In an alternative timeline where ISPs where more strictly regulated and trusted and everything was cleartext HTTP, I'm certain that HTTPS/TLS would face pushback from regulators. There's no way it can be banned today, though. Similarly, you won't be marked as suspicious just from opening an encrypted TLS connecting over port 443 to an arbitrary endpoint.
I don't think it's too late. There is a significant probability that today's centralized incumbents will Myspace at some point in the future. These federated, decentralized and secure solutions could be the next iteration after that.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/china-is-now-blocking-all-encr...
When I can’t do what I want with my phone, I may as well be leasing it. Hmmm.
But I don’t believe Apple’s business model is to spy on me.
"Location-Based Apple Ads: Your iPhone will send your location to Apple in order to provide you with geographically relevant ads on Apple News and in the App Store."
More: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207056
So not exactly "business model", but does it matter?
Apple business is not spying on you, but Apple business is much easier to do if they do spy on you. Meaning they do it anyway, don't worry.
It's impossible to use an iPhone with any popular apps and not be constantly spied on. Insofar as Apple's business model is to make the (full of spyware) App Store successful, it's Apple's business model to spy on you.
My impression was that Apple did trade ins to acquire stock to refurbish and resell in India, and to incentivize users to upgrade.
I would be pretty surprised to learn they were losing money on trade ins, and I've never heard of any kind of direct buy back.
Which ones?
They obviously sell user data in aggregate - not at a personal level, but which of the big tech companies sell personal data (maybe FB / Cambridge Analytica?)
Also, Apple has Google as the default search engine which Google pays billions for. Is that selling your personal data?
I can't see anything in that section that says that they sell information to third parties, personally identifiable or aggregate (I would consider the latter to be "personal" data as well fwiw). Is there a specific sentence you're thinking of?
It seems to be talking about the necessary sharing of data that happens when Apple contracts with third party services to run their own business. E.g. when they ship you a product they need to provide your address to the courier company. Or when they pay an advertising company to run ads for Apple products targeting certain markets/their own existing customers (not the same thing as selling personal data to an advertiser so that they can run ads for other products using said data - that would be selling personal data)
As far as I can tell you're either using a definition of "sell" that is different to mine, or you're claiming Apple is using weaselly language to make it sound like they don't when they do (which is not unheard of of course). But you haven't provided enough information for me to really know what you're talking about - which is it, and why?
Also no, making the default search engine google is not selling personal data.
"Ads that are delivered by Apple’s advertising platform may appear in Apple News and in the App Store. If you do not wish to receive ads targeted to your interests from Apple's advertising platform, you can choose to enable Limit Ad Tracking, which will opt your Apple ID out of receiving such ads regardless of what device you are using. If you enable Limit Ad Tracking on your mobile device, third-party apps cannot use the Advertising Identifier, a non-personal device identifier, to serve you targeted ads. You may still see ads in the App Store or News based on context like your search query or the channel you are reading. In third-party apps, you may see ads based on other information."
Third parties are buying ad listings, not user data. They have no way to extract user data from the ad platform, unless there's some kind of data leak.
If you think Apple is harvesting data off of bought back phones to improve their ad targeting that would also be a scandal (that I would expect some evidence of - otherwise it's just baseless speculation), but referring to it as "selling user data" is just obscuring what you're actually trying to communicate.
Targeting users who rely upon secure apps is becoming common in flawed democracies as well and more countries are eager to join that list. Several people, including minors were arrested in Kashmir when police found VPN app on their mobile during routine checks[0]. Government's logic being 'Why use VPN, if you are not a terrorist?'
At the same time journalists, activists are heavily dependent upon secure apps like this to make their voice heard outside, all the more reason for all of us who are lucky to not have gestapo knocking our doors because we used a VPN to watch PornHub to make usage of such secure apps (messaging, email, VPN etc.) very common.
[0]https://scroll.in/article/954711/in-kashmir-a-spree-of-arres...
Of course it doesn't even need to be real data, random gibberish would work too.
Although it's annonymous, your connection to the network is detectable and would trigger redflags in government monitoring software...
If you're getting mail from abroad you're already on a list. If you're getting encrypted mail - you'll probably disappear.