Academics probe Apple's privacy settings and get lost and confused A study has concluded that Apple's privacy practices aren't particularly effective, because default apps on the iPhone and Mac have limited privacy settings and confusing configuration options. The research was conducted by Amel Bourdoucen and Janne Lindqvist of Aalto University in Finland. The pair noted that while many …
They need a single place where you can lock down settings for anything privacy related. The problem they have is that there are several categories of privacy related settings that are put in different places, so unless you explore the settings menu to find where it is all kept you might miss something.
It also wouldn't hurt to have a single "max privacy" setting you could select per app (or even as a "select all") with the proviso that if an app needed something to operate (like location for a mapping app) it would be able to re-ask about that setting once after you flip the app's "master switch" since people may want "max privacy" but then would complain if an app stops working with no explanation as to why.
I think they should have all built in app ask for permissions just like third party apps do on first use. That might be a little annoying, but treating their apps exactly like third party apps is something regulators would like to see. I'm sure they'd hate to do that simply because it would be a bit jarring for new users to be bombarded with permissions dialogs before they even download a single third party app, but I don't see a way around it without putting their own apps in a special category. At least users would know exactly what data is being used by the various built in apps.
What's Apple's vested interest? They don't want third party apps collecting a bunch of data on their users so making it harder to lock that down is not to their benefit.
It doesn't benefit them at all to collect data inside built in apps, either. If you believe they are evil at heart and the whole "privacy" thing is a sham, then they can just collect data directly out of the OS and don't need to collect it from the built in apps.
So no matter how you slice it, it doesn't make sense for Apple to make privacy difficult to achieve. Now Google and Facebook that's a different story, they make all their money from advertising.
Yup, it's confusing as hell.
You can switch off (or can you?) "friendly" always-listening Siri, but each app (every single one of them) also has its own set of "Siri and Search" settings, each containing about half a dozen different (and somewhat opaquely described) sub-settings, and it's not entirely clear what "Learn from this App" really actually does (and whether or not anything so-'learned' gets vacuumed up and exfiltrated off your device or is stored locally only).
Yes, my phone seeing an email from a friend suggesting a night out, and then reminding me later to add the details to my calendar, is sort of handy, but just as a principle of privacy, I absolutely do not want (nor give informed consent to) any of that information leaving my phone (nor iCloud slurping up all my friends' contact details (and without their consent, either) and my entire calendar entries, etc, which is what would happen if you make Genosse Siri fully enabled - HAL 9000 has nothing on him/her/it…)
And then, every time there is an iOS update, it seems that all of these settings get enabled all over again, completely ignoring and overwriting the values that you had previously set them to, which is completely unacceptable.
.....so of course the articles and the comments come from technically literate folk.
But 99.9% of iPhone or Mac users ARE NOT IN THIS GROUP!!!
Millions (billion?) of smartphone users are seduced by "ease of use"...........
...............and don't know (or don't care) about issues like "security" or "privacy"...........
Sigh!!!
This is what happened with iTunes. Started out pretty straight forward and gradually turned into a confusing mess. Look at what happened to settings on the past couple of iterations of macOS. You gotta use a search engine to find out how to use it. Just when you think you've figured it out, there's an update...
Hey, I bet you're still using your own local media files. Why not use Apple Music instead, here it is. Go on try it, you know you want to. Switch off the button? I'm sure you don't want to do that. Here it is again. Because you like it so much, we've made it impossible to deactivate.
Don't think different, just don't think™
The issues highlighted are valid and I completely agree. But it’s apple settings in general that are an issue. The problems I have include;-
- some settings can be on or off. But it’s not always clear what “on” means. So do I want the setting on or off?
- the settings are generally inconsistently worded and operate inconsistently
- the settings are spread over many menus and are very poorly grouped and often difficult to find. The example of Siri is classic
- I hate the fact that the “WiFi” hot-key has been made effectively useless because it’s no longer on and off; it’s on or “paused” (switches on by itself at some point in the future)
- why isn’t there a hot-key for satnav on/off? Rather than it being buried in a menu? And why does it ask if “I’m sure” when I switch it off? S far as I know it’s the only setting that does this
This was one of the nice things that SailfishOS did (possibly still does - unfortunately my phone bricked itself during an update at one point, damn BTRFS), and possibly(?) also Nokia's Symbian phones before this (I can't remember now): you could decide whether you wanted to use only GPS for positioning or 'network assisted' location services as well, so that you could see where you are on the map without the geopositioning databases being any the wiser (and therefore they would not be able to use your location for ad profiling, etc).
If you use any OS-provided (or browser-provided) “synced with your other devices” then it most certainly is first and foremost “ingested into our giant ad-targeting database,” before going on to the sync destination.
Fortunately the old school sneaker-net and/or USB cable still offers privacy. For more convenient operation it's not hard to set up your own NAS; you can even buy one at a big box store.
I just went through the App Privacy Report. The Photos app apparently went through my contacts 14 hours ago despite the fact that I haven't opened the app in months, and there's no way to disable it. I had a look at the analytics data too. Even though I have it disabled there are still hundreds of pages of analytics data being constantly collected.
My grant applications to the University of the Bleeding Obvious for work on string length, whether it is possible to break the cosy relationship between cause and effect, and some groundbreaking work linking students, alcohol consumption and traffic cones were all turned down.
Seriously, universities should not be funding stuff that geeks and El Reg hacks can do on a wet weekend.
I turned Siri off with one click. I did it with the initial setup on installation.
It is true that I had to repeat the turn-off for each device, and again if I made a major OS update. But again, just one click each time. I have never had Siri running on any Apple device in my possession. Period. Getting rid of Cortuna on MS devices was considerably more annoying. My current Apple desktop, watch, and the phone which talks to that watch no longer get major updates, so Siri is forever banned from them. I may replace the phone this year. Or maybe next year. Maybe. The battery still works acceptably, so there's no rush. Same with the watch.
Perhaps I’m Doing It Wrong?
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