[HN Gopher] Et Tu, Procter and Gamble?
___________________________________________________________________
Et Tu, Procter and Gamble?
Author : FabHK
Score : 139 points
Date : 2021-04-10 10:49 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (daringfireball.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (daringfireball.net)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Who here bets Apple would ever pull WeChat?
| tinus_hn wrote:
| They probably won't pull WeChat but they could easily refuse
| updates while disabling tracking points. After all, there is no
| reason an app can't be told an iPhone booted up on January 1st,
| 1970.
| philistine wrote:
| Apple has said it won't hold updates for policy reasons
| anymore. They seem to have forgotten they promised that, but
| they did.
| shoto_io wrote:
| _> Doing this is clearly against Apple's rules. The questions
| are: Can Apple detect these techniques? And what is Apple going
| to do if they do identify apps in China using CAID in flagrant
| violation of the App Store rules, if those apps have the backing
| (implicit or explicit) of the Chinese government?_
|
| As much as I love Apple's move for more robust privacy policies,
| I doubt that they have a chance to prevent this from happening.
| From a tech perspective, because it requires a lot of effort to
| detect these.
|
| But also from a business perspective. It's one thing to ban a
| game, but banning WeChat?
| tracybrinkmann wrote:
| I have to agree with you here...
| Sebb767 wrote:
| I don't get the connection to WeChat here. You need to log in
| anyways, so why should WeChat run any fingerprinting? The user
| ID is right there, given by the user.
| shubik22 wrote:
| I would guess what they want is the ability to link behavior
| outside of WeChat (e.g. looking at computer monitors on
| Amazon, and then reading tech news on the Verge) with your
| profile on WeChat. Apple's changes are in part designed to
| limit the abilities for entities to track you via third party
| cookies as you go around the web; device fingerprinting would
| be a substitute for those third party cookies.
| vonwoodson wrote:
| Attaching a username to a legal name is one high-level
| fusion. Attaching these names to a device ID is another.
| Attaching that to a different app and username are a couple
| more. This account information can be used in finding out
| when that user logs into another device.
|
| If any of those devices are sharing browsing history then
| that can be fused to online accounts. If any of those devices
| are active during daily commutes can fuse brick-and-mortar
| shopping destinations, place of employment, what daycare
| watches their kids, where Mom and Dad live.
|
| Maybe, some of that data is embarrassing. Maybe, some of that
| data could be used to tell a story about you. Maybe, that
| story if false... but, would be very difficult to refute if
| made public. Maybe, you should just work with us (this one
| time, I promise) rather than have your whole life turned
| upside down...
|
| No drop of water takes responsibility for the flood.
| oxylibrium wrote:
| WeChat may have a convenient way to track users within the
| app, but a "device ID" equivalent is still useful for ad
| agencies to transparently target users on other apps based on
| the things they do on WeChat. (Otherwise, they'd need to add
| more user friction - for example, forcing users to link
| accounts.)
|
| For context, some have argued [0] that modern Chinese life,
| in many ways, revolves around WeChat - chat, payments,
| location sharing, games, and more - and I don't find any
| reason to doubt those claims.
|
| Sure, Apple _could_ say no if WeChat decided to integrate
| fingerprint-driven tracking on iOS, but because of WeChat
| being a "super app" in China, Tencent could just say "sure,
| we'll stop supporting iOS" and that would cut iOS devices off
| from one of the most used apps in China, and make everyday
| life harder for everyone in China with an iPhone.
|
| With iOS being the minority player in China [1][2], Tencent
| can likely get away with it too - I don't foresee a
| competitor rising up out of nowhere especially when WeChat
| still has a deep network effect for the remaining 78-82% of
| the population that uses Android.
|
| [0]: obtained from Wikipedia: https://web.archive.org/web/201
| 70103135948/https://www.fastc...
|
| [1]: https://www.kantarworldpanel.com/global/smartphone-os-
| market...
|
| [2]: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/china
| yladiz wrote:
| > With iOS being the minority player in China, Tencent can
| likely get away with it too
|
| I would somewhat disagree. Yes, iOS is a minority in China,
| but for wealthier people it's a higher percentage as it's a
| status symbol (as it is in many places). I don't know if
| this would change the calculus much but it might, and
| apparently the party is keen on cutting down on apps
| requiring more than essential data collection without
| consent[1] so it's possible that the government won't
| directly force Apple's hand in this case (as in, by forcing
| WeChat to remain in the App Store even using CAID).
|
| 1: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-cac-
| personaldata-id...
| motohagiography wrote:
| Slight issue with privacy is that any persistent source with
| sufficient entropy is going to be a unique identifier, and even
| low entropy sources when used together create an n^n^n... sized
| field of identifiers. Same goes for browser fingerprinting, it's
| the same set of techniques.
|
| > _Through apps, CAID collects user device data, such as the
| device start-up time, model, time zone, country, language and IP
| address._
|
| Any business whose gross margin per unit is as low as P&G's is
| effectively an advertising company with a smelly water supplier
| in the back. We can probably expect the same surveillance
| techniques from the other CPG manufacturers as well.
|
| The browser itself has become parasitic, and the only viable way
| to mitigate this predatory advertiser and surveillance problem is
| to recognize and delineate the difference between what can only
| be described as the hegemonic internet (hegemonet?) and private
| channels like matrix/element, or previously irc and other ways of
| connecting.
| sixothree wrote:
| Maybe VPN providers need to start providing hosted browsers.
| ducktective wrote:
| Shouldn't it be: Et Tu, Procter _et_ Gamble?
| greenwich26 wrote:
| Well, the site wrote it with an ampersand (&), which is
| originally a creative combination of "e" and "t". My nitpick
| is: shouldn't it be "Et _vos_ , Procter & Gamble?"
| nerdponx wrote:
| No way! Who refers to a company as a _plural_?
|
| Unless the Romans did it, but I was under the impression that
| "organizations" like the Senate (senatus) were singular.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > No way! Who refers to a company as a plural?
|
| British English tends to refer to organizations as plurals
| instead of singular.
| bitlevel wrote:
| Perhaps Et vous (pluralised you)?
| cafeoh wrote:
| "vous" if pluralized you in French, not in Latin.
| [deleted]
| Xophmeister wrote:
| It's Latin, rather than French.
| billyjobob wrote:
| That's French, not Latin.
| Centrino wrote:
| It's Latin, not French. "Et tu" could be from both
| languages, but the origin of the saying is what Julius
| Caesar said to Brutus after being deadly stabbed.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| There's also _Tu quoque_ meaning the same thing in Latin.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Did Caesar actually say that, or was is just a line
| written into Shakespeare's play?
|
| I've never been clear on that.
| acheron wrote:
| Some ancient historians quoted him as saying something
| similar in Greek, though who knows if it actually
| happened -- ancient historians were often "creative". I
| think the source of the Latin phrase is Shakespeare
| though.
| simias wrote:
| The words individually could indeed be French but we'd
| use the oblique case here, "et toi (aussi), Procter &
| Gamble?".
|
| Also, I'm not sure what the usage would be in classical
| Latin, but using the singular to talk about a company in
| French seems perfectly appropriate. IIRC it's the Brits
| who like to use the plural for companies and
| institutions.
| stuartd wrote:
| The ampersand symbol is a ligature.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographic_ligature
| mistersquid wrote:
| > The ampersand symbol is a ligature.
|
| Nice one. Never knew this either. Small
| clarification/update.
|
| The ampersand symbol is in the process of becoming
| something other than a ligature, specifically:
|
| > The ampersand comes in many different forms. Because of
| its ubiquity, it is generally no longer considered a
| ligature, but a logogram.
| dls2016 wrote:
| How did I never learn this?
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| You never learned anything, until you did; like this =D
| smitty1e wrote:
| It's an allusion to Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar".
| billyjobob wrote:
| Possibly if you were writing in Latin. I think you would also
| have to Latinize the names. But _et tu_ is a foreign phrase
| that has been adopted into English from Shakespeare, so you can
| use it in an English sentence without translating the rest of
| the sentence.
| pmichaud wrote:
| If they had used the ampersand it would have been perfect!
| FabHK wrote:
| Submitter here: I'm pretty sure that I've just copied the
| story title from the webpage (with the ampersand) and pasted
| it into the HN box, so I assume that HN software then
| replaced the ampersand by "and".
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| It may show up eventually here:
| https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/
| pmichaud wrote:
| Edges case are hard -- both you and HN are forgiven :)
| kleinsch wrote:
| > Basically, IDFA was Apple's attempt to work with companies to
| provide a way to offer a sanctioned identifier for advertising
| tracking that respected user privacy and user control over
| tracking. It didn't work -- these companies have no respect for
| user privacy or user control, even with IDFA.
|
| I'd disagree with this part - I think IDFA worked as designed,
| Apple has changed in terms of what they're marketing and how much
| power they have to enforce their vision.
|
| Apple created IDFA in 2012 to give users a way to control and
| reset their advertising ID. It worked as designed. Advertisers
| could track users, but users had control to reset their
| advertising ID to disassociate their data. Later Apple introduced
| the option to disable tracking but it was opt-in, not opt-out, so
| most users still allowed tracking and didn't realize it's
| happening.
|
| In iOS 14, they've created an opt-in system, (which everyone
| knows most users won't opt into) and a ban hammer for apps that
| violate the spirit of that opt-in.
|
| Ten years ago Apple wasn't running ads about privacy and they
| were working on building out the App Store. Hell, 2012 is also
| when they introduced signing into Facebook and Twitter built into
| the operating system. Smacking down ad networks and decreasing
| revenue for app developers would have been a lot harder. They're
| in a much better position now.
| gumby wrote:
| > think IDFA worked as designed, Apple has changed in terms of
| what they're marketing and how much power they have to enforce
| their vision.
|
| Companies improve their products and sometimes it changes the
| ecosystem. This is way better than, say, the car industry who
| fought safety enhancements for decades. This is improving
| safety for their customers; the people who believe they will
| suffer for this are like the high-interest payday lenders of
| the internet.
|
| Apple has taken a pro-privacy position for longer than the
| iphone has existed. Execution has not always been great but I
| do believe their position is genuine. However I'll let them
| defend themselves on this one: they have a communications
| group.
|
| I'm not trying to claim they are saints, merely that I believe
| that their pattern of actions Has shown a longstanding interest
| in their customers' privacy. Perfect? No, but higher than any
| others, AFAICT.
|
| PS: if you want another car analogy: certain other actions by
| Apple remind me of the car companies' proprietary extensions to
| the open OBD-II. So again, not saints.
| yarcob wrote:
| Unfortunately their protections do not really apply to their
| own apps.
|
| While 3rd party apps need to show individual dialogs to get
| access to location data, all their own services (eg. data
| collection for maps, or the "Find My" network) automatically
| get access to location data if you enable location data on
| your device.
| gumby wrote:
| Some of them do (especially, but not only, on the Mac) so I
| wonder if calling them out would cause them to change. They
| responded when with they were called out for letting their
| own Mac apps bypass connection filtering.
|
| Also some of these questions are asked in the setup
| dialogue.
|
| For this particular case (the user ID) they explicitly
| assert that they are also subject to it.
|
| I suspect what happens is their own apps don't go through
| the App Store process. The lack of that kind of dog fooding
| is, IMHO, the _real_ problem.
| nojito wrote:
| >Ten years ago Apple wasn't running ads about privacy and they
| were working on building out the App Store.
|
| Steve did
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39iKLwlUqBo
|
| >Privacy means people know what they're signing up for, in
| plain English and repeatedly
|
| >I believe people are smart and some people want to share more
| data than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make
| them tell you to stop asking them if they get tired of your
| asking them. Let them know precisely what you're going to do
| with their data
|
| I think the issue was that Apple bungled IDFA by not making in
| opt-in initially and now are trying to correct their mistakes.
|
| Apple was vilified 10 years ago for this stance, but at the end
| of the day they were right with their opt-in view on tracking
| and how pervasive silicon valley was going to become with
| collecting data.
| brudgers wrote:
| Ironically -- and I don't use that phrase lightly but this is
| Apple apologist Gruber -- the context of _et tu_ is weaker
| persons banding together to stop an out of control tyrant.
|
| Brutus was by at least a whisker on the right side of history at
| _et tu_ time.
|
| And his self-interest was raw mortal threat. Proscription lists
| were a thing.
|
| As another halo company, P&G is an Apple rival and Apple doesn't
| cooperate with it in developing its policies. Apple develops its
| policies solely in its self interest. And changes them without
| input from stakeholders.
|
| Thusly I argue that "ironically" is justified here. YMMV.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| The reality is that Apple has little ability to block apps that
| are tracking people by indirect data such as "device boottime."
| Sure maybe in that specific case they can block that piece of
| information but there are likely at least 100 other seemingly
| innocuous pieces of information available to apps that can be
| used the same way.
|
| The idea of a "trustless" App Store is nice and roughly works in
| practice but is ultimately a fiction. Using a malicious app will
| always expose you to danger. New vulnerabilities are announced
| regularly. The situation is worse on the web: WebKit vulns are
| released nearly monthly and there is no app review there.
| Browsing the web with JavaScript enabled is a security nightmare.
| For example see the recent security notes for iOS 14.4.2 [1],
| every release you'll likely see a fix for a new vulnerability.
|
| I'm hesitant to say there will ever be a scalable and permanent
| solution to this problem. The best advice is simple: do not run
| apps you do not trust, do not visit websites you do not trust.
|
| [1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212256
| Nextgrid wrote:
| This is why tracking is a problem that can only be solved at
| the legal level. Ultimately there's no reliable way for a
| machine to detect tracking given that any information collected
| for tracking can also be used for legitimate purposes.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| Just like App Store review, it can only be _mitigated_ at the
| legal level. Companies will skirt the law if there is little
| risk of them being caught and, like you said, there will
| never be a robust way of automatically detecting violations.
| buran77 wrote:
| All apps rely on information provided to them by the OS. The OS
| can simply introduce (pseudo)random variability in that data,
| especially for apps that collect a lot of it so the probability
| for aggregating and correlating is a lot higher.
|
| The more access your app wants, the more randomness should be
| introduced.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| What about the IP address used to communicate with the app's
| server? Can that be obscured? What about the screen
| resolution? What about time zone? Battery level?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why does an app need to know the device's IP address? Why
| can't the OS just provide a method to communicate with the
| network. The OS handles all of the network communication
| with the app just providing the message and recipient?
| saagarjha wrote:
| Because you can hit a server which can see your IP.
| dylan604 wrote:
| What does a server seeing the address have to do with the
| app seeing the address directly from the OS? The app
| knows the address it needs to talk to, so it preps the
| message and then calls an OS provided method to make that
| call. The OS method then returns the response. The app
| never needs to know the IP address of the device on which
| it is running.
| 120391583 wrote:
| > What about the IP address used to communicate with the
| app's server?
|
| Yes. I've been wanting Apple to launch a VPN service for a
| long time.
|
| A commercial VPN service can aid privacy by aggregating
| thousands of users behind a single IP address. The problem
| is that you have to trust the VPN provider. Commercial VPN
| providers are inherently shady -- after all, their entire
| business model is aiding and abetting copyright
| infringement or perhaps even worse activities. (No logging,
| _wink_ _wink_!) I see no reason to trust them.
|
| By contrast, Apple has a valuable brand (i.e., a
| reputation) and has made privacy a core part of their sales
| pitch. Unlike the inherently fly-by-night commercial VPN
| industry, Apple would have billions of reasons not to
| betray their customers by selling VPN usage data.
|
| I think there's a market for an existing, known, reputable
| business to come in and offer a VPN service that explicitly
| _does_ keep traffic flow logs for a short time, in the same
| way that ISPs retain dynamic IP assignment logs for a short
| time. By retaining logs, you avoid the shady elements that
| are otherwise attracted to no-logging VPN services.
|
| If not Apple, I think one of the few remaining reputable
| independent ISPs would be a great fit. Sonic.net comes to
| mind. Sonic makes [clear, explicit
| claims](https://www.sonic.com/privacy-policy) that they do
| not sell usage data, but they _do_ retain IP assignment
| logs for up to 14 days and will provide that data to law
| enforcement with an appropriate court order. That 's
| exactly what I want: my adversary is P&G and their ilk, not
| law enforcement with a court order.
| notriddle wrote:
| Screen resolution? You can predict that perfectly based on
| the model number, and many models have the same screen
| resolution.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/D
| e...
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Nobody's blocking IP addresses but apparently these are not
| enough or these companies wouldn't be clutching their other
| tracking pearls.
|
| IP addresses and battery levels are dynamic and screen
| resolution and time zones are shared by millions.
|
| The real fingerprinting is in things like sensor
| calibration and these can be stopped by binning or
| randomizing values.
|
| Apple has announced they will be blocking these prints one
| by one and they are.
|
| Developers wouldn't be screaming if they weren't in
| trouble.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| The point of the article is that there are enough data
| that are low information in isolation but when combined
| together can effectively identify ad targets. This is
| already being done, it isn't a theory. That's the point
| of the article: clever developers can
| find (perhaps infinite) other ways to combine things they
| do have access to into a unique, or even just "close
| enough to unique to be useful for tracking", identifier
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Nobody's disputing that. But if Apple wasn't anywhere
| near blocking these clever tricks, they wouldn't be
| screaming bloody murder.
|
| Again, Apple knows these fingerprinting parts exist, has
| acknowledged they exist, has stated they are going to
| block them and has blocked them. And no, they aren't
| done, they might never be done. But also they have stated
| no intention of stopping.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| They cannot block IP address, screen res, battery level,
| time zone, just to name a few.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Apple can bin battery level so it doesn't contribute to
| fingerprinting, IP addresses are dynamic and shared and
| screen resolution and time zone are shared by millions of
| others.
|
| Why would tracking companies be grasping for straws like
| boot up time if these other obvious things are so
| effective and impossible to block?
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| Those are just a few examples, the surface area is
| obviously massive (100s if not 1000s). We both know that.
| The reality is that iOS was not designed with this attack
| vector in mind. Here is yet another one I just randomly
| thought up "install date of app"
| https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39255403/get-date-of-
| whe... now imagine what a dedicated developer could
| design.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Sorry, it's not difficult or forbidden to remember user
| identity _in your own app_. It's about sharing that
| identity between apps.
|
| And by the way, there is absolutely nothing stopping
| Apple from reporting your app was installed on January
| 1st, 1970.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| > And by the way, there is absolutely nothing stopping
| Apple from reporting your app was installed on January
| 1st, 1970.
|
| I doubt Apple would do that but I think you are very much
| missing the point. These one-off patches are not
| effective at scale, there are literally 100s if not 1000s
| of information leaks of this type that indeed are
| observable across multiple apps. App install date was
| just one that I pulled from thin air that required no
| thought. A dedicated engineer could easily solve this
| problem.
| buran77 wrote:
| Hence why I said that the more data an app is trying to
| get access to, the more random variability should be
| introduced. Some apps might legitimately need access to
| some data points with "minimal" random noise. But if they
| start asking for enough to uniquely identify a user then
| the OS should just "blur" all the data. Battery level can
| randomly vary on any app that can't justify knowing the
| exact value. Imagine the app having a "budget" for
| getting exact data: it can spend it on 2 precise data
| points or 10 very blurry ones.
|
| Unless Apple decides to implement some form of VPN to
| obscure the IP there's not much to do about that, the
| phone can hide it only from the app, not the server. On a
| mobile network this seems less of a concern, and even in
| the home it wouldn't allow unique identification. So
| assuming the IP was the only thing that leaks and every
| other data point is "poisoned" by the OS, I'm sure it
| would make those companies tracking you _deeply_ unhappy
| and unsatisfied.
|
| Maybe some loopholes can't be closed, others may provide
| precise data but it's shared with millions of users
| making it as generic as it gets. Just raising the bar for
| successfully tracking the user to a very hard to reach
| level, and lowering the overall accuracy to the point
| it's no longer a practical concern could be good enough
| for all intents and purposes.
| pornel wrote:
| Apps are heavily sandboxed. iOS controls all local information
| they can access, so Apple is in position to fight this.
|
| It doesn't need to be perfect. Only hard enough that apps have
| to resort to more desperate techniques, so that they're
| detectable and Apple can ban them for trying.
|
| Overall I don't like Apple's sandbox and total control over
| iOS, but it exists, and in this case at least they can use
| their power for something good.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| The point of the article is exactly that it isn't 100%
| perfect and this slight imperfection has allowed companies
| like P&G to take advantage of that for large-scale privacy
| violation. From the article: The whack-a-
| mole1 aspect of Apple's new privacy rules is that while Apple
| can restrict access to the API that provides access to the
| IDFA identifier, clever developers can find (perhaps
| infinite) other ways to combine things they do have access to
| into a unique, or even just "close enough to unique to be
| useful for tracking", identifier. IP addresses, to name just
| one example, are a big factor that Apple can't block would-
| be-trackers from using.
| Daho0n wrote:
| This is in my opinion a symptom that cannot realistically be
| treated. The "disease" that need treatment is the power big
| markets have in the world and this is nothing new. The only New
| in this is that the US (state and businesses) aren't setting the
| agenda 100% of the time anymore. While this system of tracking is
| clearly A Bad Thing I'm not so sure the dilution of US control
| here is bad. So far I'm actually convinced this is an extremely
| good thing for the world on average. Maybe not for America but
| its time as top dog alone at the peak of power is almost at an
| end anyway.
|
| In other words this is just a new player that want what Apple
| (and others) have granted US tech industry for decades. If they
| want to shut the door now they will likely be shut out of China,
| which I fully understand from their perspective. What is needed
| is a way to secure users from tracking at a much lower level and
| I doubt Apple will ever trade money/income for user privacy. If
| they did I would buy my first iPhone.
| mcphage wrote:
| > I doubt Apple will ever trade money/income for user privacy.
|
| They do this continuously.
|
| > If they did I would buy my first iPhone.
|
| That, _I_ doubt.
| Daho0n wrote:
| >They do this continuously.
|
| They do not. The privacy Apple do is for PR and to shut out
| competitors. Benefit for users is only a side effect.
|
| >That, I doubt.
|
| Understandably. It will likely never happen that Apple will
| do privacy.
| Despegar wrote:
| >And what is Apple going to do if they do identify apps in China
| using CAID in flagrant violation of the App Store rules, if those
| apps have the backing (implicit or explicit) of the Chinese
| government?
|
| The CPC is on Apple's side when it comes to privacy.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-cac-personaldata-id...
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Maybe it's me being bad in reading diplomatic, but Apple directly
| states:
|
| > Apps that are found to disregard the user's choice will be
| rejected
|
| So, if I'm reading this correctly, if the apps will be found
| violating the policy they will be pulled/rejected? This statement
| seems pretty clear to me, to be honest.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| That's what they claim, but apps have already found to be lying
| on their "privacy nutrition labels" with seemingly zero
| consequences.
| zzzeek wrote:
| You can win at "whack a mole" by hitting harder. Pass some real
| legislation and fine P&G a billion dollars. Works better than any
| amount of technology-level detection.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-04-10 23:01 UTC)