Fixed with iOS 9.3 released yesterday. It is no coincidence that this flaw was reported the day an iOS update that fixed it was released. Those knowing about the flaw kept quiet about it until a fix for it was available.
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Siri and iAd Restricted by Apple 'Policy Czars' to Limit Customer Data Collection
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I'm kind of torn.
In Android (sign on A) I get targeted ads and have used a few.
In iOS (sign on B) I get generic ads. I am so tired of seeing ads that have nothing to do with me. I added an ad blocker that helped but didn't fix. Now some of my stock sites are mum and don't work correctly. I am getting more spam on B than A.
So, in the end, I like the privacy but I also like the targeted info.
Wish there was a way to get the best of both worlds.
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That is the challenge. I have periodically tried Siri (and I'll test it again under 9.3) however I have always come away with a lack of overall functionality when I do. Google Now is much better. Cortana is even better than Siri.
Siri needs a sirious overhaul.
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That works. Not.
The DOJ (12) and NYC (175) and LA (400+) and.... are all queued up awaiting that "hack".
Even if factual, it will be a limited hack and the FBI will be back. Hopefully next time they get a judge that wants to push to ensure (you've tried all avenues) the FBI did due diligence.
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Okay, I'll use only Apple.
Except I also hit Twitter.... and Facebook for family.... LinkedIn for work..... and Amazon to shop.... and .....
Apple is one item. If you are enrolled/logged in/member of/ any of a number of other sites / services, the Apple aspect is pretty much a meaningless placebo.
I applaud Apple's stance. I just don't see it being very realistic in the scheme of today's society.
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Already parched as of yesterday.
”The problem was partially resolved with the release of iOS 9near the end of last year, but Apple will issue a patch to fully address the bug with the release of iOS 9.3 on Monday."
”The problem was partially resolved with the release of iOS 9near the end of last year, but Apple will issue a patch to fully address the bug with the release of iOS 9.3 on Monday."
Maybe Apple can't compel them. But Apple can most certainly take them to court. Payback time. "The FBI knows about an exploit that can allow hackers to steal data from your iPhone, and the FBI refuses to give us information about it so that we can protect our law-abiding citizens from evil hackers".
Glad you're not in charge. Apple would be foolish to kick that hornet's nest. Odds are they know exactly what exploit they are using. Getting in a pissing match with the FBI just ups an already tense situation.
Yeah, I thought that was weird, too. I can't express how pleased I am about Apple's commitment to user privacy- it is a deciding factor in purchasing a product for me (which is probably the biggest reason Apple is so committed to privacy concerns, but I'm ok with that- it's not like they are the EFF). It probably goes without saying that this issue is going to become more and more serious as tech gets further integrated into our lives... and it's pretty scary to think about the implications of adopting a stance that doesn't value strong end user privacy.
On a different note, it seems Apple's commitment to privacy has been getting exponentially better ever since that old iPhone fiasco where everyone found out that the iPhone was inadvertently tracking you and everyone freaked out (as they should have). When was that?
I do not really see any difference between all major companies in terms of their commitment to user privacy. Their terms of agreements are virtually identical. All these companies store and data mine your data. In before Siri times, this might not have been the case but today for any "assistant" (or search or maps) to be really useful they need to know as much about you as possible. The only difference seems to be that Apple does not do targeted ads but those are not a problem anyways (if anything they might be useful).
Apple is amazing. They even portray their failures as something they did for their customers.
It isn't until August that they will finally give up on iAds, which they promoted for years to advertisers as being able to deeply target consumers due to personal information Apple gathered via iTunes, our location and our media/app preferences.
Even after iAds stops, Apple will still have some major privacy loose ends.
While Apple publicly talks about privacy, behind the scenes they continue to profit from their customers' data as a product in at least two major ways:
1. Apple makes over a billion dollars a year selling their customers to Google as the default search engine. Google gets the user info. Apple gets a huge kickback in return. This way, Apple can claim to have clean hands about privacy, while in reality pimping their customers out to Google.
2. With Apple Pay, Apple sells access to iPhone owners by forcing banks to pay a continuing ransom to let their own customers register on their own devices to use NFC payments using secure applets written by the credit card companies. In return, the banks are able to continue to gather all the purchasing data they usually do on us (which they then use to figure out our personal habits), while locking out stores who will now have to pay the banks for access to advertising data.
That was in 2011, and no, nobody should've freaked out at all. It was simply a bug where the location cache kept growing. The idea itself was sound, which was to help make locating faster for the user.
Likewise, it makes plenty of sense for service providers to store other information that helps them serve us better. This recent popular concept that everything we do must remain private, smacks of the way that young people think. The world is not that black and white. A lot us older folk are quite happy for our banks, favorite stores and restaurants to greet us by name and to know exactly what we like, and cater to our desires and give us personalized deals.
Ditto for things like Google Now and Google Voice, where Google keeps voice training fragments privately stored by our user id, so that it doesn't matter what device we use, they all have the same knowledge of our peculiarities, even when brand new. With Apple devices, every time we get a new one, voice recognition and user preference training has to start all over again, since that info is only stored by pseudo-device id instead of by user.
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Makes sense. There was a fair amount of enthusiasm around iAd when it launched. Advertisers pump so much money into Internet ads that they can fund Google, Facebook, and most of the rest of the web (with very poor engagement stats to show for it all). They wouldn't mind spending a bit more on higher production-quality if the platform had lots of reach and resulted in more engagement.
I still think that is the biggest danger to Google. Cheapen their products, pull their big customers away, and make them rely on viagra ads to stay afloat. See how much geek kudos they get then, or how many people are happy with them knowing so much about you.
Note that their "privacy stance" was not about what many posters seem to think.
Apple did exactly like Google, and sold anonymous ad slots to advertisers based on the quality of targeting they could do. In fact, Apple thought their customer targeting... based on all the info they had on us because of iTunes, credit cards, media and app purchases, location... was worth a LOT more than Google's less detailed info, and at first demanded a minimum million dollar campaign commitment.
It was the classic "the customer is the product" scenario.
The enormous commitment requirement dropped over time, but their per-view and per-click rates were still higher than normal, and Apple also interfered with the ad development, wanting their own input on the quality of the ads.
The main "privacy stance" that articles talk about interfering with iAds, was that Apple refused to share their demographic information. This meant that advertisers not only had no idea how many people of a certain target Apple could reach, but where and what kinds of people their iAds did reach. This is basic advertiser feedback, especially at the rates Apple was trying to charge.
One likely reason Apple didn't want to disclose such aggregate info, could be because it wasn't as desirable as advertisers would've liked. In any case, advertisers had to make blind guesses, which can be costly.
In the end, iAds failed because Apple users simply failed to follow through on enough purchases to make it worthwhile for major advertisers to go through Apple's creative blockade, lack of feedback, and high price range.
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Ha! "Hey, I have vulnerabilities in my software. You found them, so you have to tell me about them or I will take you to court." This has to sound really silly to you. The FBI, NSA, CIA and any number of ABC govt. groups around the world have found vulnerabilities in iOS. That doesn't even account for jailbreaking teams who tend to keep a cache of vulns. Payback time? The scenario you paint is a bit theatrical. This isn't TV.
I have an LG G3 and Sony tablet to partner with a 6s+ and Air2. I've tried Google Now before on the Android devices and it's just not for me. I even turned off "interest-based" ads on Google settings.
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"We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about." - Google Chairman Eric Schmidt (circa 2010)
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"We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about." - Google Chairman Eric Schmidt (circa 2010)
The thought process of some of these people is simply astounding isn't it?
Not unless multiple engineers wrote the given lines of code. (Something which is typical for an arbitrary block of code over time, but not generally when referring to a single check-in or change-set which is where most code reviews happen.)
I always get a chuckle when web pages start displaying adds for something I've already purchased. Too late guys.
Apple is taking a lot of flak for this. It's like people want to be harvested.
Post 9/11 it seems that the majority are on board with losing their rights to privacy and couldn't care less who has their info and what's done with it.
I guess they would be fine knowing their phones are being tapped and emails being read daily by several 3-letter agencies but hey if you're not breaking the law then all's good yeah?
Oh and lets not forget advertisers. They make their living back selling everything about you to interested parties. How do you think Google and Facebook "know" you so well?
Post 9/11 it seems that the majority are on board with losing their rights to privacy and couldn't care less who has their info and what's done with it.
I guess they would be fine knowing their phones are being tapped and emails being read daily by several 3-letter agencies but hey if you're not breaking the law then all's good yeah?
Oh and lets not forget advertisers. They make their living back selling everything about you to interested parties. How do you think Google and Facebook "know" you so well?
Which part? The high rates and minimums? You can Google those easily. Or search MacRumors for headlines about them falling. E.g. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-slices-iad-buy-in-fee-for-advertisers-in-half.1101132/
If you mean, how they targeted iAds, Apple's own advertising company web pages contained info on that. I've previously posted excerpts that I saved. For examples:
And a list of some of their target options:
AdAge commented on the way that our media consumption could target us:
"Hawking minivans? Try targeting ads to Duran Duran or The Cure fans, likely to be young parents in their 30s or early 40s. How about condoms? Look for the folks downloading love songs.
"In addition to the usual targeting options of demographics and location, marketers are hunting for clues in what our content habits say about us. And Apple, with its finger on 200 million iTunes accounts, years of download history and a new mobile ad network, is letting marketers target by people's music passions and genre interests for movies, TV and audiobooks, something no other mobile ad network can claim."
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Apple was pretty big into iAds at one point, filing lots of ad-related patents. One of my favorites, from a personal privacy creepiness standpoint, was about using smartphone sensors to determine what ad to display based on a person's current health and emotional state.
Sometimes I think iAds was just another "thermonuclear" attack attempted by Jobs to get back at Google and Android. Now, Tim Cook is slowly getting rid of Jobs' legacy (and costly) war fronts.
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Thanks, I've never been in the Ad sections of their website, I assume this is somewhere in the Dev portal?
This basically cements the fact that Siri will never be more than a novelty on iOS Apple devices, which is a shame. You need large, evolving datasets for AI and machine learning to function.
It used to have its own page, and some slight info is still here:
http://advertising.apple.com/
However, searches for help on iAd no longer come back with much. I suspect that Apple will continue to remove iAd info over time, until there's no trace that it ever existed.
In the meantime, another piece of targeting info, edited for posting space:
Neither Apple nor Google ever sold personal information to anyone. That's not how either of their ad setups work. They do not give the advertisers lists of people.
Instead, they sell anonymous targeted ad view slots. An advertiser gives them ads and who they want to target, and Apple / Google use their knowledge to show the correct ad to the correct target.
The whole value of Apple / Google knowledge about us comes from them keeping it secret. That's why I keep saying that it's not Google that people need to worry about. Google has plenty of incentive to NOT give out personal info, but to instead keep it tightly locked up. Instead, it's the hundreds of lesser entities that DO sell our personal info, that we should worry about.
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Define "limit customer data"
If Apple really cared about privacy they like to splash it out in detail in their report online, they wouldn't be keeping any of these logs, or at the bare maximum, only for a limited time (under 30 days is a must)
At least encrypt them first before storing would be the right thing to do.
If Apple really cared about privacy they like to splash it out in detail in their report online, they wouldn't be keeping any of these logs, or at the bare maximum, only for a limited time (under 30 days is a must)
At least encrypt them first before storing would be the right thing to do.
Not me, I closed my google (and therefore gmail) account a couple of years back. I took back control of my data.
A tip for others who close their google accounts. Ensure that every retailer and website you have registered with has your new (non Google) email address first. I thought I'd been diligent in this regard, but a couple of times I found I was still registered under my gmail address, and couldnt remember the password. It couldn't be reset as that involved sending an email to my closed and deleted gmail account! Duh!