this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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Privacy
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Tile? The brand that predates airtags and where apple stole the idea from and just made it proprietary to their ecosystem
Edit: what a bizarre thing to downvote
tile just had a data breach π
Which happens to practically all companies eventually.
There are 2 types of companies, the ones who have been hacked the the ones which don't know they've already been hacked g about to be hacked.
True yet still not OK.
That's also why a lot of us do try to avoid, as much as is realistically feasible, to provide any data to any company that should store it. Hence why a lot of questions here are about self hosting, no cloud, etc. It's not paranoia, it's because companies cut corners and as you correctly point out, fail to keep us safe. So it's not about Tile specifically, they are just yet another poor example. Let's not defend them nor this kind of practices. If people in the Privacy community are OK with that, we have a rather deep problem.
They asked for an alternative to airtags. I provided one. Doesn't matter if they were compromised because like I said, everyone is eventually. The data leaked is almost certainly super redundant for almost every user anyhow
And even though I'm not OP I'm genuinely grateful for that.
No! That's the whole point of this Privacy community! If someone is using, using home automation as an example, Apple HomeKit or Roomba or Google Home they will eventually get compromised BUT if they are using something local, e.g Zigbee with HomeAssistant they WILL never get compromised because by the very local only architecture of that solution no data is leaving the home and thus can NOT be compromised.
The ENTIRE reason d'etre of this community is not to say "Oh well... the default solutions are imperfect, we have to shrug and accept the statu quo" but rather provide genuinely alternative.
I understand a lot of people can enter into a learned helplessness mindset imagining that only poor solutions exist and thus, better pick the least worst one, but by doing that we are giving power to Big Tech, surveillance capitalism, etc.
Please do NOT say that "everybody gets compromised" when you actually mean that "the vast majority of people who accept to use a popular solution with trade offs that are not good for privacy". It sounds like a finicky difference but it's actually totally different because it shows that it's not inevitable.
By taking shortcut in your language you limit what's conceived as possible by others who are asking for help, again, in a Privacy focused community.
I know you mean well here but you're off base and it's coming across as lecturing me about something you aren't fully informed about. I am not saying people shouldn't care about privacy. I'm saying if you want this type of product, all the concerns you're mentioning here are literally impossible to avoid. The best you could do is find the company with the least number of breaches and then pray they remain that way. But that doesn't really get you very far.
I must express myself quite poorly. It is not a point about technical knowledge, in fact if you were to know more about the topic than I do, I would expect you to even more be upheld to higher standards and thus not promote a bad solution, even more so assume it's the only one. I can't imagine that even a PhD student who is supposedly at the frontier of knowledge in their very narrow field would assume no alternative is possible, or will ever be. This even more the case without having both a complete understand of the landscape but also about OP's actual needs, which is probably hard to express clearly and thus leading to a lot of assumption. Here maybe a simple loud alarm from a BT speaker going out of range might be enough.
My whole point is that abandoning hope, and leading others to do so, is worst than actively finding for a barely OK compromise.
Anyway I don't want to invest more energy on this discussion unfortunately so simply wishing you the best, thanks for the clarifications.
Wow. No one is abandoning hope by simply recognizing what options exist
Not private
Airbags?
Do you have source of that? I'm curious, nothing wrong with your answer
..airtags* are what were asked about an alternative for. Autocorrect.
Yes, I know and I've seen them before but you said apple stole their idea, no? I'm curious to know more
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tile_(company)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirTag
Apple has stolen most ideas they ever execute. A lot of people believe they do the best job of execution but I don't buy that in most cases. I mean here's a perfect example. A product that has been working great with any device for 8 years and here they come with a version that locks you into their ecosystem. I'm good on that.
Uh thanks. I was curious about it, It didn't really surprise me to know apple stole the idea from someone (like any other big company). Thanks for your answer and time!
Not sure where the disconnect is. You weren't very clear with your question but yes I did take time to attempt to clear up what you seemed to be asking about.
And no, not every big company flat out steals ideas. Apple is notorious for doing this, but other companies are not. At least none I can think of.
Apple is (rightfully IMO) far more notorious for taking something that's been around for years already, adding it to their product line (or as a feature in a product), and then pretending they invented it. Almost every company will copy features/products from other companies, but they don't usually pretend to have invented the whole thing.
Example: Gmail. It was revolutionary, but not because Google really invented much (or indeed claimed to). Rather, it was revolutionary because it provided features that already existed in paid options (e.g. full IMAP support, large mailbox sizes) for free, with a good web interface.
Rereading our exchange multiple times even, I've no idea what you're saying or what this has to do with anything.
No. You aren't listening. Apple is known especially for stealing ideas. It's their whole business model, in fact. Steve Jobs bragged about it.
I don't really know if a tile is "good for privacy". It depends on a lot of things and you should research it yourself. Since my goal for the tile is to be able to find my devices, keys, bags, etc, I expect there to be personal info asked for and that's true. I highly doubt an airtag would be any better for privacy.