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Tim Cook Says Ads That Follow You Online Are 'Creepy' (cnet.com)
In a wide-ranging interview with MSNBC and Recode, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that everyone should know how much data they're sharing and what can be inferred about us from that information. He added that privacy "is a human right" and said he's worried about how advertisers and others can abuse access to our data. "To me it's creepy when I look at something and all of a sudden it's chasing me all the way across the web," Cook said. "I don't like that." CNET reports: The comments came as part of a wide-ranging interview between Cook, MSNBC's Chris Hayes and Recode's Kara Swisher. MSNBC broadcast the special, named "Revolution: Apple changing the world" at 5 p.m. PT on Friday. The interview was taped the day after Apple's education event in Chicago, where the company introduced a new 9.7-inch iPad and tools for teachers. The two publications released some early clips and comments from Cook over the past couple of weeks. That included remarks he made about Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Cook noted that Apple purposely chose not to make "a ton of money" off its customers' data and that Facebook failed to effectively regulate itself, prompting a need for government intervention. Along with Facebook and its privacy issues, Cook talked up DACA and immigration, tax reform, the changing job landscape and the need for everyone to learn coding, among other topics.
No they don't. They started iAd in 2010 to piss off Google, but shut it down in 2016. It sucked because it required a huge upfront investment, required giving Apple some control over your own ads, and Apple took 40% of ad revenue. Apple made a big deal about how iAds would be more secure for customers and less annoying. Thing is, advertisers want to be annoying and they don't give squat about customers of the host site.
If he's using an apple mobile device, they can folow him using the unique advertising identifier that apple devices apparently helpfully send to advertisers. He can "reset it" periodically via a 3-deep system menu option, but there isn't a menu option to opt out.
The first four were easy; this one is going to hurt. Cook, it's time to start open sourcing some of Apple's code
This one is easy because they've already done it. Go to http://opensource.apple.com/ and take a look. A lot of the recent vulnerabilities were found in code that has been open sourced but none of the ones that I'm aware of were found by source analysis. Apple incorporates static analysis into their workflow on a pretty aggressive basis so bugs that are easy to find by static analysis of the source code don't usually make it into their code. A lot of their recent vulnerabilities have been found by Google Project Zero and were found by fuzzing and then binary analysis. Having access to the source code might make it easier for third parties to fix it, but wouldn't make it noticeably easier for anyone to find holes.
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