News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro by GeekyBear on Thursday October 21, 2021 @10:45AM (#28945217)
Background App Refresh was added in iOS 7 which launched 8 years ago.

I guess I could have said almost a decade ago.

So, again, Apple only discussed scanning the iCloud Photos portion of their cloud service some time in the future, but NOTHING is being scanned now.

Google, on the other hand, has been scanning everything in your account for the past decade.

Also, documents from the discovery phase of Google's various antitrust trials show that Google has literally pressured device makers to hide the privacy settings from users.

Google also buys a copy of everybody's credit/debit card transaction data so they can spy on your real world purchases as much as they spy on your online life.

A company with surveillance capitalism as it's business model, like Google, will always be motivated to violate user privacy as much as possible.

I don't know why you're still trying to pretend that Google's cloud service is separate from Android while Apple's cloud service is not separate from iOS?

Re:Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro by lern_too_spel on Thursday October 21, 2021 @11:29AM (#28945879)
> So, again, Apple only discussed scanning the iCloud Photos portion of their cloud service some time in the future, but NOTHING is being scanned now.

I acknowledged that. The point is that they admitted this is an oversight because they are already scanning iCloud Mail. Their intentions are exactly the same as Google's. They are merely less competent. Apple is also a surveillance capitalist, as I explained in my previous post, giving several examples. iOS even splits the privacy settings of Apple's apps from the privacy settings of all other apps to make it harder for users to control what little Apple lets them control.

> Google also buys a copy of everybody's credit/debit card transaction data so they can spy on your real world purchases as much as they spy on your online life.

Apple gets the exact same information for transactions completed with Apple Pay. Users have to opt in for Google to see this information. Once again, exactly the same.

> I don't know why you're still trying to pretend that Google's cloud service is separate from Android while Apple's cloud service is not separate from iOS?

I already explained why. I don't have to use Google services on Android. iOS ties me to Apple's privacy nightmare. I listed several other examples of Apple data collection on iOS that are unavoidable. Android, even in builds provided by Google, has none of those problems.

Re:Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro by GeekyBear on Thursday October 21, 2021 @11:52AM (#28946303)
> Apple gets the exact same information for transactions completed with Apple Pay. Users have to opt in for Google to see this information. Once again, exactly the same.

Nope.

>Google has been able to track your location using Google Maps for a long time. Since 2014, it has used that information to provide advertisers with information on how often people visit their stores. But store visits aren’t purchases, so, as Google said in a blog post on its new service for marketers, it has partnered with “third parties” that give them access to 70 percent of all credit and debit card purchases.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/05/25/242717/google-no...

Buying a copy of everyone's credit card transaction data, no matter who they bank through, is not even close to the same.

>I don't have to use Google services on Android. iOS ties me to Apple's privacy nightmare.

Nope. Apple's cloud service is every bit as optional as Google's.

The difference is that Google has been scanning everything in Google accounts for the past decade.

Google and Facebook, as the pioneers of surveillance capitalism, are both privacy nightmares.

Re:Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro by lern_too_spel on Thursday October 21, 2021 @12:06PM (#28946551)
> Nope.

Yep.

> Buying a copy of everyone's credit card transaction data, no matter who they bank through, is not even close to the same.

As I already explained, the user has to opt in to share that data with Google. The purchase is a deal with the credit card companies to send data that users have opted in to share. https://support.google.com/googlepay/answer/10845853?hl=en

> Nope. Apple's cloud service is every bit as optional as Google's.

You completely ignored my post explaining why they are not. To repeat myself from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28933939:

"You cannot even install an app on your device without giving Apple your billing details and letting them know you installed it, which is used for ads. You cannot get your location without also telling it to Apple. You cannot tell Apple not to track your WiFi SSID's location. You cannot uninstall Apple News, which is filled with user tracking for ads. On and on."

Apple, Google, and Facebook are all privacy nightmares. The difference is that iOS forces that privacy nightmare on its users, while Android does not. Your comparison of Apple to Google is as irrelevant as it is incorrect.

Re:Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro by GeekyBear on Thursday October 21, 2021 @12:21PM (#28946784)
>As I already explained, the user has to opt in to share that data with Google.

As I have already explained, this has nothing to do with Google Pay whatsoever.

It doesn't matter who issues your card. Google made deals directly with Visa and Mastercard to buy your transaction data.

>as Google said in a blog post on its new service for marketers, it has partnered with “third parties” that give them access to 70 percent of all credit and debit card purchases.

Google has gone from spying on everything you do online, to spying on your offline behavior as well.

As for the rest of your errors. I'm afraid that I'm not willing to take the time to correct them individually.

Re:Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro by lern_too_spel on Thursday October 21, 2021 @01:27PM (#28947900)
> Google has gone from spying on everything you do online, to spying on your offline behavior as well.

That is about aggregate purchases, which have no privacy implications at all, not about individual purchases, which need to be matched either by email or by users opting in to share their credit card transactions, which is exactly the same as Apple Pay.

> Also, how exactly do you use the Google Play Store without having a Google account?

You don't have to use Google Play to install apps on Android. Even if you use Google Pay, you don't have to completely de-anonymize yourself with billing details.

> I'm afraid that I'm not willing to take the time to correct them individually.

More like you're afraid that you cannot correct them because they are already correct. I have made those claims hundreds of times on this forum, and they have never been corrected.

You have simply fallen for Apple's marketing without critically thinking about what data Apple actually collects, and the embarrassment of overpaying for an ecosystem that is clearly worse has understandably caused you to become defensive. The takeaway is to not trust marketing and verify if what the marketing actually claims is true. None of these companies are looking out for you. If Apple can make more money by exploiting your privacy on top of getting you to pay more, they will do it, and they are doing it (why actually make a privacy-respecting product that ties Apple's hands when they can just have the marketing department claim that it's a privacy respecting product and have their cake and eat it too). The only reason Android has gotten away with less user exploitation is that Google is still not yet as top-down driven as Apple, so the hackers who work on Android can influence how the base system is made while just enabling the company's services teams to build what they want on top of that instead of directly into the base system, and the only reason Google still lets them get away with that is that Android initially had to be released as AOSP + vendor bits in order to bring other companies into the ecosystem, and it is now too expensive to change course.

Re:Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro by GeekyBear on Thursday October 21, 2021 @01:59PM (#28948439)
>That is about aggregate purchases, which have no privacy implications at all

Spying on everywhere you shop no matter which bank issues your card has no privacy implications at all?

Sorry, but at this point I can't take you seriously.

Re:Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro by lern_too_spel on Thursday October 21, 2021 @06:00PM (#28951338)
Of course it doesn't have any privacy implications if they don't know it was you who made the purchase. That's what "aggregate" implies.
Re:Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro by GeekyBear on Friday October 22, 2021 @10:23AM (#28957561)
>Google Now Tracks Your Credit Card Purchases and Connects Them to Its Online Profile of You

It's literally the headline of the article I've posted three times now.

Connecting purchases to your user profile has nothing to do with aggregate data and everything to do with spying on individual users for a profit.

Re:Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro by lern_too_spel on Friday October 22, 2021 @02:35PM (#28960837)
I see it now. This works whether you're using iOS or Android, so iOS remains strictly worse for privacy.
Re:Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro by GeekyBear on Friday October 22, 2021 @05:14PM (#28962823)
It's Apple's fault Google spies on everyone's bank account?

I suppose it's also Apple's fault that Google pressured device makers to hide the Android privacy settings, and ignored users when they turned off the setting Google told them would stop Android from tracking their location?

Re:Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro by lern_too_spel on Sunday October 24, 2021 @11:34PM (#28984235)
> It's Apple's fault Google spies on everyone's bank account?

It might be Apple's fault that you believe I said that. Try reading my comments on an Android phone, which gives you a choice of multiple working web browsers instead of just different skins of the same buggy browser engine.

> Google pressured device makers to hide the Android privacy settings.

That's funny. The privacy settings on Android are more easily accessible than the privacy settings on iOS, and they apply to all apps, not special-casing Apple apps like iOS does.

> ignored users when they turned off the setting Google told them would stop Android from tracking their location?

You're talking about two different settings in two different Google apps, not in Android. The really faulty thing is that there is no way to prevent iOS from sending your location to Apple at all unless you don't get your location on your iOS device at all.

You keep trying to compare iOS to Google and failing. The correct comparison is iOS to Android, where iOS fails badly.