Why doesn't Apple offer me the choice to opt-out of this "Differential privacy"?

[AFEPPL]

Im pretty sure the reaction would be scathing if the company you listed was either MS or Apple,
Indeed i recall just a thread - even though MS do allow you to opt of the data collection,

 

[ApfelKuchen]

Finally, I don't want targeted ads. I don't want any ads at all. I remember when the movie Blade Runner first came out. It was striking as there were TV screens everywhere, and ads on everything. It was quite a shock, feat the time could believe that was a possible future. It didn't look so good... Now we live there. Life is not about consumerism, it isn't about how much you've been able to acquire or how you've been able to acquire products that really define you, or express who you are. Life is about much deeper things...

The thing is, how do you get this "free" internet without ads? You think you'd be on this web site right now, complaining about the commercialism of the web, if ads weren't paying the cost of running this web site (and turning a profit for the owners)?

Maybe you grew up in the UK when there was only the BBC. You paid a tax for having a TV, you got BBC in return. No ads, quality programing. Seems fine to me. I grew up in the US, where nearly all broadcasting has always been commercial. That Blade Runner "future" was the American "present."

I remember the web when it was a predominantly non-commercial place. It was very nice in its way, really quite quaint by today's standards, but not nearly as useful as it is today. Once the world of commerce realized there was a way to make a buck, the web was off to the races.

The Internet as we know it today costs money. A lot of money. Now, if a business, educational institution, social cause, or government determines that the web is a cheaper/more effective way of disseminating information and interacting with its customers/user population then mailing out printed matter... they'll pay the cost. If someone has a hobby/passion, then they may pay the cost. But if someone wants to make a living publishing information or entertainment on the web, how do they do that? They can get people to pay for the service in some way, or they can attract an audience and sell that audience to advertisers (often, of course, a combination of both).

Whether selling physical goods or information/entertainment, you have to attract people to your place of business... it can't all be done by word-of-mouth. Advertisers have to go where their audience is. That's what "targeting" means. If nobody in your target audience reads the Wall Street Journal, then you don't advertise in the Wall Street Journal. Advertisers pay higher rates for efficient advertising, so if you resist targeting, it means the advertising-supported web sites you visit are getting paid lower rates. It's possible that you'll see more ads, because quantity has to make up for quality.

Now, I consider making a living to be one of the deeper things in life. If you're not able to eat, if you don't have a secure roof over your head, you probably won't have the time to interact in a meaningful way with the people around you, or contemplate the meaning of life. You can live the life of a hunter/gatherer or subsistence farmer, do a good job of it, and have enough time to contemplate the deeper things in life. Maybe you start bartering some of your surplus crops for goods you don't have the time or expertise to produce (say, steel tools so you can sow a larger field)... Well, now you live in the ugly world of commerce. And at one, fundamental level, the only reason it's as ugly as it is is that there are so many of us on this planet, and all of us have to eat.

 

[lennyeiger]

TL ; DR: I spent some time writing this, be an adult and read it.

Did read, and appreciate your viewpoint. I don't disagree.

This interest in appropriate privacy, however, is newly expressed. They made some missteps along they way that I am hoping they will fix.

We need a lot more controls so that we can block the "bad actors" in this game. They started with "block popups" for example, but the world keeps inventing new kinds of cookies that one can't block. Tracking cookies should be totally disallowed. Email should be encrypted, Apple should buy GPG and install it in every piece of mail so that Gmail doesn't read one's mail...

I am excited about the new iPhone feature that will read the phone number and let you know if its a spammer... these things are long overdue.

 

[JasonGoldsmith]

Some people do work on their devices that is very private in nature. By buying an Apple product I am not wishing to opt in to being a consumer research study specimen, why am I not given the opportunity to opt out? Even without a profile or identity attached to the information collection I am personally not interested in anything on my device being catalogged for research purposes

https://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/14/apple-touts-differential-privacy-in-ios-10/

Part of what worries me is Apple's plan to use differential privacy with message predictions. In theory, Apple's differential privacy means that the data is gathered on device and their differential privacy hashing is done on device before being sent back to Apple. Surely, this means there is on device key logging and if this data is stored on device, it's somehow accessible, maybe not OTA but if an attacker, law enforcement or anyone malicious could get the device in hand, they can access the data. Does this not poke holes in iMessages end to end encryption if what we type is being logged on device any way?

Am I wrong here?

 

[Tech198]

But shouldn't we as a consumer have the ability to tell apple not to collect the information if we choose? I understand to make their services on par with Google and Microsoft's, they need to increase the amount of data thy collect like Google and MS does, but do so in a way that protects our privacy. While I'll not argue if Apple's approach is better or not, I think selecting what goes back to the mothership should still be our decision.

Yep,, we should..... so is this the beginning of Apple going the same way as Windows 10 with data collection ?


Remember, that privacy reporting stuff Apple does on their site ? .

The more info you collect, the harder it will be to hold that "privacy" nature. Either Apple would get this, but then say they strip out parts of it and call it "we don't collect", or something.

Look at what they do with stock apps on iOS 10 ? They just hide, so in effect u don't reclaim any extra space by that stock app.

Now, image if they did the same thing here with differential privacy..? Apple has a knack for doing stuff to think users would be happy as long as they don't see anything...... so, yea,, i do question this.

There's a fine line between info and privacy...

 

[Phogro]

TL ; DR: I spent some time writing this, be an adult and read it.

Thanks for taking the time to put this together. One of the key challenges for Apple with this new technology is ensuring that what they are doing is no more risky to your personal privacy than what we currently have today. Other companies have conditioned us to expect that when we hear that data is being analyzed we assume that the company is doing this for their own benefit in order to sell that information to third parties and turn a profit. Apple needs to make sure that whatever marketing dollars they put into Differential Privacy that they clearly explain to the public what makes it so safe and how they don't intend to use this information to sell advertising.

Isn't the whole reason why Apple decided to kill off iAd because they couldn't do a good enough job at targeting users without breaking some of their fundamental beliefs about privacy?

 

[kdarling]

Are we sure it isn't? Currently iOS has a setting to limit ad tracking and to limit what reporting is sent back to Apple or developers. I don't see anything that suggests the idea of "differential privacy" will remove those choices.

Just be aware that the iOS ad tracking setting does not actually do anything, except to set a flag that the developer is voluntarily supposed to honor, and not use the device id to match users up.

Not that it matters anyway, because as soon as Apple added that flag, third parties came up with MAC address to device association tables to get around it... which renders the flag moot.

When I buy a computer, why should it give anyone access to my info, my buying habits, whether or not it can be traced directly to me? Why are they entitled to that information?

Yet we all, including I bet you, voluntarily submitted to creating an Apple account, with personal info and credit card.

Finally, I don't want targeted ads. I don't want any ads at all.

Nice thought, but here you are on an ad supported forum

(Although you can donate here and remove the ads. Doing that everywhere on the internet would quickly become prohibitively expensive, though.)

You may be correct. However, I'm guessing it wasn't always this way. The other services, Gmail, for example, has been very clear that they read all your email. The NSA records every phone conversation. not only in the US but in many other countries. Location services allow them to track your movements everywhere. Is that good?

I'm not a criminal and don't plan on becoming one, but this tracking is not right...

I seriously doubt that NSA records every US call. For one thing, US citizen surveillance is not in their charter (unless you're talking to someone overseas). They DO ask the carriers to keep call metadata for a longer time now, so that if a crime occurs, they can do a Google-like history search and track down any associates.

NSA is okay in my book, because it's mostly outward oriented. It's the internally focused agencies like the FBI that I worry about. They're the ones who want to use info to actively track American citizens.

The point that is made here is that Apple has to say they collect your data because it's your data that is being processed by their server. Even if it's never seen by human eyes, they have to say this. The big criticism that deep learning and big data has around it is due to companies like Google and Microsoft, who were known to take this data and sell it to third parties.

You were doing fairly well until this. No, they don't sell personally identifiable data, any more than Apple does.

 

[mildocjr]

Isn't the whole reason why Apple decided to kill off iAd because they couldn't do a good enough job at targeting users without breaking some of their fundamental beliefs about privacy?

No, it was lack of adoption from brands due to cost. I know Wikipedia isn't a good source, but it does give a timeline and it's clearly implied that iAd was too expensive for most brands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd
[doublepost=1466178418][/doublepost]

You were doing fairly well until this. No, they don't sell personally identifiable data, any more than Apple does.

Apple is focusing on ads based on trends, not exactly what you went for. Microsoft and Google display ads based on your recent images, Advertising agencies collect data on what IP address they were delivered to and what content, this IP address could be geo-located and ran through the Yellow Pages to identify someone. Apple is basing it on trends so by the time the advertising agencies display an ad to you, it's a trend that is displayed to everyone. Apple isn't trying to promote user specific ads, they are trying to promote brand awareness through their ads. Microsoft and Google don't sell PII directly, but give the advertising agencies enough info so they can figure out more about you. Even free Apps on the App Store do this.

The idea is this, if you collect enough data points through Facebook, Twitter, browsing sessions, and apps, an advertising agency just needs to inject an ad into an App that uses Facebook, then based on the amount of information you provide on Facebook will allow them to discern Twitter, as well as figure out your browsing history based on ads from that company that were delivered to that device or that area.

It's also really simple to hide these practices, every see your IP address and computer type on Facebook? That's their data collection practice, this happens even if you are on a mobile device. They knew they'd get caught eventually being a high visibility company so they mask it with recent logons under security, sure it makes for good visibility into the security of your account, but that is their data and you just clear it from the screen. If you were to delete that data from Facebook they could take you to court for compromising the integrity of their system.

I know this sounds like some doomsday tin-foil hat stuff and honestly I only care enough to figure out what I can do to limit my data exposure to ad companies, if they want my data, they need to pay me.

 

[kdarling]

Apple is focusing on ads based on trends, not exactly what you went for.

Perhaps in the future it'll be that vague, but for years their iAds product sold ad space exactly the same way as Google does -- by utilizing personal information to slot us into target categories.

I know this sounds like some doomsday tin-foil hat stuff and honestly I only care enough to figure out what I can do to limit my data exposure to ad companies, if they want my data, they need to pay me.

I agree with the idea that, since everyone else is making billions off our info, then why the heck aren't we getting a cash kick back as well ?

Ditto for Apple Pay. When I first heard that Apple had sold our own banks access to us, I thought oh cool, Apple is going to set up an AP rewards program for its loyal users. Bzzt. Nope. Greed won out.

As for ads, yes, we do get something in return. I mean, every website we go to has to be paid for somehow. As do Google or Bing search and maps and other cool services. It's really nice to have forums like this, without having to pay.

That said, I've always advocated that every site should also have a paid access version without ads, so anyone who wants to stay "private" can do so. MacRumors is actually a site like that, btw. (how to link here)

 

[997440]

Informational blog post on Differential Privacy by cryptographer, Matthew Green:

.....
To make a long story short, it sounds like Apple is going to be collecting a lot more data from your phone. They're mainly doing this to make their services better, not to collect individual users' usage habits. To guarantee this, Apple intends to apply sophisticated statistical techniques to ensure that this aggregate data -- the statistical functions it computes over all your information -- don't leak your individual contributions. In principle this sounds pretty good. But of course, the devil is always in the details.

While we don't have those details, this seems like a good time to at least talk a bit about what Differential Privacy is, how it can be achieved, and what it could mean for Apple -- and for your iPhone.
.....

http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2016/06/what-is-differential-privacy.html

 

[asleep]

But shouldn't we as a consumer have the ability to tell apple not to collect the information if we choose? ...I think selecting what goes back to the mothership should still be our decision.

Agree.

There may come a day when we long for the dumb phone.

 

[Rogifan]

What information is Apple collecting with iOS 10 that they weren't collecting in iOS 9 and prior?

 

[997440]

Some people do work on their devices that is very private in nature. By buying an Apple product I am not wishing to opt in to being a consumer research study specimen, why am I not given the opportunity to opt out? Even without a profile or identity attached to the information collection I am personally not interested in anything on my device being catalogged for research purposes

https://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/14/apple-touts-differential-privacy-in-ios-10/

But shouldn't we as a consumer have the ability to tell apple not to collect the information if we choose? I understand to make their services on par with Google and Microsoft's, they need to increase the amount of data thy collect like Google and MS does, but do so in a way that protects our privacy. While I'll not argue if Apple's approach is better or not, I think selecting what goes back to the mothership should still be our decision.

Why should the user not have the choice? Things like this should always be an explicit opt in.

Who said you cannot choose?

It's opt-in, not opt-out, even!

Update from MR :

.....
First and foremost, as with all of Apple's data collection, there is an option to opt out of sharing data with the company. Differential data collection is entirely opt in and users can decide whether or not to send data to Apple.
.....

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apples-new-differential-privacy-feature-is-opt-in.1979542/

 

[Mr_Brightside_@]

Update from MR :
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apples-new-differential-privacy-feature-is-opt-in.1979542/

Beat me to it!

 

[Tech198]

isn't "send data anonymously to Apple" also default turn on as well ? but at least that's in setup on iOS.

 

[997440]

isn't "send data anonymously to Apple" also default turn on as well ? but at least that's in setup on iOS.

It's been awhile since I've done an upgrade but in this video (OTA, iOS 9 upgrade) at approximately 9:31, the options for "send data anonymously to Apple" and "App Analytics" are shown as being choices :

Edit to add : there's similar vids at YT showing a choice concerning sending "Diagnostics and Usage" during El Capitan installs.

 

[Zirel]

isn't "send data anonymously to Apple" also default turn on as well ? but at least that's in setup on iOS.

No, there are two options, you have to tap one to continue, "do not send" is at bold.