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Apple's New Differential Privacy Feature is Opt-In
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Same here. Now on my fifth hybrid vehicle. Next car will be Tesla Model 3.
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Those are the ones you put on when there's a cold snap at your nudist colony.
Why not give us 3 level of choices:
1. Full opt in whereby I allow Apple to scan all my emails, everything like Google does so I can get the smartest Siri assistant possible
2. The current suggested method like in this article
3. No data sharing at all.
I would be happy to allow Apple to go thru my information if it resulted in a smarter Siri and as long as the information was stored for a certain period of time and not sold to advertisers , I would be content
1. Full opt in whereby I allow Apple to scan all my emails, everything like Google does so I can get the smartest Siri assistant possible
2. The current suggested method like in this article
3. No data sharing at all.
I would be happy to allow Apple to go thru my information if it resulted in a smarter Siri and as long as the information was stored for a certain period of time and not sold to advertisers , I would be content
Nothing is perfect on release but this technology is moving towards a more secure world rather than the current path towards a less secure one. My point is that I'm sure there will one day be a news story that a researcher has managed to reverse engineer a dataset. I'd rather that be my emoji preferences today so that the flaws are found before it's my medical data and voting history tomorrow.
If you think letting this effort fail would make your data more secure in the long run, you're not doing your accounting properly. We still see periodic breaches on some of the most venerable encryption systems. Expecting perfection is unreasonable, and clinging to insecure systems because the theoretically sound system is ringing out a few implementation issues is short sighted.
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"...then go see my?" That certainly needs a Privacy feature.![cat.png]()
They couldn't have found a better sentence to use as an example? Sounds like a bad pick-up line...
Wonder what location-based services will turn up in the context of "want to see my [cat emoji]?"...
It will depend on the implementation, of course - but "differential privacy" is not something Apple came up with. It's a specific concept developed in the academic community, largely in response to concerns regarding how companies like Google and Facebook vacuum up every bit of personal information they can.
If done right, it will allow Apple to offer products on par with Google Now, for example, without sacrificing your personal privacy.
I am pretty sure you've never heard Google or Facebook use the specific term "differential privacy".
I've long understood that products can be made better with data shared like this. It's a wonderful thing that this is opt in (fwiw many other such examples are as well, the act of opting in might simply be different than an actual toggle).
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Completely off topic but I had to ask. Do you drive a ton or do you just replace your cars often? We have a ten year old Prius given to us by my mother when she moved and it just hit 120k. We got it about two years ago with only 65 on the clock! It's been an extremely reliable car and we plan on taking it 3000 later this month!
You're thinking of the recent John Gruber interview with Craig Federighi. Obviously Apple is aware of this, but I don't think they are planning on making the user identifiable by other means either.
They've made themselves "the guys who care about privacy" so they know they are under a microscope and will get called out if they turned around and did something they said they wouldn't.
During the live Talk Show interview at WWDC, I believe it was Phil who noted that with such an approach what happens when management's view on privacy changes? So you could have a case where the current management team at a company deletes your info after a time and does not share, but a future management team comes in and starts sharing it with advertisers.
While Apple's approach impacts the benefit that services like Siri could have if they had more personalized information, it insulates you from that information being "misused" at some future date.
Thank goodness my emoji prediction system is safe. I simply must have millions of dollars worth of invested infrastructure to make sure I can speak to people icons. WTF is wrong with people? How is sophisticated emoji prediction system making the world a better place?
I am happy to see the privacy control increase....but I wish they would stop using emoji prediction as a tent pole. Like everyone says, this is huge. If Apple can set the stage for everyone else, the world will be a better place.
I am happy to see the privacy control increase....but I wish they would stop using emoji prediction as a tent pole. Like everyone says, this is huge. If Apple can set the stage for everyone else, the world will be a better place.
It does for people who use emoji and those people are making up more and more of the planet's population, evidently, based on how prevalent social media is now and continues to be as more and more people are able to opt-in to it (from a technological and affordability standpoint).
I personally could care less, but I accept that if I am not in the minority of iOS device users now, sooner rather than later I probably will be.
"...then go see my?" That certainly needs a Privacy feature.![cat.png]()
Took me a few seconds
Differential privacy can err on the side of collecting information that can be traced back to a user. It's not an iron-clad solution, it very depends on the implementation details. But if a company is truly committed to privacy then it can, if and when it realises that it by accident knows too much about a user, simply delete all related data and start over (unlike Google that 'accidentally' garnered all that WiFi data with its streetview cars).
I see you're not up to speed here about the term "opt in". Would you like it explained to you?
My first hybrid was a Honda Insight in 2000. Three years later, I needed a second car because I was working in Bethesda during the week but still living in Texas and needed a car in two places. I bought a Toyota Prius. A year later, I sold that Prius to my Dad and bought a newer model Prius, I liked the aerodynamic shape and thought the original looked too much like a Ford Focus of the day. I traded that Prius in for a newer model after driving it five years. I sold the Insight to my nephew. I still have my six-year-old Prius, but last year my family added three infants to the one child we already had (one in May and twins in October). Since you can't fit four car seats in the back of a Prius, I added a Toyota Highlander Hybrid to our fleet.
When the Model 3 is ready (hopefully not before 2018), I'll get rid of the 2010 Prius.
It's a strategy that both enables Apple to get into the health field where privacy is critical and at the same time offer something that Android and it's biggest hardware competitor Samsung simple cannot offer without completely changing Google's culture and business model. It's a brilliant strategy. Check mate for Tim Cook on this!
Privacy laws is not just critical, it's legally binding and enforced in health care. I've worked in hospitals, co-workers have gotten fired for gossiping and blabbing about celebrities that were inpatients, and (the hospital employees) posting and blabbing about it on Facebook etc. All the managers and supervisors try to catch this kind of activity.
HIPAA privacy laws protect the privacy of health care patients….. HIPAA laws are most definitely enforced in health care.
There is no chance in hell a tech company will succeed wide-scale in health care unless they have embraced privacy rights.
That's what I meant about critical. Apple as a health company cannot exist without privacy. Tim Cook is setting up the chess board for a major move into an industry that none of its current competitors will be able to compete in without completely changing their culture and business model. Google cannot compete with Apple on privacy because its very business model depends on data mining and knowing as much as possible about its customers.
A future Apple Watch as a health device with a full range of vitals monitoring will essentially put a tricorder on everybody's wrist warning people of issues even before they experience any symptoms. It will literally change and prolong human life.
Steve Jobs' Apple was about music and other creative production and consumption and it served the company well. That was his passion. Tim Cook is definitely passionate about Health and that's where he's leading the company into the future. I like where it's going.
The researchers have used the word infeasible (technical term meaning not likely). Never have they said impossible. If someone wanted to "brute force" it, they can ID you with the data Apple will plan to collect.
Interesting, but why just those?
If Apple is saying that regular anonymized data collection is not private enough, then why not use differential privacy methods for the data they already collect, such as an iPhone's WiFi hotspot discoveries, our Siri requests, our Apple Pay location and purchase amounts, and other bits of data that have previously been called "anonymous" or use a temporary id?
Seems like they're starting slow, with far less important information.
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You should probably read the linked article that Rigby posted. It's the most informative piece I've seen yet regarding Differential Privacy. It's also primarily a layman's termed article which makes it easy to understand. One of the most interesting, and surprising, tidbits in that article deals specifically with Google. Not to spoil the article, let's just say you may want to hold off on that checkmate.
Articles like this should be required reading for those who have grand ideas of what Differential Privacy actually means. http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2016/06/what-is-differential-privacy.html
Hat tip to Rigby for finding this.