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Comment by shoto_io | Hacker News Reader

> Doing this is clearly against Apple’s rules. The questions are: Can Apple detect these techniques? And what is Apple going to do if they do identify apps in China using CAID in flagrant violation of the App Store rules, if those apps have the backing (implicit or explicit) of the Chinese government?

As much as I love Apple’s move for more robust privacy policies, I doubt that they have a chance to prevent this from happening. From a tech perspective, because it requires a lot of effort to detect these.

But also from a business perspective. It's one thing to ban a game, but banning WeChat?

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I don't get the connection to WeChat here. You need to log in anyways, so why should WeChat run any fingerprinting? The user ID is right there, given by the user.

WeChat may have a convenient way to track users within the app, but a "device ID" equivalent is still useful for ad agencies to transparently target users on other apps based on the things they do on WeChat. (Otherwise, they'd need to add more user friction - for example, forcing users to link accounts.)

For context, some have argued [0] that modern Chinese life, in many ways, revolves around WeChat - chat, payments, location sharing, games, and more - and I don't find any reason to doubt those claims.

Sure, Apple could say no if WeChat decided to integrate fingerprint-driven tracking on iOS, but because of WeChat being a "super app" in China, Tencent could just say "sure, we'll stop supporting iOS" and that would cut iOS devices off from one of the most used apps in China, and make everyday life harder for everyone in China with an iPhone.

With iOS being the minority player in China [1][2], Tencent can likely get away with it too - I don't foresee a competitor rising up out of nowhere especially when WeChat still has a deep network effect for the remaining 78-82% of the population that uses Android.

[0]: obtained from Wikipedia: https://web.archive.org/web/20170103135948/https://www.fastc...

[1]: https://www.kantarworldpanel.com/global/smartphone-os-market...

[2]: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/china

> With iOS being the minority player in China, Tencent can likely get away with it too

I would somewhat disagree. Yes, iOS is a minority in China, but for wealthier people it's a higher percentage as it's a status symbol (as it is in many places). I don't know if this would change the calculus much but it might, and apparently the party is keen on cutting down on apps requiring more than essential data collection without consent[1] so it's possible that the government won't directly force Apple's hand in this case (as in, by forcing WeChat to remain in the App Store even using CAID).

1: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-cac-personaldata-id...

I would guess what they want is the ability to link behavior outside of WeChat (e.g. looking at computer monitors on Amazon, and then reading tech news on the Verge) with your profile on WeChat. Apple’s changes are in part designed to limit the abilities for entities to track you via third party cookies as you go around the web; device fingerprinting would be a substitute for those third party cookies.

Attaching a username to a legal name is one high-level fusion. Attaching these names to a device ID is another. Attaching that to a different app and username are a couple more. This account information can be used in finding out when that user logs into another device.

If any of those devices are sharing browsing history then that can be fused to online accounts. If any of those devices are active during daily commutes can fuse brick-and-mortar shopping destinations, place of employment, what daycare watches their kids, where Mom and Dad live.

Maybe, some of that data is embarrassing. Maybe, some of that data could be used to tell a story about you. Maybe, that story if false... but, would be very difficult to refute if made public. Maybe, you should just work with us (this one time, I promise) rather than have your whole life turned upside down...

No drop of water takes responsibility for the flood.

I have to agree with you here...

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