Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
Security theater: All you stuff is encrypted but they have the decryption keys
Proprietary App Store: The apps and the store itself are proprietary and I don't trust Apple.
Gaslighting their customers: Images shared with Android users from iPhone are purposely crushed to a unreviewable quality. The idea is to convince people that Android takes terrible photographs.
About "Security theater": you can enable what's called "Advanced Data Protection" so the encryption keys are only stored on-device for most types of data including photos, backups and also notes for example. Mail and calendar is one exception that comes to mind, but you could also always use a different mail and calendar service. This is a fairly recent feature, so you may have missed it. Sure, it's not your fully self-hosted "cloud" on which you can audit every single line of code and whatnot, but it might actually be the best "compromise" of ease-of-use vs. privacy for many people outside the tech bubble we're in in this community.
About "Proprietary App Store": the store itself and many apps on there are proprietary, but there are a lot of open source apps on the App Store as well. The bigger problem is the fact that the App Store is the only (hassle-free) way to install apps to the iPhone and only recently the EU seems to change that with alternative storefronts now emerging, but Apple is limiting the use of them to the EU, so they're essentially doing the bare minimum to comply with EU law.
About "Gaslighting their customers": I'd like to see hard proof on that. I think what you're talking about is the fact that messages sent to Android users using the default "Messages" app are sent as MMS, which is an ancient technology and as such only support tiny, low-quality images. Android doesn't support iMessage and Apple seems to like to keep it that way as it's apparently selling a lot of iPhones this way in the US (and sure, I agree that's a bad thing). It does get better with the just-announced RCS support (a supposedly open protocol which Google added so many proprietary extensions to you can't really call it open anymore) so pictures can be send in full quality to Android users using the Messages app. Also, you could always use a third-party messenger like Signal or WhatsApp and send full-quality pictures just fine.
I'm not saying there aren't any concerns, but some of the information you provided is at least out of date.
Android doesn’t support iMessage
I think it's the inverse: iMessage doesn't support Android.
Those aren't equivalent statements; the first implies that something about Android makes it impossible for Apple to produce an iMessage client for it when that is purely a business decision on Apple's part.
About "Security theater":
keep in mind that companies can lie on how their stuff works, also I don't think the nature of the store matters, as much as the fact that you're only allowed to get the open source apps from there which will also run on top of a proprietary OS, with proprietary firmware
Gaslighting their customers": I'd like to see hard proof on that
Consider that I have a low standard on what a hard proof should be,.. I consider telling people that : "Privacy, that's iPhone", while literally developing nothing in the open, which is the best and ONLY way to guarantee transparency, instead they went with the "trust me bruh" method, plus they display ads... like.....they have... a.. dedicated.. ad .. platform...
You don't respect my Privacy while you target me with ads
I do like their laptops, but for literally everything else: the fact that I basically don’t own my own hardware.
I can’t install or distribute my own software without Apple’s arbitrary approval. When Apple decides it’s done supporting the products, I can’t even install a different OS like Linux because the hardware is completely locked down… they become paper-weights.
That is not how ownership is supposed to work.
In what way is the hardware locked down? Is this something new with the M chips?
Everything except the Mac line has a locked boot process. So your iPhone or iPad must run the latest iOS, must have an Apple ID, must source apps from Apple, and Apple has gotten so good at securing their devices that its basically killed hobbyist jailbreaking.
Anything you do on these multi thousand dollar devices is only because Apple allows you to— reluctantly, I might add.
I just hate being told what (not) to do. If there is a solution to the problem, fucking let me solve it. I don't need anyone's permission or be told to deal with it just like every other schmuck.
I feel like my intelligence is being personally insulted. Any company deciding that I shouldn't try to repair my phone, which is my property, because they believe I am too retarded to fix it, can suck a dick.
Major privacy issues that come to mind include:
Few reasons, first is this: 
. Seems like as long as something has a clean interface, or it looks shiny enough, then all its privacy faults are overlooked.
Apple also seems to intentionally cultivate and sell their products as privacy-friendly, which is clearly not the case (see image above).
2nd reason is that I had an iphone 2g (one of the first models, I forget which one), and it had bluetooth support. An iOS update broke it, and when I reached out to apple, they lied to me and told me my device had no bluetooth module at all. They're one of the worst offenders of planned obsolescence, and have become one of the richest companies on the planet because of it.
3rd reason: they sell overpriced products to mainly to high-income imperial-core consumers, selling an image of "upper-class professional". Look at a graph of iOS market share worldwide, vs its market share in the richest countries. Apple didn't even bother to condescend to make affordable products for the global south.
The markup on iphones is something outrageous, like 40% of the purchase price is going to the shareholders of apple, not the workers who built the phones. By buying apple, you are mainly supporting these wealthy parasites. Its also why other smartphone brands have higher performance at half the cost of iphones. They really bank on the fact that they're selling an upper-class identity, and less of a phone.
4th reason: Their ecosystem is locked down in such a way as to make it difficult for open source development. iirc apple won't even let you use the GPL for any app on their app store.
They've redefined privacy to be privacy from everyone except themselves, and then indoctrinated people that they are the most privacy conscious company.
overpriced, jailed
In terms of privacy? What's the alternative? I'm sure that stock Android phones are way way worse in terms of privacy than any Apple device ever made.
Android is great in theory but the amount of pre-installed garbage, material design and Google / vendor powered spyware is way too much for my liking. I’m not saying that Apple doesn’t track things, because they do, but at least there’s no vendor garbage and you can go through the Settings and disable everything you don’t need, restrict Apps from running in the background etc. If you don’t upload your data into iCloud it will be way more private than the average Android phone.
Another thing I dislike about non-Apple phones is that, besides the Pixel and a few others, their bootloader and storage security is a joke, if someone gets your device you can assume they’ll get to your data.
GrapheneOS is great, it would be the one and only alternative to the mess that Android is however I can't daily drive that as it lacks features (nice things) I do want to have.
I’m not saying that Apple doesn’t track things, because they do, but at least there’s no vendor garbage and you can go through the Settings and disable everything you don’t need, restrict Apps from running in the background etc.
Did you make a mistake here? You are describing an Android device. You can even remove apps entirely from a device with a tool like Universal Android Debloater, and Android allows alternative app stores so you don't need to rely on a heavily limited selection of proprietary apps.
That tools doesn’t always work, besides an iPhone comes clean out of the box. No constantly running spyware on the background, no Samsung/Xiaomi apps. Almost everything can be easily turned off under Settings unlike an Android where you’ll be forced into a 3rd party tool or a ROM like GrapheneOS if you want a clean experience.
When you buy an iPhone you’ll also have a guarantee that you won’t be installing malware, even with the new Alt Stores in Europe, all the apps are code-signed and require validation. You also are sure that your apps won’t be able to get system-wide access and run all over your data and battery like we see on Android.
Yes, the iPhone is less open but it provides a level of security, privacy and “cleanliness” out of the box that Android devices can’t just match. If you don’t have much time / interest / tech skills to mess around with a phone then the iPhone is the best phone you can buy.
an iPhone comes clean out of the box
How does it come "clean out of the box" when you literally just said it requires modifications to the settings to improve its privacy?
at least there’s no vendor garbage
Samsung and Xiaomi apps are vendor-specific and can be disabled, even without the use of UAD (which works fine, not sure why you're lying about that).
unlike an Android where you’ll be forced into a 3rd party tool or a ROM like GrapheneOS if you want a clean experience.
GrapheneOS is available as an option because Android has an open-source basis. Remind me which alternative privacy OS Apple allows third party developers to create for iPhone? Which iPhone did they allow users to install this imaginary privacy OS on?
You also are sure that your apps won’t be able to get system-wide access
Android applications have been sandboxed for several versions now.
How does it come “clean out of the box” when you literally just said it requires modifications to the settings to improve its privacy?
iOS comes with reasonable privacy defaults and blocks things such as apps running in the background for long time. Going into the settings is the extra-mile that still easier than having to install a cleaner ROM or deal with 3rd party tools.
Samsung and Xiaomi apps are vendor-specific and can be disabled, even without the use of UAD (which works fine, not sure why you’re lying about that).
I'm not lying about anything here, you know as well as I do that many vendors don't allow you to remove all of their Apps and most install permanently running daemons that you can't remove without UAD or other methods.
Android applications have been sandboxed for several versions now.
Yet the sandboxing isn't even comparable. One key aspect of the iOS sandbox is that is not only restricts filesystem access but also executes applications with way less privileges than Android does.
To complement the sandbox iOS apps are forced to use Apple's APIs in order to access user data (eg. Contacts and Photos) which will apply strict restrictions such as allowing you to limit at a system level what photos an application may access. Since all apps are required to be summited to Apple for review (even on Alt Stores) they'll enforce the usage of their APIs making it way harder to bypass restrictions.
Comparatively, on Android, you can install applications from random sources that typically resort to hacks to get around the sandbox restrictions and access more than they should.
Do they really think we believe any of their lies? We don't control macOS, iOS, anti-libre software (it fails to include a libre software license text file, like AGPL). Dangerous! 🚩
So I'm confused on what your point is
They control it, not us. It's anti-libre, dangerous.
Golden cage.
Their way or no way.
It's really simple.
Oh adding to that, ever since I received the knowledge: the support, guru or whatever appointment? Worse than doctors and I hate that too. Why??
Their way or no way
The one Apple product I still own is an iPad and I run into this constantly.
Support for network shares in the files app is barely functional at best ("Just use iCloud!")
Mouse support is still super limited ("Just use touch!")
You can't install applications from anywhere but the appstore ("sECuRIty")
You can't install a proper browser or browser extensions (I don't know even know what Apple's excuse for this one would be)
You can't disable or modify window tiling ("It's just like an iPhone, because fuck multitasking!")
Apple sells the iPad as a computer replacement, but basically all its capable of is watching Netflix or basic note-taking. The longer I use this thing the more I want to buy some x86 tablet that I can just install Linux on instead.
Apples excuse is Battery Life since their mobile safari is apparently more energy conserving than other browsers.
i like apple i just prefer using android and/or linux (and windows because i like playing games).
You can tame even Windows, making it reasonable private, because in Windows you can set almost everything (most things a certainly hidden and without much documentation, logic, but it's possible) in Mac you can't set nothing what Apple don't want.
Neither of those are under your control
Anti-freedom
Profit-maximising
Literally killed the 3.5mm to increase profits
Acts holier than thou
Planned obsolescence: the other day I was setting up a refurbished MacBook air from 2017. It officially runs only up to macOS 12. I wanted to install apple's productivity suite iWorks (pages, keynotes, numbers) on it.
But the AppStore said I would need macOS 13 to download and install it. Why the eff doesn't it allow me to install an older version of those apps, and why does the 2017 not support macOS 13?
So I installed Open core Legacy Patcher, built a macOS 13 installer. Installed 13 with absolutely no issues and finally was able to install iWorks.
Any non versed or risk taking user would need to buy a newer Mac... good job apple.
Conversely I have a dell xps from 2018 that run very well with fedora atomic (kde). I upgraded the SSD, WiFi card and replaced the battery. Should easily last me another 5 years
User repairability and serviceability should be(come) mandatory!
It's Intel, you too can have fedora atomic, and it'll likely last another 5 years.
If it would be my device and not a gift I would, yeah :)
Ahh, not so sure how great a gift an insecure computer is, but I imagine you have your reasons...
Uhm how would be it insecure?
OS hasn't been updated for how many years?
My bad, I didn't read 'built a macOS 13 installer', but now they must return for 'built a macOS 14 installer'.
For some strange reason the control panel shows the update to macOS 14 even though when it was still on macOS 12 it didn't show any updates.
I told the giftee if they want to update that they please make a backup first.
What’s wrong with Tim Cook?
Edit: Downvoted for asking a question, y’all are miserable people.
I hate apple so much.
I really hate Iphones.
Iphone, Iphone,
I fucking hate it
I hate it so much
I want to beat it wtih a stick
It's such a slow-ass,
buggy piece of shit,
and everyone who works for Apple
can suck my fucking dick
I want to punch it in the face
and shoot it in the head
and run it over with a steamroller
over and over, until it's fucking dead
I'm going to dig up Steve Jobs
and Piss on his bones
Because fuck him and everyone
with their stupid fucking Iphones.
I think for most privacy nuts it comes down to “I don’t trust them and it’s closed source. They could be hiding anything in that code.”
And then there’s the people who can’t afford or won’t spend the money it takes to have an enjoyable Apple experience. It genuinely costs multiple thousands of dollars to get into the Apple ecosystem and then it’s massively painful to get out. It’s basically just “corporation bad” because corporations are bad. The only way to be truly private is to not carry a phone at all and use only FOSS solutions.
I keep hearing how painful it is to get out. Can someone please elaborate on this?
I am not super tech savvy and was DEEP in the ecosystem but didn't think it was hard by any stretch.
I migrated my data, purged my files, canceled my subscriptions in a few taps/clicks, sold our imacs, MacBook pros, homepods and iPhones and moved on with my life and haven't looked back since. Took maybe an afternoon for the data piece and a few other after-the-fact logins to cancel things I forgot about. This is legit the 4th time in two days I've read this comment so I am just genuinely curious!
If you have terabytes of data in iCloud, use their mail, contacts, photos, everything? Plus decades of purchased content, expensive devices losing functionality by dropping the iPhone… you have to basically replace everything with something else and it’s tedious especially for a less techy person. This is the reason walled gardens are anti consumer.