Google is an ad company, and a hardware/smartphone company, and an enterprise collaboration company, and a cloud hosting company, and lots more.
Similarly Apple is a hardware company which is getting more and more of its revenue from digital sales, subscriptions and even advertising every year. They can and do track their users exactly like Google.
It is naive to think that any company at that scale has your best interests at heart. They will do whatever it takes to make more money, period.
Exactly. And Apple makes money of privacy. It's their thing.
Google's business model is based on abusing my privacy.
Apple's business model is based on securing my privacy.
That's why I use Apple stuff and won't touch Google with a 10 feet pole.
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/law-enforcement-guidelin...
Some it seems thinks Apple keeps data private and anonymous. In fact they do the opposite and encourage using an icloud account over and over (after ever update). All of this data is easily acquired via a warrant at any law enforcement level.
A county cop (without a college degree) investigating his neighbor can get all this info simply submitting a scanned PDF of a warrant from a county judge.
One example: There was a person harassing people on facebook in a small local community. Sending obscene images and making threats. To solve the crime local law enforcement ended up compiling a list of just under 20 possible suspects.
Hoping to match an iCloud photo to a post on facebook a warrant was issued for all 20 users data. Apple sends an. encrypted file with all the data and then another email with the passwords
Long story short the offender was caught however almost 20 people’s data was looked through by local law enforcement. I stress local because this is not some federal agent solving a major crime but just a neighbor police officer who sends his own kids to the same schools as these other innocent people.
Disclaimer: I assisted law enforcement on this case and a couple of others.
Apple makes money by (among other things) appealing to a certain set of privacy conscious consumers. That's different than "making money off of privacy".
I think that Apple is often deceptive about the degree to which they themselves track users and store user data. I think its simultaneously true that Apple stores less information about [advertising] users that Google does, but is less straightforward about the information it does track, and keeps more than the average Apple user thinks.
It's possible to run open source android phones (including without google play services) which protect your privacy pretty well. As part of android allowing more consumer control, there's a larger culture of open source apps, so you can get further with fdroid. Open source apps are usually pretty unlikely to compromise your privacy and harvest data.
On iPhones, it's true that the phone itself doesn't track you as much, but there's other downsides. You're unable to use firefox+ublock origin, so far more websites on iPhone will track you. There are fewer open source apps, so it's quite plausible you get tracked by more apps individually. There's no ability to uninstall default services whatsoever, again unlike android.
I think for the default user who doesn't make an effort to search out privacy-preserving software, an iPhone will probably harvest less data.
However, for someone who knows how to run LineageOS, install ublock on firefox, and install apps from fdroid, I think you can get a phone that harvests less of your data with android.
I also think that there are enough distinct data-points on each side of this argument that it's difficult to claim either is better with certainty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_custom_Android_distrib...
Last, Google allows you to disable their activity history and other options that may be concerning from your Google Account. Apple has very few options to limit your amount of data sharing.
Of course that's at this point in time. Tomorrow Apple could turn around and be worse.
"Android sends 20x more data.."?
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/android-sends-20x-mo...
Take it with a huge grain of salt, but also note that Apple sends more personal data to themself than Google according to that article. Not in the amount of bytes, but in they amount of different data send, according to the article.
I think most people would agree that fewer personal details being shared is more important than the amount of data used to communicate. So in that regard Apple is worse.
All in all, I think this whole discussion is pointless. Both are collecting as much as they can get away with and both suck when it comes to privacy.
LOL. Instead of bowing down to one master, you chose to bow down to the other?
But if you choose to buy phones from ad companies, it's your decision.
They can encode it in contact in a second and choose not to.
Meanwhile; have you you seen Google stand up to the despicable behaviour of Facebook? No? I wonder why.
https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-says-itll-change-how-it-coll...
If you use your brain you can conclude that Apple does not care about privacy enough to hire competent developers, this feature design was clearly insecure and against privacy that my any person with a bit of brain and not emotional invested can see it clear, "privacy is only PR, when it comes to actual implementation is irrelevant" ... though I think you could convince me that there is a chance that we could explain this just with pure stupidity, somehow Apple has such a broken process that stupidity triumphs over sane architecture, then yeah I hope you love the fact you use a product from someone that loves privacy but is to stuipid to offer it to you.
https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-says-itll-change-how-it-coll...
Apple is still tracking app launches in macOS, even though it has said that it will stop logging IP addresses along with that usage data.
Apple has invested heavily in this vein.
They choose not to do this.
Apple have invested heavily in their /marketing/
If you believe they won't flip on you the nanosecond it suits them I've got a bridge over here that might interest you...
Besides even if you believe the current people controlling Apple, all of them, you can't possibly know who will control it next year let alone in 5 or 10 years. This "I want to believe" garbage is just ridiculous. Seriously. You expect anything you like and Apple won't care a damn if your expectations are trashed for their profit or something else.
If they won't put it in a contract it only because they reserve the right to to flip you off. Hard and rough. No other reason.
Like when Apple dropped end-to-end encryption on iCloud because FBI asked them politely.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...
Thanks for confirming that there's no privacy in iCloud.
There's no axe to grind because the lack of end-to-end encryption is a fact. Your own link states that. Nitpicking Reuters won't change that. I don't understand this mentality of religiously defending something that's clearly wrong. It will only make the platform you use worse.
By the way you should read HN guidelines. Don't comment whether someone read an article.
Apple owns your phone.
Problem solved. You get to keep using apple app stores, and other people can choose something else.
"It [privacy] is a value that is so deep in us. Personal information can be used and abused and even weaponized in ways that can be really, really destructive. Often in a way that's not at all apparent to the person who might be giving up that information." and "These devices are so intimately a part of our lives and contain so much of what we're thinking and where we've been and who we've been with that users deserve and need control of that information. Abuse ranges from creepy to dangerous".
He says more about privacy in that same interview, recommended listen.
And I'm baffled why they're baffled. Is the koolaid that strong and that permanent there?
Until such a beast is released, I'll stick with my (admittedly) crappy and de-googlified Android phone; I simply can't afford to buy a new iPhone 3-4 times a year because they keep breaking.
The other 90% use Androids. They could use "second-hand" iPhones - but those don't work quite as well and stay compatible with the latest apps whereas the latest cheap Androids do.
They sell plenty of things, including these apps
Apple has just as much reason to harvest your personal information and track you in their App Store as anyone else.
I'm happy to use an iPhone, knowing my personal information is safe and it reduces my chances of being Harvested by Google.