The world is facing a pivotal moment in the battle for online privacy as a scramble to collect users’ data risks making society “less innovative and less human”, the chief executive of Apple has said.
Tim Cook warned that tech firms and governments have a “profound responsibility” to protect users from “data-hungry companies” that are determined to take their information without permission.
He also urged regulators to halt attempts to let users sidestep Apple’s privacy and security rules by downloading third-party apps through a process known as “sideloading”.
Which is the appealing to common fashion, which the protection of business revenues? And why do both at the same time? To appeal to common fashion in order to protect business revenues, obviously.
a scramble to collect users’ data risks making society “less innovative and less human”
All those big firms out there are apparently desperate to harvest my data, but is this actually doing me any harm? I certainly haven’t noticed it. Yes they are making themselves richer in the process, but are they making me richer or poorer?
Connected to this. How do the commentariat feel about QR codes? There seems to be a movement here of restaurants foregoing menus in favour of sticking QR codes on the tables. Personally, being an interweb user from before there was an interweb, my security policy is never load a webpage without knowing what you’re loading. I never click on links in SMS’s or e-mails without first checking where it’s sending me. Which means I never click on SMS links ever. Lad in our supermarket did on one & ended up having 1200€ stripped out of his bank account. My evil, suspicious, mind tells me it would be a piece of piss to make up your own labels to stick over genuine QR’s would take the unwary to a copy website could harbour all sorts of nasties. Far as I’m concerned, you insist on your customers using QR’s you’ve lost my custom. My phone doesn’t have the ability to read them.
The argument has moved on, Shirley ?
Data collection is already heavily regulated. It is now censorship and manipulation/disinformation from the Tech Sector that we need to investigate.
He also urged regulators to halt attempts to let users sidestep Apple’s privacy and security rules by downloading third-party apps through a process known as “sideloading”.
It’s super important that Tim Cook gets to absolutely control what software you can run on your own phone for, eh… your privacy, would you believe?
I was reading about & am quite tempted by the Linux fone runs open source ware. Downside’s they’re 800 bucks what’s a very basic phone. Because the manufacturers aren’t going to benefit from all the kickbacks from the application providers get loaded with Android. With Apple, of course, you’re not even a beneficiary of the kickbacks.
A Linux phone is worth looking into, but I’d want to be very sure it actually works, because its fans always seem to celebrate when it does. Little things like ability to make a phone call, wake up and respond to an incoming call, send and receive SMS, run for as much as a day without toasting your pocket. Not saying it won’t work, but I’d want to check.
I used a Jolla phone until it died of old age and thought it excellent. That ran Sailfish, a Linux system (including Wayland and systemd, urgh) with well implemented phone and UI bits added. Unfortunately they stopped selling hardware and last I saw suggested loading it on a Sony Xsomething, and Sony have been on my do-not-buy list so long I don’t even remember why.
And before that a Nokia N900, also a Linux computer that happened to be a phone, and worked really well.
Both these were quite expensive if you measure by CPU speed but they were faster than they needed to be for their time. I imagine the Linux phones are the same. You’ll only see low prices if there can be huge sales, and for now that means Android.
You might consider LineageOS. For this you’d need to pick an Android phone from the list they support.
Re QR codes, yes, absolutely, you should never ever point your Web browser at a QR code.
I’m OK with scanning a QR code to see what text it contains, but I’m careful how I do it. If scanning might fire up your browser, that’s the same as blindly clicking a link in an unsolicited email.
@ Mr Teacake
Unfortunately, for the majority of phone users, that there is such a thing as a web browser on a phone, would come as an inexplicable mystery. Most of them believe the entirety of the internet resides on Google.
For QR codes use the Trend Micro QR scanner which checks the link for you.
I use a scanner app that shows the text first. Trouble is a lot of QR codes, to make them small, are bit.ly or other short redirects which give no clue as to the final destination. Even something that looks kosher may well not be, though that’s always a problem with any URL. Those of us with Interweb-fu can often spot the bad-uns but we can all be fooled.
Thanx for that, Mr Teacake. I’m going to give Lineage a spin. Anything must be better than Android’s Assistant’s insistent presence.