22july2013

It seems to be unavailable outside the USA. Which is fine, since Paramount+ outside the USA offers only 50% of the main shows that it offers inside the USA.

Apple doesn't say exactly which iOS features are locked down, but I'd like to prompt some concern by making comparisons to the kind of information a devious company can get from a telephone call, or from someone using a mouse on a website.

When a person answers the telephone with "Hello?" they are giving away all kinds of information that the caller, who is often a robo-dialer, can use against you. That one word gives away your age, your sex, your language, and more. Even your accent might be able to geo-locate you within 100 miles. In England, they can currently geo-locate you (using your accent) within 20 miles (before BBC TV was widespread, the geo-location distance from your voice was 5 miles.) They can record all the information they can infer from your response, and sell that information to other companies. These companies aren't even subject to UK law because they aren't based in the UK.

These days, javascript code running on a website can easily tell your height (because the curvature of the arc when you move your mouse a long distance gives away the length of your wrist or forearm, depending on how you move your mouse.) And your height has a correlation to your sex. So they can tell your sex from your mouse's motion. The correlation isn't 100% accurate, of course, but it's good enough to improve the effectiveness of ad choices. All the inferences they make from innocent-looking data are deep trade secrets. Like the phone example above, these companies can be foreign-located, and therefore unrestricted in obtaining and recording personal data from you like your religion, race, handicapped status, health, prescriptions, gender orientation, etc.

Web browsers also say "Hello" in their interaction with websites. If you want to see some of the things they offer to the web server, may I suggest visiting this site: (I have never seen this website prior to one minute ago. I don't know much about it.) These are some of the things that Apple probably blocks.

https://privacy.net/analyzer/ <--

It's a believable report, but if 1% of iOS's billion users turn on Lockdown mode, then that makes it harder to use this technique to gain any advantage.

Evil governments (eg, China) have several options at their disposal:

• they can make it illegal for Apple to include Lockdown mode as part of iOS in their country;
• they can pass a law making it illegal for users who somehow obtain Lockdown mode from turning it on;
• they can do random spot checks on citizens of their country. (Remember, there are no fourth amendment rights in evil countries.) If you are caught with Lockdown mode turned on, you (and/or your family) go to jail;
• they can do IP-location tracking (except when Private Relay is being used) to find people who are using Lockdown mode and send them to jail.

If the fourth bullet above is being hindered by Apple Private Relay, then any evil government could use the same steps above against Private Relay. I would point out that Apple Private Relay is ALREADY not available in China, which essentially means that China has already performed step #1 above on Apple Private Relay.

You see, evil governments are already doing at least one of the steps above:

"Apple says that Private Relay will not be available in China when it launches to the public later this year. It will also be unavailable in Belarus, Colombia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkmenistan, Uganda, and the Philippines. The company attributed these limitations to regulatory reasons."

"Regulatory reasons"? Try "lack of human rights" instead. But I can't blame Apple for this human rights issue.

Maybe the ad-free tier of Apple Maps will be included with Apple One. Or Apple Two.

DAalseth said:

22july2013 said:

InspiredCode said:

Apple takes privacy seriously, so hopefully they fix this. App review should also be looking for data leaks from VPN apps if it really offers the consumer protections Apple says it does.

What kind of leaks are you talking about here? VPNs have many vulnerabilities, not just apps which leak data. Do you really trust a single third party to handle all your private data? Do you even know which national governments have the right to issue warrants to get data from the VPN company's software to provide information from their users? I don't trust VPNs very much which is why I prefer using Apple's Private Relay, which addresses some of those vulnerabilities.

So if you don’t trust VPNs that’s fine. Personally I’ll take a VPN with a good reputation, over a service from Apple. Eggs in one basket issue you know. Besides from what I’ve read Apple’s service is a bit limited.

You are misusing the "eggs in one basket" metaphor. By using a VPN you are putting all your trust in a single company, the VPN company, which can see all your traffic. but if you use Apple Private Relay, no single company, not even Apple, gets to see all your traffic.

So indeed any VPN user is "putting all their eggs in one basket", while any user of Apple Private Relay is making sure that no single company can read all your data.

Also, you called it "a service from Apple." I think you don't understand how Apple Private Relay works. There's a different company involved which Apple does not control, and that company may be different depending on where you live. It's a service provided by two separate companies.