
iOS 8 Privacy Updates - kyledreger
http://lmjabreu.com/post/ios-8-privacy-updates/
======
cordite
I wonder how Google will react to this? I already feel betrayed by how apps
seem to meaninglessly and without reason request arbitrary information.

Microsoft also seems to be making a trend about "We care about your data
privacy."

~~~
r00fus
Good point about Microsoft - if they bandwagon and properly implement some of
the good-privacy approaches Apple takes, it will put big pressure on Google to
do the same.

Ultimately, that will help all users, and in the long run, even app developers
as trust increases.

~~~
Chronic29
Although IE sucks, Microsoft is the only one to enable "Send Do Not Track" by
default. Chrome and Firefox have this feature disabled.

~~~
john2x
Chrome I expected, but why does Firefox have it disabled by default?

~~~
burkaman
"As we have been arguing for a long time, the point of the feature is to
reflect the individual’s preference, so the user must make a choice before we
send any stance on tracking."

[https://blog.mozilla.org/privacy/2013/01/28/newdntui/](https://blog.mozilla.org/privacy/2013/01/28/newdntui/)

------
mikelat
I do hope this privacy conscious software becomes a trend and a race to the
top. The amount of data collection is scary and the worse thing is the
encouragement of sharing this information. I would like it even more if the
data is encrypted to the point where not even the company has access to it...
but with the cloud trends that doesn't seem like that's going to happen.

With the recent android updates to reduce importance of application
permissions already has me urked, and I'm not a big fan of google now nagging
me to enable search history. I'm considering to install a more privacy
conscious ROM or put firefox OS soon on my phone.

------
josephlord
Also I understand that it will be possible to set DuckDuckGo as the search
engine in Safari.

~~~
liviu
DuckDuckGo is set as default if you choose "Private Browsing" option.

~~~
bdash
Private windows continue to respect the user's search engine preference.

------
rizwan
This article is so very thorough and great.

I'd love to have some anchor links within the piece though, so when I'm
referring my team to some of the changes, I can direct them right to the
relevant information.

~~~
sb23
Pick a phrase in the spot you want and CTRL - F. Almost the same thing.

~~~
rizwan
Sure, that's possible. When you're passing around the links to other people,
it gets old to have a bunch of "[link] and search for
'Keychain|HealthKit|HomeKit'"

------
cstrat
I really like the changes they are making here.

One that stands out that I think will cause plenty of issues is the "Block
Cookies not from Current Website". This should basically block all tracking,
like, +1 etc... buttons, right?

I think it will even impact the SSO that Google has across its properties.

~~~
jbg_
I’m running Yosemite and the default is “block cookies not from current or
previously visited websites”. Not sure if it’s the same on iOS 8, but that
would seem to allow the buttons to use cookies as long as the user has been to
that website (e.g. Facebook, for a “like” button) before.

~~~
zevyoura
With comprehensive shared web history via iCloud this could sort of work, but
I never (for example) visit the Facebook mobile site from my phone, despite
using their apps daily.

------
tlrobinson
I think Secure Enclave and other hardware crypto technologies are massively
important, especially if cryptocurrencies are to be widely used.

Trezor ([http://www.bitcointrezor.com/](http://www.bitcointrezor.com/)) and
other dedicated wallets are a decent stopgap, but I'd really like to let my
phone do everything, _if_ it can be done securely, which I think it can with
the right hardware (of course _auditing_ hardware is a lot more difficult)

Hal Finney has done some good work here, applying TPMs to Bitcoin:
[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=154290.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=154290.0)

------
jakebellacera
It's fascinating how so many apps can be rendered useless by the simple
mistake of tapping "Deny" instead of "Allow."

~~~
GrantS
You can, of course, navigate to settings and toggle the switch for anything
you accidentally denied, but I wonder how many users know that. Also, unless a
developer explicitly adds some message reminding the user that they have
already denied access to some resource, the user may very well forget that
they ever denied anything and think that the app just doesn't work.

All that said, I think Apple is making the right choice by favoring privacy
and security even if it's at the expense of a completely frictionless user
experience.

~~~
josephlord
At least in iOS 8 the developer can add actions to send the user to the
correct part of the settings app.

~~~
gergles
And let's hope the review process is very tight about this. If I deny you some
permission, you shouldn't be able to pester me every time I run the app to
turn it back on. Some apps ( _cough_ Facebook _cough_ ) are already REALLY bad
about this.

~~~
micampe
I denied location access and Facebook never asks me anything more than once.

~~~
jbg_
The Facebook “Messenger” app pops up a full-screen modal pestering you to
enable notifications EVERY TIME you start it, if you choose to keep them
disabled. I prefer to batch electronic communications and check them a few
times a day at most, and find the constant nagging to change my communications
style pretty infuriating. I ended up deleting the app.

~~~
harshaw
ok, but given that Messenger is about, err.... real time messaging it is
probably very important to have push notifications enabled.

------
johnvschmitt
A welcome change. But, for this to work, the violators (even past) can't be
allowed to bypass the rules.

For example, how many of the top apps that explicitly allow kids, violate some
or all of the COPPA standards?

Clash of Clans is just one example, ages 9+, but allows custom usernames and
p2p chat with very little filters. Those social features are key to long term
engagement, even of 9 year olds.

------
junto
I'm trying to get my head around the keychain changes, and whether they fix
one particular annoyance that I have with iOS.

Currently I have the Gmail app installed on our family iPad. My Google account
details are therefore stored in the keychain.

If I use the Google Maps app, it PERSISTENTLY asks the user to sign in (using
my account already in the keychain). My wife doesn't want her location
searches saved to my account, nor those of my kids.

I don't want to login to the Google Maps app, but Google seems to want to
force me to, even though this is a shared device. There doesn't appear to be
an option to say "no, thanks, stop f%*king asking".

So instead I use Google Maps in Safari and cringe if I really need to use
Apple Maps - slooooooooow.

Can anyone shed any light on whether I'll be able to block the sharing of my
Google account details between Google apps?

~~~
smackfu
No, this actually goes the other direction. If you have stored your Google
login credentials in Safari, then the Google Maps app could login
automatically without prompting you. Currently only apps from the same
developer can share keychain items.

Apple would rather you buy two iPads than share one, and their OS is designed
around that.

------
GrantS
I had somehow missed the news from WWDC that accessing the camera now requires
explicit permission from the user.

I'm really surprised camera privacy took this long to arrive, and I wonder
what the reasoning was for not implementing it at the same time as microphone
permissions arrived in iOS 7.

~~~
coldtea
> _I 'm really surprised camera privacy took this long to arrive, and I wonder
> what the reasoning was for not implementing it at the same time as
> microphone permissions arrived in iOS 7._

I don't think apps could take photos without you explicitly triggering the
process, so no permission was needed anyway IIRC.

~~~
GrantS
Using the lower level AVFoundation classes to start a capture session, any app
could absolutely get live camera access to either front or back camera without
the user knowing anything. I know because my app shows a live preview to the
user right when the app starts up, no permission required, direct access to
pixels, and if I chose not to display the UIView that shows the live camera
data, that would not change my app's access to the data (under iOS 7 and
earlier, I mean).

It's possible Apple screened for non-camera apps using those APIs to keep
spying apps out but (Edit: bad example, this was an Android app. I had said:
"there was that flashlight app that was storing/reporting user GPS locations
without permission so obviously things were slipping through the old system.")

------
weinzierl
On the iOS 8 preview page for the Photos App the iCloud Photo Library
integration is featured very prominently.

I wondered what this means for privacy. It isn't mentioned in the original
post, probably because it's an extra app therefore out of scope of the
article. I'd be interested anyway in any information on this, primarily: Will
Photos be practically usable without iCloud? Syncing my devices with iPhoto is
pretty seamless, will it still work?

[1]
[https://www.apple.com/ios/ios8/photos/](https://www.apple.com/ios/ios8/photos/)

~~~
glasshead969
You can disable iCloud Photo library, atleast in current betas. Regarding
iPhoto, it is being discontinued in favor of a new Photos app in Yosemite.
Existing app should work with maintenance updates to it.

------
ROFISH
Random question: If the specially blessed form names for user signup is
'username' and 'new-password', what's the name of the field that's "password
again" (for typos)?

~~~
melvinmt
I don't think autocomplete is supposed to work for fields that check typos?

~~~
abritishguy
Autocomplete doesn't make typos so why shouldn't it work?

~~~
melvinmt
Because it defeats the purpose of the field that's checking for typos.

~~~
abritishguy
And that purpose is obsolete when a computer is inputting the password.

------
AllenKids
The biggest win for me is contact access control, it drives me absolutely nuts
when a messaging app or whatever insists on having full access of my very
private and valuable contact info.

~~~
robmcm
What's more worrying is my contact information on friends devices. I have zero
control over that.

Some of them are even on Android! ;)

------
gurkendoktor
I wish networking was sandboxed in iOS 8, at least for particular kinds of
apps (e.g. diary apps). Apple could use the chance to promote iAds and
CloudKit at the same time by whitelisting them. :)

------
sibbl
Screenshots, created with Sketch... Doesn't look good on devices that don't
have "Helvetica Neue" installed.

~~~
zaroth
What is this "installed" you speak of?

~~~
fredsted
This: [http://i.imgur.com/AoR40fw.png](http://i.imgur.com/AoR40fw.png)

------
fredsted
Nice detail on SVG graphics.

------
shurcooL
Unrelated to content, it's interesting that I could reduce the scaling to not
90, not 75, not even 67, but a whole 50%, in order to have the font sizes be
of comfortable normal size rather than extremely large. It's a pattern I'm
noticing more and more, and it makes me worry.

~~~
mikestew
Odd, it looks like you're getting down-voted. I mean, I'm no more of a fan of
"page layout complaint that has nothing to do with the article" comments than
anyone else, but I don't know that it's down-vote-worthy.

Anyway, at the apparent risk of being on the receiving end of some down votes
myself, I'm more curious _why_ giant fonts are a trend. I'm old, I wear
progressive lens (what used to be known as "bifocals"), and I still hit the
Cmd⌘-+- combo a few times to crank it down to a readable size. Is it some
attempt to capture the aging baby boomer market? (I ask with tongue somewhat
in cheek...)

~~~
untog
_I 'm more curious why giant fonts are a trend_

If you imagine that page on a phone screen, you'd find that the font size is
probably a lot more normal than it is large. If you're expecting > 50% of
traffic on mobile then that's the use-case you optimise for.

~~~
jamesbritt
Why not use media queries to apply screen-appropriate CSS?

------
chollida1
Is there a reason the author's name is in the title. Seems to violate the HN's
guidelines.

Is the author so important that we should know of him/her?

Having said that, the article is awesome and if the author keeps writing
pieces like this I'll be reading more!

~~~
keehun
It seems the title is fixed now? It's a good document, anyway.

------
fi8on
Looks like they just copied another feature as usual from some competitive OS
and made it sound like something new.

~~~
mwfunk
I swear there is no weaker criticism on tech forums than people complaining
about how technology X is lame because it has some nifty feature that
competing technology Y has been doing for a long time, which is always
followed by a complaint that whoever made technology X is guilty giving the
false impression that they are 100% responsible for inventing whatever that
feature was, by virtue of the fact that they don't include a long list of
thank yous to said competitors in their marketing materials.

In previous decades, this argument was every bit as silly when someone used it
to claim that Windows sucked because the Mac came first, or that the Mac
sucked because the Xerox Alto came first, or that the Xerox Alto sucked
because the Analytical Engine came first, or that the Analytical Engine sucked
because the abacus came first, or that the abacus sucked because fingers came
first, or that fingers sucked because...well, I don't know. Maybe there were a
bunch of flagella graybeards on the forums who would get super pissed anytime
someone made a positive comment about fingers without acknowledging the
evolutionary contributions of their species.

