I see little reason to even believe his story. Who, with Find activated, waits years to check? Alternatively, who, in possession of such a thing, waits years to turn it on? The story as-told doesn't pass the smell-test. So what is it? A corporate psychological-operation with this bozo giving Apple "bad" all-publicity-is-good-publicity.
While I agree with you that his story smells off, I would suggest that nobody, but nobody, would seriously take Sweeney for a parallel controlled by Apple, as defined by your linked article. He has been pushing anti-Apple sentiment for many years now and is the driving force behind various lawsuits filed by Epic against Apple -- not all of which have failed. What's more, while his successes have been more limited in the United States, he has nonetheless successfully lobbied for changes to laws in various other countries around the world, which have significantly adversely impacted Apple's business model, even practically upending it entirely in the EU.
No... I would opine that he is neither a parallel nor an anti... rather, he's just a jerk with a chip on his shoulder, too much money and too much control over other people's money.
Remember "Blackout Tuesday" four years ago? Go high enough over the CEO's head, you'll find these guys all have the same nameless bosses six shadowy holding company layers up. Punch may hit Judy, who hits him back, but they do what they do for reasons the toddlers in the audience don't understand. Sweeney is a manufactured foil who doesn't do any serious damage while making everyone on the "side" he crashed look like a fool by proximity. It's intentional, and done on Twitter, because the first tactic of propaganda is to spin your tale where the rubes are. (An ostensible big cheese such as CEO getting in loud, stupid fights on Twitter is a veritable de rigueur guarantee that he's a front-man playing a role.)
Corporate lawsuits and settlements are invariably orchestrated swindles of class-C common stockholders, as well as plunder runs against the futures markets for those with inside knowledge of the outcome. (That's something to think about next time the news is clamoring for your attention about the latest outrageous thing some company is allegedly doing; there may be more money to be made rigging leveraged exchanges than in shipping actual product.)
That's Hanlon's Razor whispering in your ear, urging you to give him the benefit of the doubt. Don't. He just a smaller puppet in a smaller role than that awarded bigger puppets (like Musk, or Cook, or Gates, ...or Trump and Biden for that matter).
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Hanlon's Razor is indeed a compelling argument in a lot of cases, and may yet apply -- but I would argue that Occam's Razor is far more useful, herein. Your manufactured explanations for seemingly everything that is wrong in society require far too many convoluted assumptions about far too many things.
The world already has enough actual conspiracies; there's really no need to draw out new ones from thin air.
Hanlon's Razor sounds like some ancient aphorism, but actually dates only from the '90s. (The ancients took things at face value: if you behaved in a questionable manner, they assumed you were up to something, not just stupid.)