Comment by WuxiFingerHold
2 months ago
iPhones are less of a privacy nightmare.
One of the biggest incentives for creating apps is to scrape all kind of data from the users. Look at how many apps require permission to see you contacts. And how many actually need your contacts to function. That's why I'm still a bit surprised that many seem to be surprised by findings like this one here.
I wish there was an option for “give bogus contacts” which showed the app a list of contacts - but it was all randomly generated junk. Make it so the app can’t tell if the contacts it gets are real or fake.
I read a fiction book years ago where there were cameras everywhere. To get privacy, instead of hiding their identities the protagonist paid companies to insert bogus information into the information brokers’ network. So if they tried to figure out where they were on a certain day, 20 records would match. I think this is a much more likely vision of the future.
I guess rather than closing my Google account I should have removed the 2FA and changed the password to a weak one on the HIBP list (:
Look at how many apps require permission to see you contacts. And how many actually need your contacts to function.
That is, again, not require but ask for on iphone. I have zero non-functioning apps on my iphone due to denied access to contacts. Even a chinese bluetooth light controller doesn't dare (while refusing to work on android for the same reason).
You can hate apple/iphone ecosystem all you want, but let's not sneak false claims into how they actually work.
> I have zero non-functioning apps on my iphone due to denied access to contacts.
You don’t have WhatsApp then.
I do and deny it access to contacts. Everything works fine.
iOS grants just the contacts you select - including “none” to apps. WhatsApp works fine in that regime.
> Look at how many apps require permission to see you contacts.
It is so annoying that it’s either "give access to ALL my contacts and ALL their information (yes, even the notes I took on their favorite things for next Christmas)" or "don’t give access". I wish we could limit the number of contacts and the level of information we give.
> It is so annoying that it’s either "give access to ALL my contacts and ALL their information… […] I wish we could limit the number of contacts and the level of information we give.
iOS added fine-grained (at the contact level) access to contacts data last year.
https://lifehacker.com/tech/you-can-control-which-contacts-a...
They did the same for photos years ago.
Many apps have not updated and perhaps never will.
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Check if GrapheneOS suits your needs. It has "contact scopes", ie you cna literally allow the app to see single contact only.
Same with storage scopes: one directory and that's it.
iOS hasn’t allowed access to contact notes for several years, and last year added support for providing arbitrary subsets of contacts to all apps.
Photo access has improved a lot in this regard recently.