[HN Gopher] iOS 18 cracks down on apps asking for full address b...
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       iOS 18 cracks down on apps asking for full address book access
        
       Author : mfiguiere
       Score  : 46 points
       Date   : 2024-06-12 19:13 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
        
       | ratg13 wrote:
       | More than just "growth hacking" apps.. if someone gets access to
       | your contacts they can generally identify who you are just from
       | this information alone.
       | 
       | Data brokers have been harvesting this information for years.
       | 
       | This is a huge step forward for data privacy.
        
         | cantSpellSober wrote:
         | Even just cynically, it doesn't even work:
         | 
         | > _in many cases, that hack does not drive sustainable growth
         | in the long term_
        
         | WhackyIdeas wrote:
         | Kind of. But they could have done this many moons ago. They
         | didn't.
         | 
         | In no way am I going to be duped that Apple suddenly give a
         | damn about anything other than protecting their investment.
        
       | bigyikes wrote:
       | I love these crackdowns and increasingly granular permissions.
       | They did a similar thing for photos a while back.
       | 
       | I wish they'd crack down on advertisements in notifications.
       | Sleazy players like Uber will spam you with ads, so you're forced
       | to choose between receiving ads or missing out on actually
       | important notifications.
       | 
       | There's nothing better than getting buzzed for an advertisement
       | which you can conveniently view on your lock screen!
        
         | joshuaturner wrote:
         | I think they used to have a rule about this but then their own
         | apps started to violate it, so they loosened restrictions. What
         | I'd really love to see is notification categories so you can
         | choose which to accept.
        
           | xnx wrote:
           | Android has notification categories, but I think those end up
           | getting abused too.
        
             | joshuaturner wrote:
             | I'm sure enforcement around it would be difficult but I'd
             | imagine most major apps would fall in line if only because
             | the risk of losing their notification entitlement would be
             | too great.
        
           | buffet_overflow wrote:
           | I moved my primary phone from Android to iOS and this is
           | hands down the thing I miss the most. I ended up silencing a
           | lot of apps wholesale, mostly rideshares, as a result.
        
         | drodgers wrote:
         | I reckon Apple Intelligence will end up solving this problem -
         | have it classify notifications and then give you control. That
         | way, you're not reliant on ongoing good behaviour from
         | developers.
        
           | viraptor wrote:
           | I'm not sure AI can do that reasonably well. Notification
           | "Foo is available for sale now" - is that an ad? From the
           | Uber app, yes. From the app explicitly used for tracking
           | bargains, no. From the supermarket app, maybe, depends if I
           | subscribed to that thing. There's a lot of context that
           | automation will not understand.
        
             | theshrike79 wrote:
             | I'm pretty sure the SLM model can track which ones you
             | interact with.
             | 
             | The current iOS version already does this to a degree: if
             | you use profiles. It notices if you often interact with an
             | application during X profile and asks if you want to add it
             | to that profile's allowed apps.
        
         | Pesthuf wrote:
         | This would probably be a good use case for "ai", to filter out
         | notifications that are clearly ads.
        
           | TheJoeMan wrote:
           | Can't wait for the "AIO" (Apple Intelligence Optimization)
           | engineers at Uber to find how to make notification ads
           | surface higher.
        
         | adiabatty wrote:
         | I'm one of those types who only uses Uber every two or three
         | years, so I just disable notifications for it. If a ride is
         | coming, I'll just check my phone loads.
        
       | joecool1029 wrote:
       | It would seem to me that eventually Apple will have some kind of
       | 'identity proxy' that apps will need to talk to in order to have
       | an app send to a real contact. It can be overridden explicitly
       | when needed by the end user but the default would be a sort of
       | unique UID that changes over time. Think private relay/URL's but
       | for identity.
        
         | cassianoleal wrote:
         | > Think private relay/URL's but for identity.
         | 
         | More like Hide my Email [0].
         | 
         | [0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/105078
        
       | reify wrote:
       | I have always disliked any app that wants access to my contacts.
       | 
       | While the rest of my friends do not repsect my privacy I do
       | respect theirs.
       | 
       | I use a seperate database that isolates my contacts so that no
       | apps can have access.
       | 
       | On android I use OpenContacts which does the same thing.
       | 
       | OpenContacts:
       | 
       | A different database for contacts to keep them private only to
       | you.
       | 
       | We should not be sharing our contact information online.
        
       | chongli wrote:
       | This is great but it feels like closing the barn door after the
       | horses have already left. All the big social networks already
       | know your address book! Would have loved this from the very
       | beginning of the App Store.
        
         | viraptor wrote:
         | It will take ~5 years for the social media landscape to rotate
         | again. The next "generation" will be protected at least.
        
         | adiabatty wrote:
         | I never said 'yes' to any of those prompts.
         | 
         | If you did, why?
        
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       (page generated 2024-06-12 23:01 UTC)