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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

The bigger problem, in my view, is that Apple demands a working email address and phone number (and a street address which is thankfully not verified) even to download $0 apps.

It also, of course, transmits your fixed and unchangeable system serial number to Apple to obtain any apps. You can't opt out of this.

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The even bigger problem, which could be regulated if US legislatures had the will, is that Apple is comfortable if consumers believe an item of personal information is required to participate in some Apple service (like an Apple App Store) when truly it isn't. This is why we see so many back-and-forths in forums between users about what is actually required. Apple is comfortable with the confusion. If people are submiting more personal information to Apple than is actually needed, this is not a problem for Apple. Not in the US, anyway.

The $1K app seems like an early example of how "apps" marketed through Apple (App Store) were immediately being used by "developers" to gather personal information about Apple users, such as indicia of net worth. Having identified a segment of users willing to pay $1K for nothing, via an "app" download, seems like it would be instantly valuable to online advertisers.

The seller of the app knows practically nothing about the buyer, basically just the IP address when they launch the app, and other vague details.

IP address isn't vague. It identifies your city, state, and country, and your ISP, which gives at the least an indicator of residential/commercial/mobile.

Coupled along with other data sources, it can frequently give street address or phone number.

Those things would bother me if they even once abused access to that data. I can’t think of one time I’ve gotten anything other than a capacity warning from them, and even that was graciously spread a few months apart.

They abuse the data constantly in that they are based in the US and are legally obligated to provide it to federal government snoops without a warrant or probable cause.

They abused over 30,000 customers in 2019 in this manner per their own transparency report.

All for data they didn't need to collect in the first place.

Complying with mandatory external policy seems like a huge stretch to claim abuse...

It is if they don't need to collect it in the first place, or had systems designed and developed to protect it from illegal spying with end to end encryption and then explicitly and intentionally halted those plans at request from the spies:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...

Every Linux distro has been managing very well without those since forever, curiously enough.

But we all know why they want that data. It's not a technical necessity.

This is true for Android too, you can install F-Droid, disable every Google app (or uninstall) and use it like a normal phone with apps on F-Droid or whatever you want to sideload.

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