https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/11/15/americans-an...
"Some 81% of the public say that the potential risks they face because of data collection by companies outweigh the benefits, and 66% say the same about government data collection."
I only know two persons in real life (other than me) that care about data privacy and act on that. Of course if you ask most people they will say that yeah they care about privacy, but their actions tell a different story.
It can be as simple as showing them to open incognito for specific searches or topics, or to install a trusted tracker blocking extension like ublock origin and set it up for them.
Managing app location privileges is a big one too, iOS is really good about nagging for background location permissions and I appreciate that a lot, but a lot of people don't realize if you give Facebook or another app "while using", you can bet money it will use it whenever you open the app.
https://business.financialpost.com/technology/tim-hortons-ap... The Tim Hortons app logged this guy's location 2,700 times in 5 months. He didn't find out until the iOS 13 background location warning.
https://cdn.iphoneincanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/ios...
People care, most of them just aren't as literate as the typical HN user so they either don't have a clue what's really happening, or simply throw their hands up in the air.
There's an entire class of problems you cannot solve through 'hygiene.' Equifax, for example, collected data on you without your consent, and got in trouble for unintentionally giving it away when they're supposed to be getting money in exchange.
Vast majority of people today know Google/Facebook is Big Brother and that knowledge doesn't matter to them nearly as much as some hoped.
This whole pandemic kind of proves that we haven't learned the real-life hygiene, after decades and decades of that being drilled into us, and real-life hygiene having actual life-or-death consequences.
Don't hold your breath about digital hygiene.
That's essentially Apple's marketing pitch on this subject, and this poll shows that there are a lot of people with whom it will resonate.
A billion people might use Facebook, but 1.3 billion use iMessage. I think this is a significant risk for services that don’t respect user privacy.
>19% of the public uses google and/or facebook services.
As an example of misunderstanding: Apple attempts to guess at pairs of phone numbers, email addresses, and names based on the data on the phone using analysis on the phone. So someone emailed a colleague a phone number (From: Bob, Body: "Hey, call me at 555-555-5555"). They get a call from 555-555-5555 and "Bob" comes up in the caller ID. It freaked them out, "I haven't added them to my contacts! Apple is reading my email!". This misunderstanding of what the systems are doing and how they're doing it creates an appearance of something "wrong" happening, even when it's not. The inability to distinguish these things leads to "they're all the same" and other perspectives that cause the non-technical people (especially, but even many technical people) to give up. They care, but they don't know how to overcome it (short of getting a dumb phone or a feature phone and moving off grid).
They likely see both as secure enough.
That was true maybe five years ago, but the HN meme is no longer true.
I interface with a lot of wetware for my job, and I've seen a shift. People have learned to care about privacy.
Some of the education has come from the mass media. Some of it from the creepiness of seeing a product you viewed on one web site follow you around to all the other web sites you visit. Some of it has come from the privacy alert boxes on Apple devices. Some of it from the thousands of TV commercials for privacy services.
The notion that "nobody cares" is simply not true anymore. If it was, then there wouldn't be a demonstrated market for all of the privacy tools out there.
> Notably, Facebook has declined to even show app install advertisements to the 30% of U.S. iPhone users that turned off their IDFA of their own accord — and now it is opt-in, instead of opt-out.
That is a massive proportion. Especially when you consider that the IFDA setting is buried three or four screens app in the settings app. 30 percent of users went way out of their way to turn tracking off. That tells me that a lot more users care about their privacy than we might assume
That's an interesting point. Without delving into the rest of your comment, I'd like to expand on that one bit and add that part and parcel with exclusivity and luxury, part of Apple's brand has been simplicity, quality, and joy (or pleasure in use).
Like many luxury brands ; ). Or high-end brands. It's a mix.
And I think that Apple is using it's privacy features to enhance the "quality" and "simple" part of their brand in addition to the other aspects you mentioned.
That's a hell of a claim. What's your source on this?
Unfortunately, as you touch on, privacy is yet another thing that only people with money get to have.
The vast majority of the public do not care, at all, about the type of data tracking that gets HNers so up in arms. That may be a bit of hyperbole - they may care a teeny bit, but the second they have to do something that is even the slightest bit inconvenient in order to get more privacy ("Why do I have to log in here again?") they'll bail.
What Apple has done, though, is frame privacy-consciousness in terms of exclusivity and luxury. It's quite similar to how Tesla rebranded electric cars from dorky and stodgy to cool. Most people's experience with Apple's privacy-conscious features are Touch ID and Face ID. These felt really futuristic when they first came out. And the privacy messaging that Apple does is really great IMO: it's more along the lines of "With Google all your data is shared with crappy advertisers along with the rest of the unwashed masses. With Apple everything is safe and secure, and most importantly protected from their grubby little non-Jony Ive-approved hands."
This has real benefits to consumers (because the privacy advancements with Apple are not just marketing, they're real), but people should understand Apple is still based around exclusivity and luxury, and privacy is just a part of that.