Hi 👋 just shared the site with one of my buddies and he told me he doesn’t care much about it because there’s no way you’ll be 100% privacy enforced since you’re using an iPhone and sharing your location, name, birthdate , personal files, photos.
I’ve to say this gets to me but on the other side I’m also respectful of everyone‘s opinion because after all, this is what makes us special
How are you handling these circumstances usually, do you say something?
- This sort of “all or nothing” nonsense is a fairly common counterargument. The answer is “do what you can”.
- Don’t use an iPhone
- If you do use an iPhone, you can absolutely limit the amount and type of information Apple has about you.
- Apple is not exactly notorious for actually giving anyone your information. Unlike most tech giants, they’re not an advertising service, so don’t have much motive. They’re not the best but much better than, say, Google.
2 is almost as bad as the all or nothing approach. I argue that while Apple is not trustworthy, they are not incentivized to collect every piece of information about you that they can. Conversely, android is an operating system created by an advertising company specifically to ensure an ongoing corner on their market. Asking the average person to use a DeGoogled OS is akin to telling them to switch to OpenBSD on their desktop.
Completely disagree. You can’t use iPhones with anything but iOS. And you can’t install any apps Apple hasn’t put their fucking rubber stamp and collected taxes on. For that reason, it is not and never will be viable. Not to mention being overpriced and disposable.
Android may be created by an advertising company but they also give you the ability to run whatever OS you want and strip it of Google’s proprietary software completely. These days you can install OS like Graphene by simply plugging in your phone and clicking buttons in your browser.
Android may be created by an advertising company but they also give you the ability to run whatever OS you want and strip it of Google’s proprietary software completely. These days you can install OS like Graphene by simply plugging in your phone and clicking buttons in your browser.
This is patently untrue, and a total misrepresentation of the facts. You can install other OSes on a rather small list of Android phones. Furthermore, while the user might just be clicking a few buttons, behind the scenes those buttons put into play a rather complex series of actions that break the protections put into place by Google and phone manufacturers to stop you from doing exactly that.
Saying that Google gives you the ability to install other OSes is like saying Sony gives you the ability to install other OSes on the Playstation. It isn’t true, Google never gave you that ability, the technical wizardry of white hat hackers did.
Graphene doesn’t completely strip Google software though, it sandboxes it. You still gotta use the play store to install most apps for example.
90%+ apps require Google play services, which basically allows them to know every app you use, and potentially more.
There’s also a surge in apps implementing integrity checks, which makes you unable to run certain apps entirely with a custom ROM
Google has the exact same policy of getting a large cut of each payment you make…
Android may be created by an advertising company but they also give you the ability to run whatever OS you want and strip it of Google’s proprietary software completely. These days you can install OS like Graphene by simply plugging in your phone and clicking buttons in your browser.
That’s like saying since computers come with Windows pre-installed, Microsoft gave you the ability to install Linux. Computers are agnostic to what runs on them, they’re inherently neutral unless made on the deeper level to prohibit side loading. Like a lot of Androids and all iPhones do.
I would argue that, out of the two smartphone OSes available, iOS is the better choice for most people. They’ve done far more than Google at making sure nobody (even them), can access your data without your permission by putting encryption into a lot of their services.
In contrast, Google wants, and gets, access to everything about your life. And they’re more than willing to share that data with the government, or anyone that will pay them. And while the best option would be deGoogled Android, that’s something that most people aren’t going to be willing to use, even if they’re wising up to the need to take privacy seriously.
Privacy isn’t an all-or-nothing. Usually it’s better for each person to consider if they really need fully secure, or if a iPhone that does far more than the bare minimum at protecting their privacy is enough for them
There’s many reasons not to get an iPhone, but privacy worries, in contrast to Android, is not one of them.
Rather than take an all or nothing attitude on the matter, I certainly think your friend would be better off trying make smart choices with his data whenever possible. Ultimately though, it’s something that he has to be motivated to do himself. Perhaps informing him of potential privacy risks would be helpful in that regard.
How does getting an iPhone not worry someone about privacy? Do you believe that Apple doesn’t collect as much data as Google?
Apple charges unreasonably high profit margins on its products as its primary business model, along with locking down their ecosystem to push overpriced subscriptions to the detriment of competitors, to not need the same level of invasive data collection that powers Google’s advertising business.
Basically, you trust Apple to not be as bad as Google. I hope you realise how flawed your assumption is. Capitalism doesn’t consider morality in its wake
Assuming for arguments sake that they do, which corporation do you think should get a better grade when privacy is the concern?
Apple, which has gone to court time and again to protect the privacy and security of their product, and leaked that a western government ordered them to backdoor their product when they were ordered not to reveal that, or Google, an advertising giant that uses every tool that having one of the largest mobile OSes on the planet gives them to not only invade that privacy, but to sell it to everyone with money, and give access away to the US government before they even demand it?
They’re both rock bottom, and that’s the best I can give. However, I will accept a concession in that my argument is more geared towards trying to escape Big Tech surveillance as a whole, not from any specific company. I admit that was a bold move from Apple but that’s our perception of the situation; you don’t actually know the discussions that happened and their inner workings because both companies aren’t transparent in their dealings
With the exception to GrapheneOS, compared to stock Android and Apple its much more secure and private since it removes everything connected to Google on it.
Then by using Free/Libre Open Source Software apps on F-Droid, as the replacement for Google Play, you can effectively eliminate trackers from your device using apps like Exodus that provides detailed breakdowns on app trackers and permissions.
As well as TrackerControl where you are given granular control over trackers on apps and even on websites you visit. It blocks analytic, fingerprinting, advertising, and other uncategorized trackers.
Then using Privacy Browser you can browse the web using TOR further enhancing your privacy. Whilst having built in tracker, cookie, javascript, and DOM storage controls.
Communicate through Molly (hardened version of Signal only available on android) or Threema and you can keep your communications secure and private.
Couple that with using a VPN like Mullvad or Proton and you can be very private on Android, that of which you cannot achieve on iOS where Apple has built in telemetry harvesting.
So I would say that compared to Apple, Android CAN be far more private and secure, I personally don’t trust that Apple users are private at all considering Apple harvests telemetry and most users use iCloud which, whilst having Advanced Data Protection for most users, they literally took this away from UK residents more recently effectively exposing all of their content.
Apple disabled the feature in the UK because the alternative, per the British government, was to add a backdoor to it.
That doesn’t change the fact that it’s insecure and will likely become even more insecure as more governments demand more of the same in the name of “protecting the children”.
Regardless if Apple’s actions were better than the alternative, devices devoid of such vulnerabilities such as degoogled phones are inherently more secure and private.
I take the stance that I’m privacy minded and while I think everybody should be I don’t force my opinion on them. I do express myself and usually my “odd” behavior makes people I know question me, which I then give an answer for.
Most people don’t understand why they should strive for privacy. I usually start soft with ads because it’s a universal that nobody likes ads and they’ve experienced all the listening and tracking stuff but not connected the dots.
If they are responsive then in later conversations I can go more into deeper thoughts regarding it all. If I rake them down the rabbit hole right away their head will explode and run away.
it’s not only about privacy.
why is anybody ok with zuckerberg or another dipshit getting even richer by selling the information collected on them? Why?
Why would any of my friends or members of my family be ok with our relationship getting used to make money?
fuck surveillance capitalism and anybody who willingly participates in it
…and this is how you keep people using mainstream services instead of FOSS / privacy respecting ones.
The actual answer is convenience and not wanting to make their life more difficult, which brings ignorance into it.
Not everyone is ready to flip their whole digital life upside down based on the privacy principles you and I care about - that’s why I too use the approach the parent commenter mentioned, and I’m also okay with people who just won’t make any switches, because while I don’t support it, I understand it.
The long and short of it is don’t think of this as “us vs them” - we’re all people together and understanding and gently making people aware of these privacy principles and giving them realistic private solutions is, in my opinion, way more effective than saying “fuck 'em”
“So, you leave your door open because locking it is useless because someone can break in?“
The problem with this sort of analogy is that the physical risk of leaving your unlocked is difficult for people to translate into digital risk. If that makes sense. Your average person is generally not going to see any noticeable negative effect of 100 different companies having all their personal info. But they’d feel constantly paranoid about leaving their doors unlocked.
For me that’s the hardest part of explaining why people should care about digital privacy. It doesn’t really affect their day to day life very much if at all.
I’m a big advocate of digital privacy, but I find it to be more ideological than practical which makes it much harder to convince apathetic people. For example, take privacy out of the equation and Facebook can’t be topped for its utility to non privacy conscious people.
