Comment on ‘Alexa, what do you know about us?’ What I discovered when I asked Amazon to tell me everything my family’s smart speaker had heard

• Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  but at least Apple has a track record of respecting privacy.

  …to keep the same amount of data for themselve.

  Don’t kid yourself. Apple collects the same amount as everyone else does. And if either get hacked, it doesnt matter if they keep it or sell it.

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  • Flames5123@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    They say they don’t associate the data they collect with anyone. There’s no way to trace back to my device.

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    • CommanderCloon@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      That doesn’t work. Data can and has been deanonymized previously. It’s still very mcuh unsafe if it falls in the wrong hands

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    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      “Oh yeah we collect data. Anonymously.”

      That has literally the same energy as some other user pointed out here about Valve and Gaben with their brain implant.
      Gaben is the harbinger of light for many but us still a billionaire that got the money from somewhere. Thus is also evil. Just not as much as, for example, Bezos.
      Apple is evil. At least equal to Google in different aspects.

      Stop cheering for anti-consumer companies.

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  • Septimaeus@infosec.pub ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    1. There is absolutely no possible comparison between the colossal scale of data collected by Google throughout routine operation of their products and the anonymous diagnostic data users can optionally send to Apple.
    2. The entire point of E2EE is that it remains encrypted in storage and transit. No one wants to buy encrypted consumer data right now unless it’s a very old protocol and guaranteed sensitive.

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    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Anonymous :o

      Like this? ads.apple.com

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      • Septimaeus@infosec.pub ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Yes, in fact. That’s a good example.

        The API for the ads allowed on-platform (only in their “App Store” and “News” products to my knowledge) is also used internally, which you can verify yourself by simply inspecting network traffic. The component instrumentation is obviously meager compared to the rich analytics and user behavior tracking data offered by virtually every other platform.

        But the foremost restriction is granularity. Neither internal analytics nor advertisers are ever provided a persistent user identifier. The advertising ID is generated on-device and doesn’t persist with device reset. That’s unheard of on platforms like Google, Meta, Amazon, etc.

        In-app tracking is allowed but subject to item by item opt-in user permission and is similarly restrictive, audited with package submission (they will reject the submission if you attempt to circumvent the API to extract more/better data from the user). What I’m describing is draconian compared to most platforms, especially carrier-manufacturer Android distributions in many countries.

        I mostly use custom roms and distros personally, and I’m not even trying to convince you Apple is in some way more ethical than other big tech cos. I just don’t like seeing misinfo and hearsay spread around for any purpose, especially when that purpose is apparently bullying other users for upvotes.

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• Septimaeus@infosec.pub ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  They do, so far. I test these machines for privacy claims as a hobby and have been a bit surprised to find Apple stuff mostly delivering on those claims. I’m used to seeing a lot of dark patterns in testing and it’s made me expect the worst, but so far they’ve followed through on (in particular) their end-to-end encryption and on-device processing guarantees. Security audit failures so far have appeared to be engineering oversights, and the ones I reported have been patched already.

  The majority of user data they collect appears to be optional analytics and diagnostics that are properly encrypted and anonymized using the same pooling strategy used for their built-in VPN service. They recently started doing processing off-device for some new features related to the Apple intelligence thing (I haven’t gotten around to testing most of that) but otherwise anything siri-related is indeed processed locally. You can toggle a setting to allow anonymized siri recordings to be sent to Apple for quality control but they ask you permission each time you reset a device and re-confirm when you install updates, which IMO is adequate.

  The other guy who commented here is talking out his ass. I used to give guys like that the benefit of the doubt but I’m done with them. Truth doesn’t matter to them. There are good reasons to hate Apple, such as the fact that it’s a massive soulless corporation raping the planet to make luxury electronics for affluent consumers, but for most of the rabid apple haters I find online the reasons appear to be far more selfish and petty than that. In this case, the guy is just a contrarian who likes pretending to know things, which is why he hawks conspiracy theories on lemmy for guaranteed upvotes.

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  • Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    They do, so far.

    They do, so far as anyone is aware.

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    • Septimaeus@infosec.pub ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      They do, so far as anyone is aware.

      They do, so far as anyone is aware or can know, yes.

      I said “so far” because I think continuing to test their claims remains important, as they keep making new equipment and are a large public corporation whose only moral code is increasing shareholder value.

      But I’m not interested in conspiracy theories. Sorry.

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• lepinkainen@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I sold my Alexa devices when the Sidewalk crap came out

  Still waiting for a replacement for the Echo Show though, having a smart speaker with a display was handy at times

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