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A comment on Apple: We're not handing over Safari URLs to Tencent, just IP addresses. Parent comment

Re:Apple: We're not handing over Safari URLs to Tencent, jus... by jrockway on Tuesday October 15, 2019 @03:31AM (#21256307)
I think it's reasonable to be a little concerned. The IP address does not have to be the identifier, it's just another datapoint for the model. For example, how many people in your residential DHCP pool visit Github and Hacker News every day? Whichever IP has those hashes in its pool is probably "you", so eventually a model can be built that watches you move from IP to IP. (Eventually there could be enough data that it doesn't even need to use the "same DHCP pool" as a heuristic, and it can watch you move between home and work or even on your cross-country trips.)

I think it would be difficult to get a strong signal as to what sort of browsing you're doing from this information, but I also think that if life and death ride on what websites you visit, you should turn this off.

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Re:Apple: We're not handing over Safari URLs to Tencent, jus... by jrockway on Tuesday October 15, 2019 @06:56AM (#21257285)
Something I should have added to the comment during the editing window:

You also have to be careful about targeted malware, which can give up far more information than these hashes. So I am not really sure where the balance is. It is more concerning when Tencent is running the service instead of Google. A well-targeted ad is better than being disappeared.

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