Comment by dns_snek
5 days ago
This myth that you're not being tracked in very similar ways if you use an iPhone is nothing but genius marketing and PR. Do some research about the type and quantity of telemetry that's sent back to the mothership from your iOS device, it's not materially different from regular Android.
> Both iOS and Google Android transmit telemetry, despite the user explicitly opting out of this. When a SIM is inserted both iOS and Google Android send details to Apple/Google. iOS sends the MAC addresses of nearby devices, e.g. other handsets and the home gateway, to Apple together with their GPS location. Currently there are few, if any, realistic options for preventing this data sharing
Not saying there is no spying, but Google is definitely a worse offender, by orders of magnitude. This, plus the lots of nagging + nudging dialogues a stock Android phones tries to get you to allow data collection. Google Maps is a prominent one, that by default tracks your each and every move and sends it to google. Web+App cross ID fingerprinting is also something Google has no issue with. Safari on iOS defaults to delete cookies every 7 days based on some AI logic to measure interactions. AirDrop works offline only between devices etc.
P.S: Citing a paper from 2021 is propably useless. Apple was the driving force in dropping trackable App ids, google had to follow suit. More stuff has happend in the space since then.
> Not saying there is no spying, but [...]
But that is exactly what your previous comment said:
>> Sounds like an awful lot of work vs. just having an iPhone and regularly install your banking app on it, and still not get spied on.
Installing GrapheneOS admittedly requires a computer, a browser, and about 15 minutes of your time after you buy the device, assuming you've never done it before, but claiming that that's "an awful lot of work" compared to "just" having an iPhone is false. They don't provide even remotely the same level of control over your privacy or security. With technical hardening measures on one side, and on the other, a vague promise that Apple might crack down on third party tracking methods that happen to be misaligned with their own business goals.
> AirDrop works offline only between devices etc.
That's actually a great example because Apple obediently restricted AirDrop as soon as Chinese authorities discovered that it was being used for anti-government protests. Apple doesn't care about privacy ideologically, their actions in other countries and their commitment to growing their advertising business should serve as proof of that, but there's clearly some dissonance at play.