I'm an app developer and all my apps have the "Data Not Collected" privacy nutrition label. I love the idea, but Apple's enforcement of it is very lackadaisical. I've reported dozens of apps that were blatantly lying on their privacy nutrition labels to Apple and I'm yet to see any such app's nutrition label change.
I can't help but feel the whole Apple privacy PR will be blown in the future where some report will come out that Apple has been logging and sharing user data with NSA since 2001.
Why have rules (or laws) if they don’t enforce them? Or only enforce them selectively when they feel it necessary, such as when not doing so would threaten your stock price (or re-election campaign)? Maybe I just answered my own question?
Reminds me of meat processing regulations. I can sell my animals whole to buyers through a custom processing exemption, but they must go pick up their meat from the butcher. The law says I cannot pick up and deliver it, but it is trivial to find people advertising that extra service. Reporting them does not result in any obvious action.
In both of our cases, our honesty is a liability in the marketplace, because people are ignorant of such laws (or simply don’t care). Really, they simply want the product that they want, as conveniently as possible. We are then forced to compete in the marketplace with liars and cheats.
I am sure our peers here can find countless examples in other areas where this flavor of dishonesty prevails. Hell, I would love to hear some counter examples, because I cannot help but view this state of affairs as intentional at this point.
The purpose of system is what it does (or, in this case, does not do).
The cynical way to look at this is that the purpose of the system (the privacy nutrition label) is to support Apple's carefully-crafted and -marketed image as the most privacy-focused of the tech giants. Actually having enforcement of the contents of said labels would be a nice potential byproduct of that, but that's not strictly required to accomplish the system's purpose.
I uninstalled the app recently; despite having layers of ad tracking protection, I would see my Amazon searches appearing in my social media feed in near real time, and this irked me.
I dropped their .com into a Home Screen icon, and this completely stopped (at least as far as I’ve observed). It’s definitely more janky from an experience perspective, but still easier than driving to the store.
Shopping works better on web sites because can open multiple tabs to browse multiple products. Especially important on big stores like Aliexpress and Amazon where need to compare lots of products. Desktop is better for that but mobile browsers are still better than apps.
Using web apps on Firefox really is the way given its support for uBlock Origin.
Screen real estate is precious on phones, so being able to permanently block "Install our app!" and even entire navigation categories (shorts on LinkedIn) is quite valuable.
Then you can "install" the site on your home screen or simply place it in collection folders so it's sitting ready on your "New Tab" page.
This is the way. It's prudent to treat apps with skepticism, it's unfortunate it's come to this.
I study Apple's Privacy Nutrition Labels religiously every time I consider installing an app.
I like the ones with "Data Not Collected".
I'm an app developer and all my apps have the "Data Not Collected" privacy nutrition label. I love the idea, but Apple's enforcement of it is very lackadaisical. I've reported dozens of apps that were blatantly lying on their privacy nutrition labels to Apple and I'm yet to see any such app's nutrition label change.
Here's a good overview of the problem: https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.02658v3
Oh man… that's a rude awakening.
I can't help but feel the whole Apple privacy PR will be blown in the future where some report will come out that Apple has been logging and sharing user data with NSA since 2001.
Why have rules (or laws) if they don’t enforce them? Or only enforce them selectively when they feel it necessary, such as when not doing so would threaten your stock price (or re-election campaign)? Maybe I just answered my own question?
Reminds me of meat processing regulations. I can sell my animals whole to buyers through a custom processing exemption, but they must go pick up their meat from the butcher. The law says I cannot pick up and deliver it, but it is trivial to find people advertising that extra service. Reporting them does not result in any obvious action.
In both of our cases, our honesty is a liability in the marketplace, because people are ignorant of such laws (or simply don’t care). Really, they simply want the product that they want, as conveniently as possible. We are then forced to compete in the marketplace with liars and cheats.
I am sure our peers here can find countless examples in other areas where this flavor of dishonesty prevails. Hell, I would love to hear some counter examples, because I cannot help but view this state of affairs as intentional at this point.
The purpose of system is what it does (or, in this case, does not do).
The cynical way to look at this is that the purpose of the system (the privacy nutrition label) is to support Apple's carefully-crafted and -marketed image as the most privacy-focused of the tech giants. Actually having enforcement of the contents of said labels would be a nice potential byproduct of that, but that's not strictly required to accomplish the system's purpose.
I uninstalled the app recently; despite having layers of ad tracking protection, I would see my Amazon searches appearing in my social media feed in near real time, and this irked me.
I dropped their .com into a Home Screen icon, and this completely stopped (at least as far as I’ve observed). It’s definitely more janky from an experience perspective, but still easier than driving to the store.
Shopping works better on web sites because can open multiple tabs to browse multiple products. Especially important on big stores like Aliexpress and Amazon where need to compare lots of products. Desktop is better for that but mobile browsers are still better than apps.
With Firefox, yes. I wouldn't fully trust other browsers to care about my privacy.
Using web apps on Firefox really is the way given its support for uBlock Origin.
Screen real estate is precious on phones, so being able to permanently block "Install our app!" and even entire navigation categories (shorts on LinkedIn) is quite valuable.
Then you can "install" the site on your home screen or simply place it in collection folders so it's sitting ready on your "New Tab" page.
I think you need the app to use the delivery lockers (which I prefer over home delivery)
AFAIK, the app is just the website in a webview.