Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Apple Is Tracking You Even When Its Own Privacy Settings Say It’s Not, New Research Says

 Crikey editor-in-chief on indefinite leave after journalism awards incident


Our media is failing us

At a moment, when one side of politics has abandoned the bases of democracy as an impediment to their grasp on power, we need journalists holding them to account rather than gaslighting the public, normalising the rot. 


WHERE MY CHARACTERS COME FROM

I don’t choose them; they choose me.

The Myth of Online Privacy: Risks, Dangers, and Solutions

MakeUseOf: “Privacy these days means something completely different than it did even a decade ago. And the only things we have to blame for this are the internet and ourselves. In the age of the internet, we’re only as “private” as the tools we use allow us to be, which isn’t much. While you rejoice in using a lot of free tools, know that you’re actually paying with data. Data is the new currency now and we’re all “giving it away” by blindly accepting all those terms and conditions on a ton of services we use day in and day out. If you deep dive into the privacy policies of these companies, you’ll immediately notice that your data is sold to various third parties. Of course, none of your data is sold with your name on it. You’re nothing but a number to them. This is for “anonymity” purposes, on some level, but it also just makes things easier as they sell your data to marketers so you get targeted with relevant ads.The biggest culprits are all those companies you interact with all day. Sure, Google has a ton of apps you absolutely love, but at the end of the day they make most of their revenue from advertising. Meta’s Facebook and Instagram are great when you’re bored, right? But they pick up a ton of information about your browsing habits, what you like, what you don’t like, what you stop to watch, what you scroll by, and so on. Any site you visit plants a cookie on your browser and every click you make gets logged somewhere…”



STEVE JOBS: PERSONALLY OWNED AND WORN BIRKENSTOCK SANDALS (WITH BOOK) – WITH NFT Julien’s Live 


Gizmodo: “An independent test suggests Apple collects data about you and your phone when its own settings promise to “disable the sharing of Device Analytics altogether. For all of Apple’s talk about how private your iPhone is, the company vacuums up a lot of data about you. iPhones do have a privacy setting that is supposed to turn off that tracking. According to a new report by independent researchers, though, Apple collects extremely detailed information on you with its own apps even when you turn off tracking, an apparent direct contradiction of Apple’s own description of how the privacy protection works. The iPhone Analytics setting makes an explicit promise. Turn it off, and Apple says that it will “disable the sharing of Device Analytics altogether.” However, Tommy Mysk and Talal Haj Bakry, two app developers and security researchers at the software company Mysk, took a look at the data collected by a number of Apple iPhone apps—the App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV, Books, and Stocks. They found the analytics control and other privacy settings had no obvious effect on Apple’s data collection—the tracking remained the same whether iPhone Analytics was switched on or off.”

See also this Twitter thread by Mysk – “The recent changes that Apple has made to App Store ads should raise many #privacyconcerns. It seems that the #AppStore app on iOS 14.6 sends every tap you make in the app to Apple. This data is sent in one request: (data usage & personalized ads are off).”

Apple Is Tracking You Even When Its Own Privacy Settings Say It’s Not, New Research Says Gizmodo


 Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, November 19, 2022 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. 

On a weekly basis Pete Weisshighlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: Google Settles 40 States’ Location Data Suit for $392 Million; FBI Alert: Watch Out for Subscription Renewal Scams; GAO Science & Tech Spotlight: Zero Trust Architecture; and Employee tracking: From your keystrokes to your emails, here’s what your employer can see.