iOS 8 Privacy Updates
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Microsoft also seems to be making a trend about "We care about your data privacy."
Ultimately, that will help all users, and in the long run, even app developers as trust increases.
Then again, even before that DNT as an idea was dead – very few advertisers even signaled they were interested in user privacy.
Key to that notion of expression is that the signal sent MUST reflect the user's preference, not the choice of some vendor, institution, site, or network-imposed mechanism outside the user's control; this applies equally to both the general preference and exceptions. The basic principle is that a tracking preference expression is only transmitted when it reflects a deliberate choice by the user. In the absence of user choice, there is no tracking preference expressed.
By automatically setting DNT when a user hits express, they have not specifically indicated they do not wish to be tracked, therefore making the setting on IE meaningless, so companies will not honor the header. IE10 does not even expicitly tell you they're turning on the setting, they just do it for you when you hit "Recommended privacy settings" which is highlighted by a large green checkmark icon.
Just look at the disparity: http://www.futureofprivacy.org/2013/12/18/tracking-do-not-tr... Compared to users on browsers that do not push DNT like IE does, only about 7% of users enable the feature, tops. Then 10x as much users have it enabled on IE10, the browser typically used by the not-so tech savvy.
Unfortunately when the browser with one of the highest market shares does this, nobody tends to take do not track very seriously, especially tracking and advertising companies who will lose their competitive edge if they choose to not track half of their userbase. It doesn't matter what Microsoft's intentions were, but the end result is they made a mockery of the standard.
EDIT: fyi, several analytical and tracking software suites such as piwik automatically disregard the DNT setting on only IE10+, while respecting the ones on other browsers. This ironically makes IE the less privacy conscious browser.
Similarly, by ignoring DNT Google and Co. just ensure that more people block their trackers and ads entirely.
With the recent android updates to reduce importance of application permissions already has me urked, and I'm not a big fan of google now nagging me to enable search history. I'm considering to install a more privacy conscious ROM or put firefox OS soon on my phone.
I'd love to have some anchor links within the piece though, so when I'm referring my team to some of the changes, I can direct them right to the relevant information.
One that stands out that I think will cause plenty of issues is the "Block Cookies not from Current Website". This should basically block all tracking, like, +1 etc... buttons, right?
I think it will even impact the SSO that Google has across its properties.
that is still good, however I would prefer if it did allow you to block all cookies that aren't from the current website.
Trezor (http://www.bitcointrezor.com/) and other dedicated wallets are a decent stopgap, but I'd really like to let my phone do everything, if it can be done securely, which I think it can with the right hardware (of course auditing hardware is a lot more difficult)
Hal Finney has done some good work here, applying TPMs to Bitcoin: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=154290.0
All that said, I think Apple is making the right choice by favoring privacy and security even if it's at the expense of a completely frictionless user experience.
I agree with you that I doubt many people have any idea that stuff is there.
It might be that the fuzzy edges of Apples approval system can be beneficial if some good judgement is used.
For example, how many of the top apps that explicitly allow kids, violate some or all of the COPPA standards?
Clash of Clans is just one example, ages 9+, but allows custom usernames and p2p chat with very little filters. Those social features are key to long term engagement, even of 9 year olds.
Currently I have the Gmail app installed on our family iPad. My Google account details are therefore stored in the keychain.
If I use the Google Maps app, it PERSISTENTLY asks the user to sign in (using my account already in the keychain). My wife doesn't want her location searches saved to my account, nor those of my kids.
I don't want to login to the Google Maps app, but Google seems to want to force me to, even though this is a shared device. There doesn't appear to be an option to say "no, thanks, stop f%*king asking".
So instead I use Google Maps in Safari and cringe if I really need to use Apple Maps - slooooooooow.
Can anyone shed any light on whether I'll be able to block the sharing of my Google account details between Google apps?
Apple would rather you buy two iPads than share one, and their OS is designed around that.
I'm really surprised camera privacy took this long to arrive, and I wonder what the reasoning was for not implementing it at the same time as microphone permissions arrived in iOS 7.
I don't think apps could take photos without you explicitly triggering the process, so no permission was needed anyway IIRC.
It's possible Apple screened for non-camera apps using those APIs to keep spying apps out but (Edit: bad example, this was an Android app. I had said: "there was that flashlight app that was storing/reporting user GPS locations without permission so obviously things were slipping through the old system.")
I wondered what this means for privacy. It isn't mentioned in the original post, probably because it's an extra app therefore out of scope of the article. I'd be interested anyway in any information on this, primarily: Will Photos be practically usable without iCloud? Syncing my devices with iPhoto is pretty seamless, will it still work?
[1] (Session PDF Link): http://devstreaming.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/506xxeo80e5ky...
For some reason I was convinced that these were name attribute values, not an `autocomplete` attribute.
Some of them are even on Android! ;)
Anyway, at the apparent risk of being on the receiving end of some down votes myself, I'm more curious why giant fonts are a trend. I'm old, I wear progressive lens (what used to be known as "bifocals"), and I still hit the Cmd⌘-+- combo a few times to crank it down to a readable size. Is it some attempt to capture the aging baby boomer market? (I ask with tongue somewhat in cheek...)
If you imagine that page on a phone screen, you'd find that the font size is probably a lot more normal than it is large. If you're expecting > 50% of traffic on mobile then that's the use-case you optimise for.
Also, until recently most browsers didn't support subpixel typographic adjustments (for instance, "letter-spacing: 0.4px"), and you could only adjust this stuff reliably if your font-size was higher than 20px.
That said, 16px is the default base font size on most user agents, and it seems adequate for reading on many devices. However, I tested 16px in Luis's site and it was not quite satisfactory. 19px seems to be the sweet spot in this case.
Ultimately, no font-size is perfect for everyone. Be thankful that your browser zoom works ;) Even on a desktop, sometimes at night, with f.lux on, I have to zoom HN to read it comfortably (thankfully Safari has tap to zoom in an area).
By default the font is about as big as what you get in your typical novel assuming typical reading distances (on a pretty standard 1440×900 logical resolution 15.4″ display, and that’s certainly not a display with an atypically high logical resolution). For me that’s just perfect and I actually think it’s just perfect for most people. In general the font size tends to be way too small on most websites.
Is the author so important that we should know of him/her?
Having said that, the article is awesome and if the author keeps writing pieces like this I'll be reading more!
In previous decades, this argument was every bit as silly when someone used it to claim that Windows sucked because the Mac came first, or that the Mac sucked because the Xerox Alto came first, or that the Xerox Alto sucked because the Analytical Engine came first, or that the Analytical Engine sucked because the abacus came first, or that the abacus sucked because fingers came first, or that fingers sucked because...well, I don't know. Maybe there were a bunch of flagella graybeards on the forums who would get super pissed anytime someone made a positive comment about fingers without acknowledging the evolutionary contributions of their species.