It’s the middle of the night. Do you know who your iPhone is talking to?

MSN.com ^ | 28 May 2019 | Geoffrey Fowler

[E. Pluribus Unum]

It’s 3 a.m. Do you know what your iPhone is doing?

Mine has been alarmingly busy. Even though the screen is off and I’m snoring, apps are beaming out lots of information about me to companies I’ve never heard of. Your iPhone probably is doing the same — and Apple could be doing more to stop it.

On a recent Monday night, a dozen marketing companies, research firms and other personal data guzzlers got reports from my iPhone. At 11:43 p.m., a company called Amplitude learned my phone number, email and exact location. At 3:58 a.m., another called Appboy got a digital fingerprint of my phone. At 6:25 a.m., a tracker called Demdex received a way to identify my phone and sent back a list of other trackers to pair up with.

And all night long, there was some startling behavior by a household name: Yelp. It was receiving a message that included my IP address -— once every five minutes.

Our data has a secret life in many of the devices we use every day, from talking Alexa speakers to smart TVs. But we’ve got a giant blind spot when it comes to the data companies probing our phones.

You might assume you can count on Apple to sweat all the privacy details. After all, it touted in a recent ad, “What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone.” My investigation suggests otherwise.

IPhone apps I discovered tracking me by passing information to third parties — just while I was asleep — include Microsoft OneDrive, Intuit’s Mint, Nike, Spotify, The Washington Post and IBM’s the Weather Channel. One app, the crime-alert service Citizen, shared personally identifiable information in violation of its published privacy policy.

[Rurudyne]

More and more I like being unmutual.

It may ne come with a data plan but it does come with a real off switch.

[ifinnegan]

Uses up the battery, too.

[McGavin999]

My iPhone is lucky if it has enough charge to turn itself on.

[ptsal]

Screw Apple....

[Rio]

True or FUD?

[VanShuyten]

Ummmm.....

Go to “Settings” and turn off access to all that junk. Then clear cookies and change the browser settings. Then delete all those apps that still act up and use a VPN browser.

[a fool in paradise]

Barack Insane Obama

-be seeing you

[kaehurowing]

Be seeing you!

[kaehurowing]

Even apps you would think would be safe like The Bible are spying on you.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Those “privacy” settings mean nothing.

I bought a Faraday bag that I keep my phone in.

[MrEdd]

My phone has a foolproof off switch.
I have never bought a phone without one.

We have people on this forum who lambaste people who insist on the fool proof off switch as a nonnegotiable requirement for cellphones. Doesn’t matter how nasty they get, that’s what I will always buy.

[kaehurowing]

When we were traveling in Southeast Asia recently for a couple of weeks I kept my Iphone on airplane mode the whole time (otherwise you’re liable to be claimed to be roaming by foreign cellular services and charge a whopping fee). I just used the camera on the phone. After about a week my Iphone started to generate these warnings from Apple saying that bad things would happen to the phone if I didn’t connect.

[goodnesswins]

I recently bought a basic laptop and basic black&white printer. Had my computer geek download very basic software...libre, irfan, printer etc at HIS business...for the purpose of Writing and Photos...don’t plan on it going online ever altho the geek says I’ll need updates......tired of being followed around.

[null and void]

No. 6 is unmutual!

[Swordmaker]

True or FUD?

We are about a week away from Apple’s World Wide Developers’ Conference and we are fully in the traditional FUD Season so what do you think. This is a reposting of another FreeRepublic article from the Washington Post posted two days ago entitled “Washington Post finds 5,400 app trackers sending data from iPhone. FUD.

However, what they did NOT tell their readers were facts such as most of these apps were sending data necessary for the apps to work and that the data was anonymized. As 9to5 Mac pointed out:

First, while there is much breathless reporting of data being sent to companies like Google and Facebook, the vast majority of it is innocuous. It’s simply developers using app analytics services provided by these companies, and they are learning things like which app features people do and don’t use.

Second, the Privacy Pro app that The Washington Post was using to monitor the tracker traffic was provided by a company that would like to sell you in-app purchases to block this traffic, so the company concerned has a vested interest in making the situation sound scarier than it is

Interestingly, and ironically, that blocking Privacy Pro app breaks Apple’s security and privacy sand boxing to do what it does, and the user has to give IT permission to access the internet to get its exception definitions.

Also ironically, Apple’s apps are far less intrusive that those on Google Android. —PING

More Apple iOS FUD on Privacy
from the Washington Post Article Ping!

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

[Swordmaker]

How many people have 5,400 apps on their iPhones? Not too many. This is a FUD article for FUD Season. Most of these apps need the function the article is complaining about to actually do what they are designed to do. If the user turns the function off, they stop working. The data is mostly innocuous.

[bigbob]

“Hi Alexa, it’s Siri...”

[sheana]

Exactly. It’s not that hard and when I’m home I turn the cellular totally off so it has to use my WiFi.

[discostu]

It’s part of the EULA for all the apps. Apple or Android. Doesn’t matter. And there’s nothing Apple or Google should be doing about it, you said yes.