If Apple made land mines, the majority of Ra-Ra posters on this site would praise them for their kind heartedness in putting the opt out switch in a place where you had to stand on it in order to operate the switch. Apple would be extolled as being so much better than all those other land mine makers who didn't even install a switch.
I really love the inane stories the Apple-haters come up with. You don't have anything real to attack Apple for, so you make up stupid idiotic fantasies:
"If Steve Jobs could do it, he would enslave the entire world and steal your sister as his love slave, so don't buy Apple products".
Sorry, but I prefer to live in the real world. And in the real world, Apple takes better care of its customers than almost anyone out there - not because of altruism, but because Jobs realizes that their success comes from keeping customers happy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cnocbui
It should all be opt-in as a default, and this is why we need politicians. In Europe, websites used to typically have the little box authorising them to send you mailouts and to share your information with other companies, pre selected. The law was changed so you had to opt-in. That was a good thing.
I would certainly support opt-in. I'd also support life imprisonment for the bigger spammers and for criminals using malware. But that doesn't change the fact that what Apple is doing is perfectly legal and Apple is the BEST of the companies out there.
Well this confirms what I already knew, politicians are...wait, not getting sucked into that one again.
I hope Steve sends them a nice little letter directing them towards the readily available articles describing the policy changes and exactly what people can expect to be done with their data as well as their options to opt out.
This is of course assuming they CAN read, which given that of late they seem to like passing legislation they've never even looked through I'm not so sure they can.
Wow, Congressmen confused? I am so surprised. I would never think that could ever happen.
Maybe they meed to waste millions of taxpayers money on some hearings about this. Sounds like that is in the works.
I see what it is now - a plot to create new appointed positions and such and be able to say see how well I am spending you tax dollars I am protecting your privacy while meanwhile nothing changes and our taxes go up.
Well this confirms what I already knew, politicians are...wait, not getting sucked into that one again.
I hope Steve sends them a nice little letter directing them towards the readily available articles describing the policy changes and exactly what people can expect to be done with their data as well as their options to opt out.
This is of course assuming they CAN read, which given that of late they seem to like passing legislation they've never even looked through I'm not so sure they can.
Oooo, even better, Steve should demand a statement from them explaining the changes in this years census and what they plan to do with our data!
I really love the inane stories the Apple-haters come up with.
A hater? I have a Mac SE, bought when new. An imagewriter II, a Powerbook G4 Ti, an iMac G5 and a MacBook unibody, and an iPod classic.
Twenty five years of continuous unbroken use of Apple products. Not bad for a 'hater'. I have just not bought into the iPhone and iPad eco-systems and don't partake of the uncritical fanboism that so infects this site.
After reading about the potentially annoying impact iAds may deliver in iOS 4, I have held off on any "upgrading" until I could learn what consequences this would have for me.
Later, I learned that all sorts of metrics will be gathered & transmitted to all sorts of 3rd parties about whom I know nothing, nor with whom I have agreements. This data includes my use of my own phone, where I am, what sites I visited, what applications I prefer, what music I like, what movies I watch, what TV shows I like, what books I read, how old I am... now I am CONVINCED that adding iOS 4 to my 3GS would be about the worst personal decision I could make.
According to advertising.apple.com :
"Standard targeting options on the iAd Network include:
Demographics
Application preferences
Music passions
Movie genre interests
Television genre interests
Location"
I would go out of my way to never purchase any product or service whose ad was force-fed to me on my phone, including even changing any plans I might have had to procure. I urge all iPhone users to do the same. Voting with our dollar may be the last real voice we have left.
Unlike most who have posted here, I was glad to see the government requesting detailed data from Apple regarding the use of this personal and proprietary information. Yes, by and large there's a number of knuckleheads in government - however, this does not mean that you can't educate them. Stop whining and write to your congressman! I have and I've told them that I believe it's time that Americans force corporations to deploy OPT-IN systems, rather than OPT-OUT.
Please note that with Apple's iAds, even if you OPT-OUT, you still aren't safe - you can't actually exit their over-reaching system:
You may still see the same number of ads as before, but they may be less relevant because they will not be based on your interests.
You may still see ads related to the content in an application or based on other non-personal information.
If you use more than one Apple mobile device running iOS 4, you will have to opt out from each device individually.
Opting out applies only to Apple advertising services and does not affect interest-based advertising from other advertising networks."
You're iAds targeted for life whether you like or not, chucko.
What's the point of opting out of a system that doesn't give a rat's ass what you think one way or the other? And do we trust all this data to a company that doesn't care what our desires may be?
I find the whole thing relatively creepy and slimy. When I think of iAds, I want to shower and scrub down.
After reading about the potentially annoying impact iAds may deliver in iOS 4, I have held off on any "upgrading" until I could learn what consequences this would have for me.
... now I am CONVINCED that adding iOS 4 to my 3GS would be about the worst personal decision I could make.
...
I find the whole thing relatively creepy and slimy. When I think of iAds, I want to shower and scrub down.
Not liking all that I saw in the iPhone ecosystem, I decided to not subscribe. If you would like something equivalent to an iPhone 4, but without the Orwellian undertones, check out the Samsung S8500 Wave. The OS and web browsing are not quite as slick, apps are pretty scant at the moment, but in pretty much all other respects (except you can hold it how you like), it is as good as the iPhone and betters it in many respects and yet in my market. costs about 75% less sim free.
Not liking all that I saw in the iPhone ecosystem, I decided to not subscribe. If you would like something equivalent to an iPhone 4, but without the Orwellian undertones, check out the Samsung S8500 Wave. The OS and web browsing are not quite as slick, apps are pretty scant at the moment, but in pretty much all other respects (except you can hold it how you like), it is as good as the iPhone and betters it in many respects and yet in my market. costs about 75% less sim free.
I appreciate the suggestion. However, I'm going to stick with my 3GS and the old iPhone OS currently on it and fight against iAds. No upgrades for me or my family (3 iPhones) until iAds changes it's big brotherish behavior. I am writing every congressman in the House and every Senator in the Senate.
I am looking for a local political champion who will take a bill to Washington and work to drive it to signature. Fortunately, it's an election year, iPhone 4 is big, big news, highly visible, so I don't think it'll be very difficult to find someone who will want to leverage this.
The law of the land must be opt-in henceforth, and when people do not opt-in, a corporation must respect and honor their wishes, not "pull an iAds" on them. I will contact friends and business associates to solicit funding for this individual & I will dedicate a huge chunk of money to this myself. My youngest daughter works as a lobbyist, so I'll solicit her advice and assistance in plotting and executing an effective strategy.
Instead of running away to some other phone, I'm going to hold my ground here and try to do something about this sleazy practice. As an Apple customer & Mac user for over 25 years, I'm so angry and disappointed by the 180º change in the company I supported & evangelized for decades, I just can't ignore this. Besides, in 1998 I sent Steve Jobs a nicely typed and worded letter with my product vision of a portable hard drive for everyone - to which I received a snotty letter on Apple stationery from their legal department noting that all ideas submitted belonged to Apple - and so, I feel a little responsible for the whole damned thing that started three years later.
If enough Apple supporters complained, and enough of us took the fight to Washington, I am confident that we could get AAPL to alter their tactics to better protect our personal & private information and provide support for our hard-fought freedoms. Too many men and women have made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our freedom to let some sordid corporate policy run amok.
2. The GPS in your phone gets most of its location from cell towers. Cell towers themselves must know their own location precisely, in addition to their own local time, so using those two pieces of information a phone may determine its own location from cell towers. By the same token, these days your phone company probably knows where your phone is as well (can't speak to that, though).
3. The ad capability being discussed enables your phone to tell the advertiser where it is, so that when you surf the web the ads on a given website will be geographically specific.
3. Google originally designed ads into their cell phone business model (intending to offer the service for free) and then dropped the model but kept the ad capability.
4. You will get no more and no fewer ads, just geographically-specific ads.
5. You can turn the function off any time if you get creeped out that ads from the stores all around where you're parked are appearing on your Yahoo email page as you read. Not a big deal.
6. For what it's worth, anybody who watches CSPAN will quickly get the idea that a fair number of Congressmen are not stupid and/or do not have strictly self-centered intentions. Unfortunately Joe Barton is as dumb as a box of rocks, takes more money from the oil industry than anybody else, and grandstands as often as possible. Lately he's been looking hard for something to make people forget about his BP apology.
7. If given the opportunity, I myself will steal your sister and turn her into my sex slave. It's a great idea and I just don't see any reason not to run with it.
8. Anybody who turns Apple's new iPhone 4 EULA into an offense against our troops, who give the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our freedoms, is either one of the bad congressmen or a complete dope.
2. The GPS in your phone gets most of its location from cell towers. Cell towers themselves must know their own location precisely, in addition to their own local time, so using those two pieces of information a phone may determine its own location from cell towers. By the same token, these days your phone company probably knows where your phone is as well (can't speak to that, though).
3. The ad capability being discussed enables your phone to tell the advertiser where it is, so that when you surf the web the ads on a given website will be geographically specific.
3. Google originally designed ads into their cell phone business model (intending to offer the service for free) and then dropped the model but kept the ad capability.
4. You will get no more and no fewer ads, just geographically-specific ads.
5. You can turn the function off any time if you get creeped out that ads from the stores all around where you're parked are appearing on your Yahoo email page as you read. Not a big deal.
6. For what it's worth, anybody who watches CSPAN will quickly get the idea that a fair number of Congressmen are not stupid and/or do not have strictly self-centered intentions. Unfortunately Joe Barton is as dumb as a box of rocks, takes more money from the oil industry than anybody else, and grandstands as often as possible. Lately he's been looking hard for something to make people forget about his BP apology.
7. If given the opportunity, I myself will steal your sister and turn her into my sex slave. It's a great idea and I just don't see any reason not to run with it.
8. Anybody who turns Apple's new iPhone 4 EULA into an offense against our troops, who give the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our freedoms, is either one of the bad congressmen or a complete dope.
First of all, I would like to know why it is the business of Congress to meddle in how a particular business is run in the absence of any major public outrage (I don't believe I saw anyone picketing the AT&T store or any reports of picketing at the 1 Infinite Loop) or a particular odious judicial ruling. It's all great and wonderful that they are "concerned" about our privacy, but just what makes you believe that this hasn't been happening for ages already? Besides, it only makes good business sense to build a system that targets the advertising to the individual likely to view it.
Would it make much sense for the viewers in southern Georgia to see television commercials for a small hardware store chain in Montana?
Targeting users based on demographic information is a process that has been undergoing refinement for decades. The only difference now is that we, the consumers, are making it much easier to refine the process. Consider the Pandora Radio system. They have this musical genome system that gives you music similar to music you have already chosen. As you skip or like new songs in the list, the radio station gets more an more specific as to what to want to hear, until at some point you will no longer have to hit skip. Now you don't honestly think that they aren't using the wealth of information you are providing them to manage the ads you se or hear do you?
Let's consider what kind of information that you are providing them, simply by listening to your custom radio station. They can take the IP range and do a series of simple searches to determine with decent accuracy your geographic location. If your IP is in the range of a block owned by a university, government, or corporation they can then correlate your location with a good guess as to an industry that, at the very least, the computer is being used from. If they choose to look at the time range and frequency of your logins from that IP they can likely determine if you are at work (especially if you login from the same IP for the same date/time frames).
So given that information it wouldn't be too large a stretch of the imagination to devise the following scenario:
You come into work and login, then fire up Pandora. You proceed to slog along at whatever widget it is that you are currently tasked with. All the while Pandora is innocently playing music interspersed with ads. As the time gets closer on to noon in your timezone, the category of ads shown begins to change so that you are getting a larger number of food related adverts. Not surprisingly, you find that "hey the Chinese place down the street is having a lunch special today that sounds tasty. It's been a while since I ate Chinese, think I'll go there instead of eating the PB&J I brought from home."
Now, you also happened to have Pandora on your iOS4 equipped device and as you wander into the Chinese restaurant for lunch Pandora registers your location, correlates it with the ads that your desktop account had received that day so far and determines that the Chinese restaurant ad actually worked. They then send this data to the restaurant owner (or ad agency, depending) and consequently that restaurant may have specials at lunch more often since they know that it works. They will also advertise more on Pandora, because they also know that works. It is even possible that they might install WiFi in their restaurant since a large number of customers appear form the demographic information to be employees or students of the local university, and free WiFi is quite popular in that particular demographic market.
So you see, matt_s, the collection of the iAD data is not Big Brother-ish at all (and that analogy is a little flawed since Big Brother was actually the governmental dictator, so taking your fight to the government for advocacy would seem a little at odds here). This collection of data is in fact helpful, since without that data Pandora wouldn't have sent you that ad, you wouldn't have gotten a deal on Chinese lunch, and the advertiser would have no way of knowing if their money is being spent wisely. Wisely spent advertising dollars keeps prices reasonable, so you were in fact helping the whole community out with this small act of targeted data collection participation.
Now, whether or not "opt-in" should be the law of the land is debateable, since people are, by and large, lazy. These same lazy people are the ones that click on every attachment they get in e-mail, they write their passwords on post-it notes under their keyboards and mouse pads, fail to vote because it's "too inconvenient", and they still leave keys to the house under the doormat. I seriously doubt that these people would bother to opt-in. Now, what's the harm in that you may ask? The harm is that without this precious demographic information advertisers wouldn't be able to reasonably connect with everyone that wanted to eat Chinese and everyone's lunch would end up tasting like Tasty Wheat.
And really, would you like to eat Tasty Wheat three meals a day? I mean it may have all the proteins and amino acids you need but I bet it tastes as bad as it looks.
I appreciate the suggestion. However, I'm going to stick with my 3GS and the old iPhone OS currently on it and fight against iAds. No upgrades for me or my family (3 iPhones) until iAds changes it's big brotherish behavior. I am writing every congressman in the House and every Senator in the Senate.
I am looking for a local political champion who will take a bill to Washington and work to drive it to signature. Fortunately, it's an election year, iPhone 4 is big, big news, highly visible, so I don't think it'll be very difficult to find someone who will want to leverage this.
The law of the land must be opt-in henceforth, and when people do not opt-in, a corporation must respect and honor their wishes, not "pull an iAds" on them. I will contact friends and business associates to solicit funding for this individual & I will dedicate a huge chunk of money to this myself. My youngest daughter works as a lobbyist, so I'll solicit her advice and assistance in plotting and executing an effective strategy.
Instead of running away to some other phone, I'm going to hold my ground here and try to do something about this sleazy practice. As an Apple customer & Mac user for over 25 years, I'm so angry and disappointed by the 180º change in the company I supported & evangelized for decades, I just can't ignore this. Besides, in 1998 I sent Steve Jobs a nicely typed and worded letter with my product vision of a portable hard drive for everyone - to which I received a snotty letter on Apple stationery from their legal department noting that all ideas submitted belonged to Apple - and so, I feel a little responsible for the whole damned thing that started three years later.
If enough Apple supporters complained, and enough of us took the fight to Washington, I am confident that we could get AAPL to alter their tactics to better protect our personal & private information and provide support for our hard-fought freedoms. Too many men and women have made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our freedom to let some sordid corporate policy run amok.
it's actually very easy to opt-out of iAd's "big brotherish behavior", just visit oo.apple.com with any iOS4 device and you are out.
7. If given the opportunity, I myself will steal your sister and turn her into my sex slave. It's a great idea and I just don't see any reason not to run with it.
Dude, wtf?
I don't want to be the fun police and all, but that was pretty.... well, I don't know what that was.
it's actually very easy to opt-out of iAd's "big brotherish behavior", just visit oo.apple.com with any iOS4 device and you are out.
Read the fine print, man. You can opt out but not really. You'll still get fed ads - albeit not as "relevant" or tailored to your tastes or usage and age and height and race and what you read or watch or listen to or how much you make or the thousands of other parameters they store about you in their huge new North Carolina data complex - and your Location will still be reported even after you opt out, unless you turn off Location services and never use it again. The moment you activate it, you'll be spied on again.
So, while opt out means opt out everywhere else on earth, not on iAds, baby. You're theirs for life... or as long as your contract runs. And when your contract runs out, they reserve the option of selling data about you to other marketing and financial firms. Again, read the fine print.
Maybe someday you'll apply for a loan and the bank will refuse, citing some books they don't approve of that you read awhile back on iBooks. Or you have a tendency to watch revolutionary kinds of films. Or because you visited a medical marijuana store way back in '11... they know, because they have your location parameters. Who knows where this could lead? Dream it & it'll happen.
This is definitely big brotherish. Freedom requires constant vigilance.
Read the fine print, man. You can opt out but not really. You'll still get fed ads - albeit not as "relevant" or tailored to your tastes or usage and age and height and race and what you read or watch or listen to or how much you make or the thousands of other parameters they store about you in their huge new North Carolina data complex - and your Location will still be reported even after you opt out, unless you turn off Location services and never use it again. The moment you activate it, you'll be spied on again.
So, while opt out means opt out everywhere else on earth, not on iAds, baby. You're theirs for life... or as long as your contract runs. And when your contract runs out, they reserve the option of selling data about you to other marketing and financial firms. Again, read the fine print.
Maybe someday you'll apply for a loan and the bank will refuse, citing some books they don't approve of that you read awhile back on iBooks. Or you have a tendency to watch revolutionary kinds of films. Or because you visited a medical marijuana store way back in '11... they know, because they have your location parameters. Who knows where this could lead? Dream it & it'll happen.
This is definitely big brotherish. Freedom requires constant vigilance.
Hardly. Opting out means Apple won't use your location and personal information together, as well as using more generic, non-specific information to serve up ads.
You didn't think you get to opt out of a world that included advertising did you?
You go online and you are explicitly agreeing to being harvested and served up ads. At least there are some vendors like Apple that agree to serve up generic ads rather then the Minority Report versions you get everywhere else.
Comments
Nice!
This one was too esoteric for me.
Thanks for the link, I was wondering about the origins of the heading. Besides which, I laughed so hard I spilled my coffee.
If Apple made land mines, the majority of Ra-Ra posters on this site would praise them for their kind heartedness in putting the opt out switch in a place where you had to stand on it in order to operate the switch. Apple would be extolled as being so much better than all those other land mine makers who didn't even install a switch.
I really love the inane stories the Apple-haters come up with. You don't have anything real to attack Apple for, so you make up stupid idiotic fantasies:
"If Steve Jobs could do it, he would enslave the entire world and steal your sister as his love slave, so don't buy Apple products".
Sorry, but I prefer to live in the real world. And in the real world, Apple takes better care of its customers than almost anyone out there - not because of altruism, but because Jobs realizes that their success comes from keeping customers happy.
It should all be opt-in as a default, and this is why we need politicians. In Europe, websites used to typically have the little box authorising them to send you mailouts and to share your information with other companies, pre selected. The law was changed so you had to opt-in. That was a good thing.
I would certainly support opt-in. I'd also support life imprisonment for the bigger spammers and for criminals using malware. But that doesn't change the fact that what Apple is doing is perfectly legal and Apple is the BEST of the companies out there.
Are you suggesting that the idiot trollers here are older?
Uh, no. Not unless they are also Congressmen - most of whom are older than dirt.
Maybe they meed to waste millions of taxpayers money on some hearings about this. Sounds like that is in the works.
I hope Steve sends them a nice little letter directing them towards the readily available articles describing the policy changes and exactly what people can expect to be done with their data as well as their options to opt out.
This is of course assuming they CAN read, which given that of late they seem to like passing legislation they've never even looked through I'm not so sure they can.
Wow, Congressmen confused? I am so surprised. I would never think that could ever happen.
Maybe they meed to waste millions of taxpayers money on some hearings about this. Sounds like that is in the works.
I see what it is now - a plot to create new appointed positions and such and be able to say see how well I am spending you tax dollars I am protecting your privacy while meanwhile nothing changes and our taxes go up.
Well this confirms what I already knew, politicians are...wait, not getting sucked into that one again.
I hope Steve sends them a nice little letter directing them towards the readily available articles describing the policy changes and exactly what people can expect to be done with their data as well as their options to opt out.
This is of course assuming they CAN read, which given that of late they seem to like passing legislation they've never even looked through I'm not so sure they can.
Oooo, even better, Steve should demand a statement from them explaining the changes in this years census and what they plan to do with our data!
I really love the inane stories the Apple-haters come up with.
A hater? I have a Mac SE, bought when new. An imagewriter II, a Powerbook G4 Ti, an iMac G5 and a MacBook unibody, and an iPod classic.
Twenty five years of continuous unbroken use of Apple products. Not bad for a 'hater'. I have just not bought into the iPhone and iPad eco-systems and don't partake of the uncritical fanboism that so infects this site.
Oooo, even better, Steve should demand a statement from them explaining the changes in this years census and what they plan to do with our data!
I'l second that!
I would certainly support opt-in.
After reading about the potentially annoying impact iAds may deliver in iOS 4, I have held off on any "upgrading" until I could learn what consequences this would have for me.
Later, I learned that all sorts of metrics will be gathered & transmitted to all sorts of 3rd parties about whom I know nothing, nor with whom I have agreements. This data includes my use of my own phone, where I am, what sites I visited, what applications I prefer, what music I like, what movies I watch, what TV shows I like, what books I read, how old I am... now I am CONVINCED that adding iOS 4 to my 3GS would be about the worst personal decision I could make.
According to advertising.apple.com :
"Standard targeting options on the iAd Network include:
Demographics
Application preferences
Music passions
Movie genre interests
Television genre interests
Location"
I would go out of my way to never purchase any product or service whose ad was force-fed to me on my phone, including even changing any plans I might have had to procure. I urge all iPhone users to do the same. Voting with our dollar may be the last real voice we have left.
Unlike most who have posted here, I was glad to see the government requesting detailed data from Apple regarding the use of this personal and proprietary information. Yes, by and large there's a number of knuckleheads in government - however, this does not mean that you can't educate them. Stop whining and write to your congressman! I have and I've told them that I believe it's time that Americans force corporations to deploy OPT-IN systems, rather than OPT-OUT.
Please note that with Apple's iAds, even if you OPT-OUT, you still aren't safe - you can't actually exit their over-reaching system:
Quoting from http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4228 about what happens after you OPT-OUT of iAds:
"A few things you should know:
You may still see the same number of ads as before, but they may be less relevant because they will not be based on your interests.
You may still see ads related to the content in an application or based on other non-personal information.
If you use more than one Apple mobile device running iOS 4, you will have to opt out from each device individually.
Opting out applies only to Apple advertising services and does not affect interest-based advertising from other advertising networks."
You're iAds targeted for life whether you like or not, chucko.
What's the point of opting out of a system that doesn't give a rat's ass what you think one way or the other? And do we trust all this data to a company that doesn't care what our desires may be?
I find the whole thing relatively creepy and slimy. When I think of iAds, I want to shower and scrub down.
After reading about the potentially annoying impact iAds may deliver in iOS 4, I have held off on any "upgrading" until I could learn what consequences this would have for me.
... now I am CONVINCED that adding iOS 4 to my 3GS would be about the worst personal decision I could make.
...
I find the whole thing relatively creepy and slimy. When I think of iAds, I want to shower and scrub down.
Not liking all that I saw in the iPhone ecosystem, I decided to not subscribe. If you would like something equivalent to an iPhone 4, but without the Orwellian undertones, check out the Samsung S8500 Wave. The OS and web browsing are not quite as slick, apps are pretty scant at the moment, but in pretty much all other respects (except you can hold it how you like), it is as good as the iPhone and betters it in many respects and yet in my market. costs about 75% less sim free.
Not liking all that I saw in the iPhone ecosystem, I decided to not subscribe. If you would like something equivalent to an iPhone 4, but without the Orwellian undertones, check out the Samsung S8500 Wave. The OS and web browsing are not quite as slick, apps are pretty scant at the moment, but in pretty much all other respects (except you can hold it how you like), it is as good as the iPhone and betters it in many respects and yet in my market. costs about 75% less sim free.
I appreciate the suggestion. However, I'm going to stick with my 3GS and the old iPhone OS currently on it and fight against iAds. No upgrades for me or my family (3 iPhones) until iAds changes it's big brotherish behavior. I am writing every congressman in the House and every Senator in the Senate.
I am looking for a local political champion who will take a bill to Washington and work to drive it to signature. Fortunately, it's an election year, iPhone 4 is big, big news, highly visible, so I don't think it'll be very difficult to find someone who will want to leverage this.
The law of the land must be opt-in henceforth, and when people do not opt-in, a corporation must respect and honor their wishes, not "pull an iAds" on them. I will contact friends and business associates to solicit funding for this individual & I will dedicate a huge chunk of money to this myself. My youngest daughter works as a lobbyist, so I'll solicit her advice and assistance in plotting and executing an effective strategy.
Instead of running away to some other phone, I'm going to hold my ground here and try to do something about this sleazy practice. As an Apple customer & Mac user for over 25 years, I'm so angry and disappointed by the 180º change in the company I supported & evangelized for decades, I just can't ignore this. Besides, in 1998 I sent Steve Jobs a nicely typed and worded letter with my product vision of a portable hard drive for everyone - to which I received a snotty letter on Apple stationery from their legal department noting that all ideas submitted belonged to Apple - and so, I feel a little responsible for the whole damned thing that started three years later.
If enough Apple supporters complained, and enough of us took the fight to Washington, I am confident that we could get AAPL to alter their tactics to better protect our personal & private information and provide support for our hard-fought freedoms. Too many men and women have made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our freedom to let some sordid corporate policy run amok.
2. The GPS in your phone gets most of its location from cell towers. Cell towers themselves must know their own location precisely, in addition to their own local time, so using those two pieces of information a phone may determine its own location from cell towers. By the same token, these days your phone company probably knows where your phone is as well (can't speak to that, though).
3. The ad capability being discussed enables your phone to tell the advertiser where it is, so that when you surf the web the ads on a given website will be geographically specific.
3. Google originally designed ads into their cell phone business model (intending to offer the service for free) and then dropped the model but kept the ad capability.
4. You will get no more and no fewer ads, just geographically-specific ads.
5. You can turn the function off any time if you get creeped out that ads from the stores all around where you're parked are appearing on your Yahoo email page as you read. Not a big deal.
6. For what it's worth, anybody who watches CSPAN will quickly get the idea that a fair number of Congressmen are not stupid and/or do not have strictly self-centered intentions. Unfortunately Joe Barton is as dumb as a box of rocks, takes more money from the oil industry than anybody else, and grandstands as often as possible. Lately he's been looking hard for something to make people forget about his BP apology.
7. If given the opportunity, I myself will steal your sister and turn her into my sex slave. It's a great idea and I just don't see any reason not to run with it.
8. Anybody who turns Apple's new iPhone 4 EULA into an offense against our troops, who give the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our freedoms, is either one of the bad congressmen or a complete dope.
1. Most phones these days have a GPS.
2. The GPS in your phone gets most of its location from cell towers. Cell towers themselves must know their own location precisely, in addition to their own local time, so using those two pieces of information a phone may determine its own location from cell towers. By the same token, these days your phone company probably knows where your phone is as well (can't speak to that, though).
3. The ad capability being discussed enables your phone to tell the advertiser where it is, so that when you surf the web the ads on a given website will be geographically specific.
3. Google originally designed ads into their cell phone business model (intending to offer the service for free) and then dropped the model but kept the ad capability.
4. You will get no more and no fewer ads, just geographically-specific ads.
5. You can turn the function off any time if you get creeped out that ads from the stores all around where you're parked are appearing on your Yahoo email page as you read. Not a big deal.
6. For what it's worth, anybody who watches CSPAN will quickly get the idea that a fair number of Congressmen are not stupid and/or do not have strictly self-centered intentions. Unfortunately Joe Barton is as dumb as a box of rocks, takes more money from the oil industry than anybody else, and grandstands as often as possible. Lately he's been looking hard for something to make people forget about his BP apology.
7. If given the opportunity, I myself will steal your sister and turn her into my sex slave. It's a great idea and I just don't see any reason not to run with it.
8. Anybody who turns Apple's new iPhone 4 EULA into an offense against our troops, who give the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our freedoms, is either one of the bad congressmen or a complete dope.
You're a disgusting ass.
Would it make much sense for the viewers in southern Georgia to see television commercials for a small hardware store chain in Montana?
Targeting users based on demographic information is a process that has been undergoing refinement for decades. The only difference now is that we, the consumers, are making it much easier to refine the process. Consider the Pandora Radio system. They have this musical genome system that gives you music similar to music you have already chosen. As you skip or like new songs in the list, the radio station gets more an more specific as to what to want to hear, until at some point you will no longer have to hit skip. Now you don't honestly think that they aren't using the wealth of information you are providing them to manage the ads you se or hear do you?
Let's consider what kind of information that you are providing them, simply by listening to your custom radio station. They can take the IP range and do a series of simple searches to determine with decent accuracy your geographic location. If your IP is in the range of a block owned by a university, government, or corporation they can then correlate your location with a good guess as to an industry that, at the very least, the computer is being used from. If they choose to look at the time range and frequency of your logins from that IP they can likely determine if you are at work (especially if you login from the same IP for the same date/time frames).
So given that information it wouldn't be too large a stretch of the imagination to devise the following scenario: Now, you also happened to have Pandora on your iOS4 equipped device and as you wander into the Chinese restaurant for lunch Pandora registers your location, correlates it with the ads that your desktop account had received that day so far and determines that the Chinese restaurant ad actually worked. They then send this data to the restaurant owner (or ad agency, depending) and consequently that restaurant may have specials at lunch more often since they know that it works. They will also advertise more on Pandora, because they also know that works. It is even possible that they might install WiFi in their restaurant since a large number of customers appear form the demographic information to be employees or students of the local university, and free WiFi is quite popular in that particular demographic market.
So you see, matt_s, the collection of the iAD data is not Big Brother-ish at all (and that analogy is a little flawed since Big Brother was actually the governmental dictator, so taking your fight to the government for advocacy would seem a little at odds here). This collection of data is in fact helpful, since without that data Pandora wouldn't have sent you that ad, you wouldn't have gotten a deal on Chinese lunch, and the advertiser would have no way of knowing if their money is being spent wisely. Wisely spent advertising dollars keeps prices reasonable, so you were in fact helping the whole community out with this small act of targeted data collection participation.
Now, whether or not "opt-in" should be the law of the land is debateable, since people are, by and large, lazy. These same lazy people are the ones that click on every attachment they get in e-mail, they write their passwords on post-it notes under their keyboards and mouse pads, fail to vote because it's "too inconvenient", and they still leave keys to the house under the doormat. I seriously doubt that these people would bother to opt-in. Now, what's the harm in that you may ask? The harm is that without this precious demographic information advertisers wouldn't be able to reasonably connect with everyone that wanted to eat Chinese and everyone's lunch would end up tasting like Tasty Wheat.
And really, would you like to eat Tasty Wheat three meals a day? I mean it may have all the proteins and amino acids you need but I bet it tastes as bad as it looks.
I appreciate the suggestion. However, I'm going to stick with my 3GS and the old iPhone OS currently on it and fight against iAds. No upgrades for me or my family (3 iPhones) until iAds changes it's big brotherish behavior. I am writing every congressman in the House and every Senator in the Senate.
I am looking for a local political champion who will take a bill to Washington and work to drive it to signature. Fortunately, it's an election year, iPhone 4 is big, big news, highly visible, so I don't think it'll be very difficult to find someone who will want to leverage this.
The law of the land must be opt-in henceforth, and when people do not opt-in, a corporation must respect and honor their wishes, not "pull an iAds" on them. I will contact friends and business associates to solicit funding for this individual & I will dedicate a huge chunk of money to this myself. My youngest daughter works as a lobbyist, so I'll solicit her advice and assistance in plotting and executing an effective strategy.
Instead of running away to some other phone, I'm going to hold my ground here and try to do something about this sleazy practice. As an Apple customer & Mac user for over 25 years, I'm so angry and disappointed by the 180º change in the company I supported & evangelized for decades, I just can't ignore this. Besides, in 1998 I sent Steve Jobs a nicely typed and worded letter with my product vision of a portable hard drive for everyone - to which I received a snotty letter on Apple stationery from their legal department noting that all ideas submitted belonged to Apple - and so, I feel a little responsible for the whole damned thing that started three years later.
If enough Apple supporters complained, and enough of us took the fight to Washington, I am confident that we could get AAPL to alter their tactics to better protect our personal & private information and provide support for our hard-fought freedoms. Too many men and women have made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our freedom to let some sordid corporate policy run amok.
it's actually very easy to opt-out of iAd's "big brotherish behavior", just visit oo.apple.com with any iOS4 device and you are out.
7. If given the opportunity, I myself will steal your sister and turn her into my sex slave. It's a great idea and I just don't see any reason not to run with it.
Dude, wtf?
I don't want to be the fun police and all, but that was pretty.... well, I don't know what that was.
it's actually very easy to opt-out of iAd's "big brotherish behavior", just visit oo.apple.com with any iOS4 device and you are out.
Read the fine print, man. You can opt out but not really. You'll still get fed ads - albeit not as "relevant" or tailored to your tastes or usage and age and height and race and what you read or watch or listen to or how much you make or the thousands of other parameters they store about you in their huge new North Carolina data complex - and your Location will still be reported even after you opt out, unless you turn off Location services and never use it again. The moment you activate it, you'll be spied on again.
So, while opt out means opt out everywhere else on earth, not on iAds, baby. You're theirs for life... or as long as your contract runs. And when your contract runs out, they reserve the option of selling data about you to other marketing and financial firms. Again, read the fine print.
Maybe someday you'll apply for a loan and the bank will refuse, citing some books they don't approve of that you read awhile back on iBooks. Or you have a tendency to watch revolutionary kinds of films. Or because you visited a medical marijuana store way back in '11... they know, because they have your location parameters. Who knows where this could lead? Dream it & it'll happen.
This is definitely big brotherish. Freedom requires constant vigilance.
Read the fine print, man. You can opt out but not really. You'll still get fed ads - albeit not as "relevant" or tailored to your tastes or usage and age and height and race and what you read or watch or listen to or how much you make or the thousands of other parameters they store about you in their huge new North Carolina data complex - and your Location will still be reported even after you opt out, unless you turn off Location services and never use it again. The moment you activate it, you'll be spied on again.
So, while opt out means opt out everywhere else on earth, not on iAds, baby. You're theirs for life... or as long as your contract runs. And when your contract runs out, they reserve the option of selling data about you to other marketing and financial firms. Again, read the fine print.
Maybe someday you'll apply for a loan and the bank will refuse, citing some books they don't approve of that you read awhile back on iBooks. Or you have a tendency to watch revolutionary kinds of films. Or because you visited a medical marijuana store way back in '11... they know, because they have your location parameters. Who knows where this could lead? Dream it & it'll happen.
This is definitely big brotherish. Freedom requires constant vigilance.
Hardly. Opting out means Apple won't use your location and personal information together, as well as using more generic, non-specific information to serve up ads.
You didn't think you get to opt out of a world that included advertising did you?
You go online and you are explicitly agreeing to being harvested and served up ads. At least there are some vendors like Apple that agree to serve up generic ads rather then the Minority Report versions you get everywhere else.