Apple Took Out a CES Ad To Troll Its Competitors Over Privacy (engadget.com)

An anonymous reader shared a report: Historically, Apple hasn't had an official presence at CES. It's not surprising given the company's success at hosting and hyping its own product launch events -- long before the iPod and iPhone brought Apple to the top of the technology mountain, Steve Jobs keynotes were can't miss events. The company is also very deliberate about its marketing campaigns; when I see Apple billboard ads, they focus on new product close-ups with minimal messaging. This is why the giant ad banner I saw when I arrived in Las Vegas yesterday for CES 2019 caught my eye. Positioned not far from the convention center where CES takes place, the sign is a cheeky riff on the old "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" slogan -- and with just a few words, it casts an Apple-shaped shadow over the convention.

Comments

Free pass over privacy

[sinij]

I don't understand why Google, Facebook, Twitter and a lot of other companies get a pass over privacy. It used to be that Apple, was a bad player in this area by unnecessary collecting data. While Apple didn't change, everyone else rushed into most outrageous abuses. So, sadly, now Apple is one of the better players in this area.

Re:Free pass over privacy

[fluffernutter]

It's because people don't really care. I have to admit, I use an Android phone so I guess I am encouraging privacy violations. But the alternative is to lock myself into Apple's walled garden, inability to simply copy files to my phone, and instead have to use a format iTunes will be happy with or use a flaky in app transfer; I pick sacrificing my privacy.

Re:Free pass over privacy

[Presence Eternal]

I care, and I'd pay an extra fifty to have great privacy on my phone. I won't pay an extra five hundred though. Or put up with a screen with a wedge sliced out of it. Or no headphone jack. Or no microsd support. Or virtually no customization. Or...

Re:Free pass over privacy

[b0s0z0ku]

What if you don't want said files on Apple's servers? If it can't be copied cloudfree, it's worthless for privacy.

Re:Free pass over privacy

[Kohath]

Similarly easy: email the files to yourself and open them on your phone. Or use an app that supports Box/Dropbox/OneDrive/etc.

It's very, very easy for anyone without a long string of hangups or other random complaints about anything and everything.

Re:Free pass over privacy

[AmiMoJo]

"Free pass", as in hauled before Congress, Secrets leaked by the UK Parliament, multiple lawsuits, so bad they had to start taking out adverts to reassure people?

You also need to understand what each of those companies is actually doing. I mean, Twitter's privacy invasion is pretty minimal. Google makes everything opt-in for the most part, at least in the EU where it is legally requires - maybe the US is worse. So really it's just Facebook, and Facebook is taking a lot of flak for it.

Re:Free pass over privacy

[thomst]

b0s0z0ku applauded:

Well said -- Apple practically invented the walled garden and computing as a prison.

Not even. Not at all, in fact.

Once upon a time, there was a company called Wang that owned the word processing market. If you wanted to use computers to process words, there really wasn't any choice, at least in a corporate environment at the departmental level or above. And, much like Oracle's sales model, buying into Wang meant hiring ridiculously-overpriced consultants to create document templates and teach your staff how to use their proprietary, terminal-based network and software. You even had to buy printers from them, because there were no third-party products that worked with Wang's hardware ecosystem.

Oh, and you didn't actually get to buy Wang systems - you could only lease them. And, boy, were they expensive to lease, even discounting things like support contracts and having to pay Wang technicians to install upgrades and patches.

Before that, there was IBM and its competitors in the mainframe market, with their proprietary hardware and software systems and their own legions of consultants and product support engineers.

Steve Jobs learned about closed computer ecosystems from the real pioneers in the field. In fact, it's only because in 1981, or thereabouts, the same IBM that kept such an iron grip on its mainframe environment inexplicably decided to open its PC architecture to third-party vendors that we've gotten used to open standards for personal computing hardware and the OSes that control it. Otherwise, closed gardens would be the rule, rather than the exception for the consumer and small-business computing markets.

I don't have a lot of good things to say about the current version of Apple, but Steve Jobs isn't to blame for the walled garden concept - it existed long before he was even conceived ...

Re:Free pass over privacy

[Kohath]

It's a very easy workaround. But there's also Dropbox, etc.

Regular people who don't have hangups about WTF-ever can use one of the dozen simple ways to get files onto their iPhone. Only people like you have trouble.

Re:Free pass over privacy

[Kohath]

If it's too private for your email, then keep it on an isolated computer that's not connected to the Internet. Don't walk around with those files on your phone.

You're afraid of every 3rd-party service. About 98% of everyone else isn't. I will admit I don't intuitively understand fringe sensibilities.

Re: Free pass over privacy

[tepples]

If you don't like those apps then just take them out of your home screen and don't use them.

"Uninstall updates" doesn't recover the gigabyte of space that the outdated copies of these apps occupy in an Android device's read-only system partition.

Re:Free pass over privacy

[tepples]

Run a web server on your laptop, connect to said web server from your phone using a 10.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x IP address, and upload things that way.

Re:Free pass over privacy

[LynnwoodRooster]

Here you go. You don't have to use Google, Facebook, Twitter, or any of those if you want a smart phone with a secured, hardened OS. You can strip pretty much all Google tools out of Android, you don't need to use any of the social/data gathering platforms.

Re:Free pass over privacy

[LynnwoodRooster]

I like to just plug a USB cable between $DEVICE and my phone, and just drag-and-drop files because my phone enumerates as a flash drive.

Re:Free pass over privacy

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You're seriously suggesting, in a discussion about online privacy, that a reasonable alternative to sharing your digital life with whoever makes your phone is to make your own phone?

Here's an alternative suggestion: Makers of consumer devices are required by law to make all data collection and use of online services transparent, with notifications prominently displayed on the packaging and UI to legally mandated visibility standards. Moreover, any data sharing that is not essential for the device to operate must be optional, with user controls that stick once set and are set to full privacy by default. Likewise, the user must explicitly opt-in to activate any online service, even if it is essential for the use of the device. Penalty for failure to comply is 10% of global revenues from sales of the affected devices in the first year and the percentage doubles each year, in addition to any server ever touched without the correct user authority being subject to removal and destruction without compensation.

See, anyone can propose severely one-sided rules for this game. The difference is that for some reason we're accepting the rules set by big business in an industry where competition isn't functioning effectively any more because the abuse is too profitable under current laws for any big player to offer an alternative that doesn't come with that abuse.

Re:Free pass over privacy

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Every method you've suggested so far involves transferring your files via a third party. There is absolutely no reason anyone should have to do that to transfer data between their personal devices that are sitting next to each other on a desk right in front of them, and your whole approach goes against the generally good principle of security and privacy by design and by default.

Re:Free pass over privacy

[Kohath]

...your whole approach goes against the generally good principle...

The complaint was about inability to transfer files, not about failure to optimize upon such a principle. You want files protected optimally, don't transfer them at all. You want easy transfer of files, then there are easy ways.

You want some in-between thing that's partly optimized for one thing and partly optimized for an entirely contrary thing, then no one can guess which amount of optimization you want for which side of the balance, so no one can offer a suggestion for that. Too bad.

Re:Free pass over privacy

[Solandri]

The best compromise is a rooted Android device. No walled garden, and you can use something like AFWall+ to block apps from sending info over the network unless you explicitly allow it. Or you can use XPrivacyLua to feed the privacy-invading apps fake data to pollute what they collect. e.g. Make Facebook think you're located in the South Pacific. The root hiding tools are mostly effective at running apps which normally refuse to run on rooted devices (e.g. Netflix).

That said, some privacy must be given up for functionality. I had to mull over giving Google my location data for several months. In the end, I gave it to them because I use Google Maps' current traffic conditions heavily. The traffic updates are generated by phones sending their locations to Google in real-time; so if everyone chose to protect their location data, there would be no live traffic on Maps. I could either participate in helping provide the service I use, or I could become a leech - using but not giving. I decided I was morally obligated to participate.

Re:Free pass over privacy

[Kohath]

Normal people transfer files the way they are given, because they don't know any better.

Also because it works. Then they go on with their lives instead of worrying about ethereal threats.

Normal people are also subject to identity theft, targeting marketing, and all the other risks that come with sharing potentially sensitive data with third parties unnecessarily.

That's a good reason to use iCloud.

It is baffling to me that you seem to equate the common behaviour with good behaviour. Why on earth would anyone do that?

Because it was about transferring files to an iPhone, not about passing a purity test on forensic data handling.

Re:Free pass over privacy

[gnasher719]

It used to be that Apple, was a bad player in this area by unnecessary collecting data.

Could you give some examples of that? Google is a company whose sole purpose is to collect data about you and hire it out to advertisers. Apple's purpose is to make devices and sell them to end users.

Google was the company who quite accidentally added code to their ads when running on a Microsoft browser that went around the user's privacy settings, and quite accidentally added different code when running on Safari that went around the Safari user's privacy settings.

Re: Free pass over privacy

[gnasher719]

Celebrities should use 2-factor.

Now seriously, while I need a password that cannot be cracked when it turns up in a 10 million password collection that hackers have "liberated", any celebrity trying to protect things that they _really_ don't want to be seen needs a password that cannot be cracked by someone who investigates their lives, finds all the schools they have been to, the names of all pets they owned, and so on and so on.

I have passwords that resist random or dictionary attacks, but that could be cracked if someone investigated my life very thoroughly. That's fine because no hacker does that. Not if I was a celebrity.

Re:Free pass over privacy

[apoc.famine]

That's not remotely true. Encrypt your data, transfer via the cloud, then unencrypt.

Unless you're using a very outdated encryption method, the absolute worst that can happen is that they keep your data for as long as it takes for that method to get broken or for computing to advance far enough that it can be brute forced. And about the only people willing to do that are the intelligence agencies of nation states, and if you're on their radar, you're probably fucked in a dozen different ways anyway.

Re:Free pass over privacy

[phantomfive]

Airdrop worked fine last time I tried it.

Re:Free pass over privacy

[Kohath]

That you consider yourself a "non-crank" after the above, and everything else you've ever whined/lied about here, lol.

I'm not the least bit cranky.

What's wrong with anything posted in this discussion? These guys are trying to say it's a big problem copying data to an iPhone when it's actually very easy. Kids and old people can do it, but these Slashdot readers (of all people) have trouble.

And they're trying to claim that's because everyone else is doing it wrong...? That's hard to relate to. You'd think some self-awareness would eventually be realized. Doesn't seem to be happening though.

PRISM

[deadaluspark]

They're still a PRISM partner with the US Government which means they are completely compromised and your data isn't safe at all. Why does anyone even buy these fucking advertisements? Did everyone already forget about the Ed Snowden leaks? Are my fellow countrymen really that insipid, thick, and forgetful?

Re:PRISM

[Registered Coward v2]

They're still a PRISM partner with the US Government which means they are completely compromised and your data isn't safe at all. Why does anyone even buy these fucking advertisements?

Because they want to believe.

Did everyone already forget about the Ed Snowden leaks?

Who?

Are my fellow countrymen really that insipid, thick, and forgetful?

Yes

Re:PRISM

[AmiMoJo]

To be fair there is no evidence that PRISM was voluntary, and in fact the leaked documents show that it worked by attacking those company's networks. Google took very public actions to cut off access after the leak. I'm sure Apple did something too, but didn't say what exactly.

For example, there was that infamous slide showing otherwise protected Gmail data flowing between data centres. A few months later Google had it fully encrypted.

I hate Apple but....

[tomxor]

How is this trolling? They are advertising a supposed feature of their phone, and supposing their competitors lack that feature then it's automatically trolling? I really hate Apple and think they are evil, but my view is not so warped as to think advertising advantages is trolling.

Re:I hate Apple but....

[Kohath]

Anything someone doesn’t like for any reason is called trolling now. It's easier to name-call than to spend 10 seconds thinking about what's the actual objection.

Re:I hate Apple but....

[Sebby]

The wording of the title is meant to trigger the Apple fanboys.

Re:I hate Apple but....

[serviscope_minor]

How is this trolling?

It might be true but it's clearly done in a way to wind up the companies at CES. In other words, it's a troll, and an excellent classy one. Even people here seem to have forgotten that trolling is winding up, not just shit posting.

What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone

[Darinbob]

That's the slogan used, for those who don't want to have to actually click on the story and supply advertising revenue to a clickbait site.

I just switched back to iPhone for this reason

[Btrot69]

I bought an iPhone on the first day in '07, cause it was obviously a great thing.

In about 2012, I switched to Android, mostly cause I run linux everywhere else and like it.
I thought I'd have more privacy, then slowly realized how stupid that was.
Looked into Cyanogenmod and LineageOS over and over, but ran out of time to ever actually do it.

Finally gave up, bit down, and went back to iPhone (it was a hand-me-down 6S)
I really liked Android. Still lots that can't do on the iPhone.

I really wish there was a better choice, but for now, I'm depending on Apple to keep the worst data harvesters at bay.

With Google, you don't get that option, got burned too many times.

Re:I just switched back to iPhone for this reason

[Solandri]

In about 2012, I switched to Android, mostly cause I run linux everywhere else and like it.
I thought I'd have more privacy, then slowly realized how stupid that was.
Looked into Cyanogenmod and LineageOS over and over, but ran out of time to ever actually do it.

If you were considering Cyanogenmod (phone has unlocked bootloader and is rooted), you didn't look hard enough.

AFWall+ lets you block apps from sending data over the network. Let's you selectively allow/deny access to the LAN, WiFi, and/or cellular networks for each app and service on your phone. (NetGuard claims to do the same without root, but I haven't tried it.)

XPrivacyLua takes a different approach. It allows the apps to send data back, it just turns the data they see into fake data. So your location will be spoofed as being in the South Pacific, they will see a fake contact list instead of your real one, This works better if an app you need needs network access to function or crashes if you simply block its network access.

Who do I root for here?

[Snotnose]

Apple, who has usually had (IMHO) second rate hardware for over inflated prices, but they care about user's privacy. Or everyone else.