Other Apple privacy practices

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ISSUE 18.18 • 2021-05-17 APPLE By Nathan Parker Not all privacy settings are neatly contained in the main Settings app in iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. In m
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Nathan Parker

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DrBonzo, Mele20, Alex5723

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Excellent article. I’m sorry to see you leave as your Apple coverage here has been outstanding.

I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I did not know about App Store Privacy Labels. I’ve checked a few of mine and, as a result, I’m getting rid of some of them (Target which I already knew was very bad is so awful I won’t use their app any more even though I shop there frequently. Besides these apps are frequently wrong when they claim they have an item in stock at your local store as usually they don’t have it (at least in Hawaii this is the case). So, why use the app especially if it violates privacy?).

I recommend everyone concerned about privacy who lives in the USA check their installed apps in the App Store for their privacy labels.

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Nathan Parker

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The Privacy Labels are fairly new (I think last December is when they went live). I’ve definitely purged some apps after reading them. There was one report where some developers weren’t accurately reporting their privacy practices in some of the labels (I probably should have mentioned that in the article). I hope for those developers, Apple will block their app updates until they provide accurate info.

Nathan Parker

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Thank you Nathan.

One thing that should be covered is the location services under confidentiality and especially the system services, many of which are not useful to you and drain the battery while being used for privacy invading features and marketing data. Not sure everybody would be happy to discover that where they have been with the date and time is accessible there and shown on a map. Some of those settings have misleading names that make them look essential but they are not necessarily or it depends on your usage. I personally can live with all those settings off with no significant degradation of my user experience, but I try to avoid privacy invading features in apps so I don’t use features that would rely on those.

Keeping location off to weather apps makes it less automatic to follow you, but it helps not have them drain your battery (GPS is hungry) and also follow you to sell that info after or present you ads related to your location. Background weather apps with localization on can track you to build a nice marketing database at the expense of your privacy and battery. I can live with the manual search for the city I am in when I use the app. They will say they won’t be able to warn you of an impending weather alert. Fair enough. I can live with that. The weather app is just an example, it can be any app that use location services to track you and sell that data in exchange for its service even if it is unrelated to the service.

Disabling background apps is also very useful for privacy as it can help prevent some apps from tracking you and using your battery when they are not open. I think you have to prevent them from using GPS too or else they might use location services as an excuse to run even if background apps is off. A good idea is to select “only when active” for access to location services for the apps that you want to give access to location, but disable it for all other apps.

Also, turning off personalized ads in confidentiality might be a good idea if you value privacy.

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Bill C., Nathan Parker

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Good points, and some of those are covered in my first article. Some of the weather apps I set privacy to “while using” and only access those apps at home, then force quit them before heading out. One app I have to keep location services on for work, but it’s an app our business customers pay for (Earth Networks Sferic Connect), so we don’t sell advertising in that app.

Nathan Parker

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AlexEiffel

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FYI: Location services also uses WiFi which can do an excellent job of location, without the need for GPS.

More iOS defensive/privacy options are at
https://defensivecomputingchecklist.com
in the Apple iOS section.

Get up to speed on router security at RouterSecurity.org and Defensive Computing at DefensiveComputingChecklist.com

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AlexEiffel

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FYI: DuckDuckGo gets their search results from Bing and my recent experience has been that the results are not as good as Google. Startpage gets their results from Google and claims to not track you.  Or, use Google but from private browsing mode and not logged in to Google.

 

Get up to speed on router security at RouterSecurity.org and Defensive Computing at DefensiveComputingChecklist.com

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Nathan Parker, AlexEiffel, OscarCP

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I’ve heard good results on Startpage as well. Thanks for that. I’ve had decent luck with DuckDuckGo. It’s about as good as what I’ve searched with using other search engines. Everyone’s mileage may vary, but it’s been good enough for me to use it and enjoy the extra privacy.

Nathan Parker

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DuckDuckGo is Bing. I tested them vs. Google when searching for “router security”. Bing was much worse.

Get up to speed on router security at RouterSecurity.org and Defensive Computing at DefensiveComputingChecklist.com

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Great article, many reminders I had to check on my own equipment. I do have one question about the ‘enabling Do Not Track’. I have read from a few other security site and gotten information from several techs that contradict that. Not complete reversal but that by sending the ‘Do Not Track’ request to the web site instead of just blocking the cookies actual lets the website know you were there. A small cookie installed to confirm the Do Not Track can actually be used as a tracking cookie itself. Can you help clear this up for me?! Thank you for the excellent article.

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Nathan Parker

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Good question. I’m not 100% sure of that. Someone can likely clarify.

Thanks everyone for your comments! As I sign off this evening, I’ll quote Porky from Looney Tunes, “That’s All Folks!”.

Nathan Parker

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Nathan Parker wrote:

’ve heard good results on Startpage as well. Thanks for that

StartPage has been bought by an ad company.

https://www.ghacks.net/2019/11/16/startpage-search-owner-changes-raise-serious-questions/

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Then use Google but do it while NOT logged into Google and from private mode.

Get up to speed on router security at RouterSecurity.org and Defensive Computing at DefensiveComputingChecklist.com

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Let me see if I understood correctly how this works: both DuckDuckGo and Startpage get their search results from these two incarnations of the Big Bad, but they purify these from ads and such, also acting as anti-snooping/tracking firewalls between them and heir users?

And the Big Bad ones do not care. (Making too much money already?)

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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