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113 points blinding-streak | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.71s | source
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jeffbee ◴[] No.24110022[source]
Apple exempts all their iOS software from their own privacy scaremongering. iOS never pops up a scary dialog warning you that Camera has accessed your location twice in the last week, even though Camera accesses your location every time you start it. There is a completely separate iOS privacy regime for Apple's own apps.
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acdha ◴[] No.24110222[source]
Scaremongering isn't the right way to describe a real, well-documented ongoing concern. We have a long history of app developers trying to monetize their user's privacy, and that also explains why your comparison is inaccurate: if you buy an iOS device you are already trusting Apple. If you don't trust Camera to do nothing more than geotag your photos, you can't use iOS at all because every mechanism which would protect your privacy is built by the same company.

What the privacy measures are doing is giving the user the ability to review requests for access to your personal data by parties you aren't already trusting by virtue of owning the device.

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save_ferris ◴[] No.24110280[source]
Don't you think it's at least a little hypocritical that they don't extend the same privacy configuration options to their apps that they mandate for 3rd party apps? Sure, I generally trust Apple more than a random 3rd party developer, but the fact that Apple doesn't trust me to set my own privacy configuration for the camera makes me trust them less.
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1. beervirus ◴[] No.24110482[source]
Apple's in control of the operating system. If you don't trust them, why would you think that disabling access to the camera app would do any good?
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2. shadowgovt ◴[] No.24110813[source]
This is the absolutist security perspective, where one assumes an "evil demon" threat model (i.e. every exploit will be exploited to the maximum). It's a useful theoretical model for hardening systems against known and unknown intrusion, but it doesn't realistically model the expected outcome in a world with laws and social constraints.

In practice, it's quite reasonable for a consumer to assume that the company providing them services isn't actively out to get them. In fact, we encode that assumption in law in a couple key places (to wit: if Apple is turning the camera on randomly against explicit user desire, they could be sued for invasion of privacy in the same vein as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School...)