I’m a bit concerned about how much data Google has on me and I do think Apple is genuinely more concerned about user privacy. But what’s the difference in practical terms really?
Google uses my data to target ads at me but doesn’t actually give any of my data to its ad-buying customers. Apple doesn’t do this but is obliged to turn over my iCloud data to the government with a subpoena.
Since this is really the scenario we should be most concerned about and since all tech companies are required to comply with the law it seems to me that the only way to have any meaningful online privacy is to not use cloud services from any vendor.
> Apple ... is obliged to turn over my iCloud data to the government with a subpoena.
Apple must of course comply with a subpoena, but it can only hand over data it holds the keys to. The iOS Security whitepaper[1] goes into some details. Any encryption keys that are stored in iCloud Keychain "share[] the security characteristics of iCloud Keychain—the keys are available only on the user’s trusted devices, and not to Apple or any third party." This is used for some, but not all, categories of iCloud data today—iMessage transcripts, for instance, are safe only if you do not use iCloud Backup.
Your post makes it sound like Google targeting ads to you and Apple complying with legal data requests happen with the same frequency, which is obviously false, and definitely is a difference in practical terms for the everyday user.
According to Apple's transparency report[2], they gave data up in 2,088 account requests in the United States in the first half of 2018.
I agree there are some important differences but for my own privacy I’m much less concerned about being targeted by ads then I am about some future administration deciding I’m a person of interest for some reason and subpoenaing my entire online life. In that respect there doesn’t seem to be a huge difference between the two.
I deleted my Facebook account because Facebook actually has sold user data to third parties.
Seems to me like one of the key differences is in how much data is actually collected. DDG claims in their blog post that they send no PII to apple, they're just using apple to provide a map view and search data.
I'm not even sure this level of anonymized usage is possible with google's APIs.
Edit: I just had the experience of trying to use biking directions in google maps the other day. In order to enable actual turn-by-turn directions I had to turn on something called "Web and App activity" which, as best as I can tell, is an unbelievably invasive set of technologies designed to track you across websites, real locations, and non-google owned apps using google APIs.
There's a real and meaningful difference in the amount and depth of the data collected by google vs. its competitors. I think a huge motivating factor for why google collects that data is their ad-driven revenue model.
To tie it back to your original question: Sure we could all just not use cloud services but in the mean time there are clear differences in how vulnerable you are to privacy violations by nation-states through legal means based on how much data various cloud services are actively trying to collect on you.
Yeah I agree this is very shady. Until recently you couldn't use Google Assistant at all without enabling that, which means that every time you launch an app it's logged on their servers. They've fixed this recently but they still require you to turn it on for a lot of features in Android.
> Google uses my data to target ads at me but doesn’t actually give any of my data to its ad-buying customers. Apple doesn’t do this but is obliged to turn over my iCloud data to the government with a subpoena.
I agree with you, but Google is way more aggressive in its data collection behavior than apple and i am getting sick of that.
I have been using Google maps this past month and i noticed some dark patterns :
- after getting directions from `your current location` when you deactivate your location services and switch apps, google maps will delete the directions and resets to the page that asks you to chose a `from` location, now you have to give google your current location to get those directions back.
- you cannot get your `current location` without internet enabled, even when you have `location services` enabled.
I'm seriously considering going iPhone for the first time, I've been an Android user since I could get my hands on an Android phone on Sprint for the first time (2009? I think...) and lived through the crappiness of early Android. I prefer Android cause I can root it, but I never do, feel like it will break something I want if I use a "ROM" (why they're not called DISTROS is beyond me) but also last time I tried to install a ROM I screwed up my phone so bad I had to factory reset the hard way through a tutorial, I basically bricked it.
With iOS I only get iOS or jailbroken iOS. Not really satisfying, but Google made an open source kernel into a proprietary mess of literal spyware.
You know, I switched to an iPhone exactly for this purpose years back. Got an iPhone 6s and used it for years.
It was definitely not easy giving up the convenience of integrations you got with Google, the small things. In the end apple maps suck compared to Google and if you want to look for a restaurant well would you rather give your info to Yelp/foursquare than Google? So Google maps it is.
After a bit you get used to it, apple does scratch your privacy itch by showing things like when an app is using your location.
Then after three years I had to upgrade, I was like that was grest, but fuck me if I have to shell out 10 Benjamins for a fucking phone when I can get an as good phone (everything except privacy) for half that price. I just purchased a Galaxy S9 and finally remembered how much I used to like Android.
Moral of the story is, if you're anything like me, you'll eventually be like fuck it Google take my data give me a cheap good phone.
>but fuck me if I have to shell out 10 Benjamins for a fucking phone
You don't have to. iPhone 8 and even 7 works well even today and unlike most Android OEMs including Google, you will get updates for at least 4 years easily. You been a 6s user, you already know that.
No my point is that all cloud providers have to do this so there's not as much difference in effective privacy between them as discussions often seem to assume.
Seems like you need to store all your data locally or encrypted on your own servers if you really want privacy.
Google uses my data to target ads at me but doesn’t actually give any of my data to its ad-buying customers. Apple doesn’t do this but is obliged to turn over my iCloud data to the government with a subpoena.
Since this is really the scenario we should be most concerned about and since all tech companies are required to comply with the law it seems to me that the only way to have any meaningful online privacy is to not use cloud services from any vendor.