
Apple says it’s tracking your calls and emails to ‘prevent fraud’ - ColinWright
https://nypost.com/2018/09/20/apple-says-its-tracking-your-calls-and-emails-to-prevent-fraud/
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fpgaminer
The title is misleading.

Most people would believe the title is saying "Apple is collecting information
on who you call, who calls you, where, when; and it's reading your emails."

But then the article says: "information about how you use your device,
including the approximate number of phone calls or emails you send and
receive"

So, no, they aren't "tracking your calls and emails" in the layman's sense of
the term. They're just counting the number of calls and emails.

In terms of privacy violation that's at least an order of magnitude less
egregious, and so it's an important distinction.

Not to mention that those numbers aren't even sent to Apple directly. Again
the article states: "The data that gets sent to Apple, according to the
company, is a numeric score that is computed on the device itself."

~~~
Terretta
I'd guessed there's a reason the links being posted here on this are from low-
trust sources: Sun, NYPost, etc.

~~~
mercer
These posts being flagged is a bit of a relief.

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vikingcaffiene
1) Apple has a pretty good privacy record so I'm more inclined to trust them
on this one. Go ahead, light me up for saying that. :-)

2) No one I know ever calls me anymore. I am however getting 10 to 15 spam
calls a day (one literally just came through as I was typing this up). Its so
bad that I had to install a paid spam blocker and even that only catches 80%
or so.

If Apple is looking for ways to deal with these jokers, I am all about it.
This is getting ridiculous.

~~~
morley
I agree with you. FWIW, the article is talking about assigning each user a
fraud score for iTunes purchases. I'm guessing it's so that people can't use
new iTunes accounts to game apps, or to use in-app purchases to test stolen
credit cards.

Having said that, Apple should definitely be more aggressive about blocking
spam numbers. My perception is that it does absolutely nothing about them.
Does Android do a better job here?

~~~
random42_
I've been pretty happy with the way Android is handling spammers. Not only it
shows when a call is suspected to be spam, it also gives me the opportunity to
flag a caller as such.

~~~
cmurf
How is this configured? I've never seen an incoming call shown as possible
spam.

In fact, when I tell Google Voice a number is spam, while it won't forward
calls from that number anymore, it still forwards both calls and texts to
Hangouts. The only way to prevent Hangouts from receiving _known spam_ is to
block the number, which is buried in the app. (I hate Hangouts, it has to be
the best self-torture app ever.)

Edit: As I was typing this, I received notification on both my phone
(Hangouts) and in my web browser (Hangouts) of a voicemail from a number
previously marked as spam. "Our system is showing your local Google listing is
currently not managed or has not been properly cleaned and verified ..." In
Google Voice, this voicemail is in the Spam folder. And yet I received two
notifications on my devices for it.

~~~
random42_
There is a setting on the Phone app just for Caller ID and Spam and you even
have the ability to filter spam calls. I don't have Google Voice so I don't
know if/how it works.

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heavymark
That is not what Apple says. Apple says that developers submitting apps to the
store will be given a trust score to prevent spammers based on the approximate
number of calls and emails made. It does not look at your emails or calls. If
you use the phone for spamming purposes and say send 1000s of emails a day and
10000s of calls a day and marked as a spammer you will get a lower score to
avoid abusing the app store.

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lallysingh
"Tracking" is probably too aggressive a word here. Sounds like they're
counting, while "tracking" opens up a lot more metadata potential.

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bluetidepro
Honestly, I'd probably take this with a grain a sand while "nypost" are the
ones reporting it without too many details. They aren't really known for high
journalistic standards.

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wgerard
Wait, I'm confused:

Are spammers using Apple devices? I always assumed they were just generic VoIP
devices in boiler rooms (or bots, obviously).

Why would you invest that kind of money into a device for making spam calls?

~~~
18040063
This isn't about call spam calls. This is about app review farms and spam
reviews. The way the headlines are being made and the way it's being discussed
is FUD trying to show that Apple is evil; they're just making an effort to
make sure app reviews are legitimate.

~~~
jtr_47
To remove issues with fake reviews, remove the ability to post reviews and
rankings for an application. Instead, enable a application refund system. If
you don't like the application, you have 60-90 days to get a refund. No more
nonsense with fake reviews and such. You as the individual will determine if
an application or song or whatever is good for you. Don't rely on reviews,
they can be faked.

peace

~~~
bilbo0s
This is a really good idea!

Although, I suspect, app developers would absolutely hate it.

~~~
MBCook
Because it would be a disaster. There are so many games that you can complete
in a day or two. They may be absolutely FANTASTIC, like Monument Valley. But
people already don’t like paying for apps so they’ll ask for their $.99 back
after they’ve played the game.

The end result is the only games they can survive or 90 our games that are
full of in app purchases. Every other app could be easily download it, used,
and refunded it quickly.

As bad as monetization is in the App Store right now it would be in order of
magnitude worse.

~~~
jtr_47
Build in a trial period then with limited functionality/levels. The cost of
that trail period is a small percentage of the overall price. For isntance,
let's say the game is $12 USD. The trial period of the game would be 2 days 1
or 2 levels & cost $2 USD. you can upgrade to the full game (no refunds) or
pay as you go for each level/functionality.

Yes - maybe this is more programming, but we have better languages & libraries
to make this happen.

I think there's a way to do this & eliminate nonsense.

~~~
MBCook
$12 games are an absolute no-go on the App Store. If the app is paid its
almost certainly $0.99, maybe $2.

So that doesn’t work, unless the ‘trial period’ is $0.20. And at that point
Apple/etc is losing money on CC fees.

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lev99
This sounds like something they should be doing. If someone used a tool or
service I provided to commit fraud I would take it as a personal failing.

Privacy and security are the reasons I moved from Android to iOS four years
ago. After reading the details this sounds like such a minor collection of
data that it doesn't bother me.

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chooseaname
> Originally published by BGR.

Well, there's your problem right there. Certainly explains why they would use
a word like "tracking" when it doesn't apply.

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nickthegreek
do you think it only tracks emails if you are using the default Mail client?

~~~
oliveshell
I would cautiously assume so— though I don’t know enough about the innards of
iOS to say for sure.

That is to say, my instinct is that it would be difficult (if not impossible)
for the OS to extract meaningful data from, say, the Gmail app, if it’s
communicating with its servers using end-to-end encryption.

The OS _might_ be able to see 3rd-party app calls and emails through the API
which allows app data to appear in Spotlight search, but that’s at least a
permission the user can revoke.

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cmurf
Well, they could hardly do worse than Google has with Google Voice. 90% of the
calls I get are spam and outright fraud, i.e. "Yes, hi sir. I am calling from
Microsoft. The big company. And we want your computer to be safe! Can I have
your password?"

Google is collecting a ton of data, and I no longer have any reason to believe
they care about fraud and spam filtering one bit. It's far worse after porting
the number to GV.

