Privacy Guides
In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.
This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.
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Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!
Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!
This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.
Moderation Rules:
- We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
- This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
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- No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
- Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
- General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.
Additional Resources:
- EFF: Surveillance Self-Defense
- Consumer Reports Security Planner
- Jonah Aragon (YouTube)
- r/Privacy
- Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List
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At a level that the user doesn't have much control over, I fear both stock systems are about the same in terms of privacy.
According to an analysis by Köllnig et al. (2021) on 500k+ free Google Play/App Store apps, tracker libraries such as Google Play Services/Apple's SKAdNetwork/cross-platform libraries are used in about equal percentages on both app stores' free apps. These free apps' trackers are generally not configured to follow GDPR data-minimization practices, even for kids' apps, but it's to be noted that Android has a disadvantage in that advertising ID is more used in Android apps than Apple apps. However, Apple has disadvantage too: the researchers noted that Android's intent system and different permission model makes apps seem "more privileged" than Apple's, but Apple makes accurate analysis of their apps' reach difficult, judging by the larger failure rate in app decompilation as well as the more opaque approach to permission disclosure. Although the paper might imply Apple has improved over time, since it mentions Apple's implementation of opt-in tracking in 2021, after the study, as a limitation, keep in mind Apple's new movement towards advertising as a form of revenue, as discussed by Apple Insider (Owen, 2022) and Bloomberg (Gurman, 2022).
Of course, Köllnig's study only reflects tracking in "curated apps" for either platform. It does not discuss hardware/firmware/system app-level privacy, which users have little control over (Leith, 2021 -- easier reading with TomsGuide). Leith found that either OS phones home (lol) every ~4.5 minutes, and even though Google may send more data (even from the clock app!), Apple profiles your social network via MAC addresses on your Wi-Fi as well as location geotagging, which the TomsGuide article called "quality vs. quantity". This builds on the idea that Apple might seem more private, but only ostensibly so, judging by these more particular looks at their data collection and the trend of their increasingly data-focused business model.
Does that mean the choices between stock OS don't matter? Well, no -- as for me, who can't afford a Pixel anytime soon, I've chosen Android on account of freedom outside of curated app stores. Yes, PrivacyGuides may not recommend F-Droid, but the opportunity cost in security there may be negligible compared to the convenient and easily-handled privacy received in exchange*, at least for typical less-savvy threat models like my own. (This favorability is illustrated in a forum debate here (Lukas, 2023), though in a context less relevant to stock OS comparisons.) Ignoring the facet of freedom with stock Android, the possibility of large privacy advantage one way or the other, strictly in terms of stock Android and stock iOS operating systems, is marginal if it even exists.