Comments on: Apple’s Privacy Policies look more and more like Microsoft

By: privacy what

privacy what — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:22:42 +0000

Insulting and pointless comment from an airhead deleted. Better luck next time.

Why should anyone trust you and not Apple, a multi-billion dollar publicly traded company…

Ad hominem attacks are not accepted, nor does Apple bootlicking endear you either.

By: alec

alec — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 22:21:26 +0000

Yes, we are keeping track of how people found our site.

But it’s not going through third party collection agencies so it’s relatively harmless. Not tied to anything else related to you: your Facebook, your Google account, any of your other purchases.

Unlike Apple.

Thanks for helping make my point.

By: slapulation

slapulation — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 13:12:52 +0000

Something more aggressive like what, the tracking cookies and counters you are collecting on everyone visiting this website?

You’re collecting more data about visitors to your website than Apple is collecting about users of Aperture; you could easily start collecting even more information and inserting browser exploits into your webpage to install malicious software that monitors every visitor.

I know it doesn’t feel good to be wrong, but you make some pretty serious accusations for somebody with zero evidence.

By: alec

alec — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 18:07:01 +0000

Hi slapulation,

Thanks for checking a single communication from Apple. The real question is how easily can all these “benevolent” checks be turned into something more aggressive.

I would guess quite easily. The more of them there are, the more open your computer is in case an external party wants access.

Apple’s OS is Swiss Cheese now in terms of unlocked doors to external servers.

By: slapulation

slapulation — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 03:13:16 +0000

I actually looked into this. I agree with the other posters. Using wireshark/tcpdump and lsof you can see what is happening when it makes that connection.

There is nothing malicious about the communication, it’s fetching a plist to ensure it has the right values for network services.

By: alec

alec — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:57:11 +0000

Emory if you don’t realize that the new Apple is data mining by now, your naivete is astonishing.

Remind me to play poker with you some time.

By: emory

emory — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:19:25 +0000

Little Snitch is only telling you that an outbound connection is occurring. It doesn’t tell you what that is.

If you wanted to see what it was, you could, but then you would disprove your own salacious hypothesis.

By: alec

alec — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 16:56:08 +0000

Hi Frank,

Apple and their partners are stealing your information. If you’ve signed up for iCloud then you’ve accepted sharing your information with Apple.

I haven’t.

It’s not that difficult to understand. Just install Little Snitch to watch it happen.

A lot can be circumvented in hosts as well.

Apple made certain promises regarding respecting our privacy, promises they’ve slowly been reneging on over the last five years.

Based on Apple’s dishonesty, it’s time to stop buying Apple computers.

By: Frank Yang

Frank Yang — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:31:58 +0000

emory is correct. Saying that apple is stealing your info is complete BS. While they might be doing just that, saying you see software connect to a server is hardly proof. There are a vast number of valid reasons to contact servers. Communicating with icloud, tweeking and editing code to keep everything running smooth. Your computer sends out so many communications just for e-mail that are so complex and difficult to understand people spend there entire undergraduate careers in computer science understanding and the next 4 year of a phd program to master it. This is not trivial stuff.
If you dont want to comunicate with the home base you have to disconnect the internet. Or get a degree in computer science or equivalent and hack the hell out of your computer.

By: alec

alec — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 22:11:26 +0000

Hi emory,

Just communicating with home base without my permission is already borderline malicious.

That’s the point. We don’t know what is in the communication. Most people don’t even know that the communication is there. I never agreed to such communication. If it’s stuck in the ELUA deep in the fine print, that’s not good enough. Frankly I don’t want to do business with a computer company which is communicating with home base without my permission.

If Apple has changed their policy, and apparently they have, many of us are now in a difficult position as when we made our huge investment in Apple technology, Apple didn’t tell us we’d face this kind of invasion of privacy in the future. Quite the contrary.