App Store Personalized Recommendations and Keylogging

But I thought Apple cared about our privacy!

It's for reasons like this that it concerns me that Siri AI can supposedly read the screen and everything you're doing and adjust its behavior on that. It's a black box and we have nothing but the trust we place in Apple (which I think would be misplaced trust) that they're not going to be siphoning off and processing all of that data for all manner of privacy violating reasons.

Even if they aren't now, what do you think they're going to do with that data when their normal revenue sources inevitably level off and they still need to generate ever growing profits?

> But I thought Apple cared about our privacy!

But they do. Please note that they do not allow any other company to sell you apps, ensuring that no other company can ever keylog you while browsing for apps on an iPhone. Doesn't that make you feel happy, warm, and safe?

They’re putting this much effort into monitoring everything about my keyboard except how bad the actual typing experience is.

Even if they weren't keylogging and it was encrypted, keystroke biometrics are an identifying / fingerprinting metric (like a person's gait).

Apple is a PRISM company.

Mysk 🇨🇦🇩🇪
@mysk_co
·
Jun 10
If you block (xp . apple . com) then it [the key logging section of the personal privacy data requested from Apple] should be empty

That’s interesting.

This is another reason sideloading shouldn’t be optional. We need government regulation enforcing that users can download and install apps from anywhere they want

> But I thought Apple cared about our privacy!

I think they actually do, but ONLY between you and non-Apple.

It's not tracking if it's just Apple tracking you, right?

...right?

> I think they actually do, but ONLY between you and non-Apple.

Which means they don't care about the actual issue at all. They were just taking a baseball bat to their competitor's kneecaps while virtue signaling.

You're the customer AND the product. They were playing 4d chess and now it's checkmate mother fuckers!

Are there online stores that don’t have search fields?

I mean, doesn’t a web site need to process the text you enter into the search field somehow? Are we expecting an old-style Yahoo! link tree?

Ah yes, this is in comparison to the ‘open web’ — which is totally tracking-free (except for the Google Analytics literally everywhere, oh and your credit card now knows who you bought from, as opposed to “Apple”)

> Are there online stores that don’t have search fields?

You're misunderstanding what people are complaining about.

> Ah yes, this is in comparison to the ‘open web’ — which is totally tracking-free

Nobody said that.

> I mean, doesn’t a web site need to process the text you enter into the search field somehow?

But it doesn't need to log an event on every key press for the purposes of serving you targeted ads with apparently no option to even opt out? I'm into freedom.... if some people like the ads and find them useful go for it but there should be a preference to opt out especially from a company like Apple who smugly lectures everybody about privacy all the time.

What's next, they going to log events when I type in the address bar in Safari? What about TextEdit?

And Google is creepy AF with their ads too but at least they are honest about it and don't pretend to have some moral high ground.

So what if they log keypresses and the time between them? Is that a privacy thing people are really concerned about? What will it be used for?

“keyboard gait analysis” by the CIA or something?

And yes, targeted ads… inside the store… that you’re currently inside of. You have started or are already in a business relationship with Apple — is it unusual that a company you’re doing business with tries to tailor its service to you, their customer?

This is absolutely benign compared to actual tracking of you across apps and the web that Facebook, Google, and hundreds of other tracking services do, including your credit cards, your cell phone, etc.

Guess what: Apple is keeping your traffic, behavior, and purchases more private in iOS than if you used any other device, including a computer. Consider the circles of privacy and Apple’s is very small.

And yeah, if they were tracking that stuff in TextEdit, sure, that’s weird — but guess what: They’re not doing that, and they’re not serving ads inside TextEdit, either.

What a weird bunch of conspiracy theories going on in here. Stop this semantic flattening. This is not like the others.

Privacy is a human right except when Apple violates it 😂

> is it unusual that a company you’re doing business with tries to tailor its service to you, their customer?

This justification can be applied to any app or website not just the App Store. They all are collecting data on you to sell you something, or sell the data to someone else so they can sell you something. Some people actually like targeted ads. I’m surprised how many people opt in, if you ask them.

You are right other companies do the same shit but at least they don’t lecture us and claim moral superiority.

Where’s the evidence that the data is associated with the user’s Apple Account? An immutable account identifier that’s being sent to a server? If so that should be pretty easy to prove, because whoever made the claim also says it’s unencrypted.

Mysk’s screenshot looks a lot like the Console app on macOS, which is primarily used to stream system logs. Anyone can use that to stream local logs from their iPhone, take a screenshot like that, and accuse Apple of conspiring surveillance.

@Harvey You can request your personal data from Apple, and they will send you everything they’re storing that’s associated with your account. From the screenshot, it looks like Mysk found this in one of the CSV files they received.

@someoneelse not to mention dynamic pricing...

Where is the App Store's privacy nutrition label? If other companies where collecting every key stroke and permanently associating it with the user profile, Apple would require they disclose it.