Apple Opens Access To Mobility Data, Offering Insight Into How COVID-19 is Changing Cities (techcrunch.com) 17
Apple is providing a data set derived from aggregated, anonymized information taken from users of its Maps navigational app, the company announced today. From a report: The data is collected as a set of "Mobility Trends Reports," which are updated daily and provide a look at the change in the number of routing requests made within the Maps app, which is the default routing app on iPhones, for three modes of transportation, including driving, walking and transit. Apple is quick to note that this information isn't tied to any individuals, as Maps does not associate any mobility data with a user's Apple ID, nor does it maintain any history of where people have been. In fact, Apple notes that all data collected by maps, including search terms and specific routing, is only ever tied to random rotating identifying numbers that are reset on a rolling basis.
Hipster tracking (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
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The main feature of an iPhone is the logo on it.
Of course. That's why they put it on the back. So you don't see the main future. You don't get how stupid that makes you sound, do you?
In other news... (Score:1)
In other news: Apple has all this data on their "customers"(*).
(*) They're not really the customers, they're the product.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)
(*) They're not really the customers, they're the product.
And who, precisely, is this "product" being sold to?
No one. That's who. Because your portrayal of the situation in no way resembles reality.
Many companies do indeed monetize their users by selling the things their users are giving away for free—data, access, attention—to their actual customers, usually advertisers. This is not an example of that. There's no monetization happening here. Apple collects this data for its own internal use, presumably to better understand how their customers are using their products so that they can make better products, but chose to make that data available here, free of charge. With no money exchanging hands and no one's personal data being compromised, you'd be hard-pressed to make any sort of valid argument along the lines of what you're claiming.
Moreover, Apple has put in a good deal of work [apple.com] to make the data they gather useless for anything that could be targeted at you. For instance, they want to know about trends, not your specific interests, so they "fuzz" their user's locations in their logs to a random, nearby location in the general region so that they can't pinpoint your specific whereabouts. As much as possible is handled on-device without any data being sent to the cloud, and none of your usage of Maps is linked to an Apple ID. Instead, the randomly-generated identifiers they use are disposed of frequently and automatically.
There are legitimate uses for this sort of information, and Apple has surprisingly readable documents talking through it in language that laypeople can track, as well regularly updating their white papers that talk through their security and privacy. While this one isn't specific to location tracking, here's their Spring 2020 platform security guide [apple.com]. I haven't read through this one, but I've found their past ones to be written for an entry-to-intermediate level audience that has some knowledge of privacy or security concerns, cryptography, and other topics in the field. Anyone with a CS degree or some awareness of the field should be fine reading through it easily.
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I really do hope that Apple lets users opt out of the data collection though even if they do take steps to anonymize it.
What about GDPR? (Score:4)
Who uses Apple Maps? (Score:4, Insightful)
What percent of the population uses Apple Maps? I've had Apple phones for a long time and I think I opened Maps once. Never again. Or is this yet another case where it's constantly running background phone-home style and reporting my every movement?
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1. Lots of people. Just because you don't doesn't mean nobody does.
1b. Google can fuck off into the sun, and I have none of their products installed on my phone because I don't like giving my data to them.
2. If you bothered just reading even PART of the summary, you'd see that it's from *routing requests*. That is, people that have asked for a route to get from point A to point B.
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B) Maps was an abysmal failure when it first launched. I sure as heck wasn't going to waste time trying that a second time.
C) Yes, google can fuck right the fuck off. On that we can agree.
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A) Why would I read part of the summary? This is still Slashdot, right?
B) Maps was an abysmal failure when it first launched. I sure as heck wasn't going to waste time trying that a second time.
C) Yes, google can fuck right the fuck off. On that we can agree.
So because Maps needed improvement (actually, it mostly needed more data) when it first launched 8 years ago, you don't think there is any possibility it has improved since then?
Idiot.
Apple Maps? (Score:2, Funny)
Pardon my ignorance (Score:2)
How does Apple protect against the "Today ID 'aaa' went from X to Y, and then tomorrow ID 'faa' went from X to Y" at the same times of day" correlation? Do they roll IDs once an hour?