January 16, 2025 • 24 mins
Apple’s recent iOS update has raised serious privacy concerns by enabling AI tools that monitor user behavior without consent. The episode emphasizes the urgent need for users to disable invasive settings while questioning Apple's commitment to privacy amidst its marketing claims.
• Examination of the AI features in the latest iOS update
• Default settings that allow data collection on app usage
• Discussion on Apple's reputation versus actual practices
• Potential consequences for users who are unaware of these changes
• Speculation on how this may affect Apple's market share
• Exploration of the need for privacy-focused technology alternatives
• Encouragement to take action by adjusting privacy settings
Go turn off all those privacy-invasive settings on your device.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Go turn off all those damn privacy invasive settings
in your device.
Man, you've got seven days todo it.
Make it happen, do it now.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Three, two, one.
Now Do it All right.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcomeback to another episode of
Privacy Plans.
Cameron Ivey here alongside MrGabe Gumbs.
Gabe, how we doing, man, how wedoing, we are doing, well, how
are you doing?
I be doing good, my friend, I'mdoing good.
(00:29):
Right on right on right on.
I don't know about these Appleusers, though, man.
In case you missed it, gabe,why don't you give us a little
background on what we justdiscovered, or what everybody
just discovered?
Speaker 1 (00:43):
I don't know if everyone's discovered it yet,
but certainly a lot of peoplehave.
I discovered it from Heidi Sassearlier today and I was like
wait what?
So we've been told that AppleIntelligence Suite was coming to
iOS products soon.
It's a suite of local AI tools,and I suspect that local AI
tools is why Apple is going tosay that what I'm about to say
(01:06):
next isn't really a problem, butwhat they did they being Apple
is in the latest iOS update.
Those intelligence tools wereinstalled, but they also enabled
automatically the ability forthose AI tools to capture and
analyze how you're usingapplications.
It turned this on by defaultfor all of your applications.
(01:26):
It automatically opted you inby default have AI analyze your
app behavior.
Now again, presumably these aresupposed to be local apps,
local models that are runningright, which is to say, the
models are running on yourdevice.
They're not running like onApple's hardware and their
services.
I'm just going to tell you I donot know enough about, sure, the
(01:47):
models may run locally, but Ido not know enough about where
the data goes after.
I know some data is on thephone.
Is it all still in the phone?
I don't want it at all, thoughis the problem?
Why did I not get the choice tohave any application start
monitoring all of my behavioracross all of my applications,
of my behavior across all of myapplications?
This might be the singlelargest privacy of the last few
(02:12):
years.
In my opinion, it's kind ofshitty.
Honestly, it's really shitty.
Maybe I'm being a littlehyperbolic.
There certainly were massiveprivacy problems in the last few
years, but this is problematic.
Yeah, especially-.
What the hell, apple?
What in the world are yousmoking?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
I don't know, maybe we need to know.
Whatever it is man, I have thatconfidence, whatever it is.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
If you start selling that instead of my data, maybe
you get rich that way, becausethey're on something, they're on
something and it's wrong.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Well, first of all, thanks for the fart noise,
because now I don't have toinsert it, hey-o, I appreciate
that.
That saves me on editing.
Yeah, I agree, this is very,very sneaky, very, very sneaky,
sir, very sneaky, but I mean,honestly, I'm not surprised.
I don't think you are either,but maybe you are.
Maybe you are a little bitabout it.
(03:03):
It's AI too.
It's not like I've always hadan inkling that our cameras and
our microphones on all deviceshave always been somewhere that
allow for that kind of behaviorto happen.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
We know that there's software that is sold to less
than trustworthy governmentsthat use these tools to spy on
individuals all over the place.
We know that that is a truth.
We know that cameras can beturned on and the green light
can be disabled so that youdon't even know it's on.
We know microphones can beturned on.
We know all of these things aretrue.
We know that those things aretrue in the context of bad guys
(03:50):
doing bad guy things.
Got it Good Right.
But you know, presumably Apple'sbeen touting itself as the
privacy good boy.
In fact, they've spent millionsand millions of dollars on ad
campaigns and the like to tellus that.
So they were just like silentlydoing all this good stuff
altruistically, like, hey, lookat us, we are very respectful of
(04:10):
your privacy.
They wanted to let you knowabout their altruism.
They wanted you to see theirname on the check.
But then, as was alwayssuspected, that is indeed a
competitive advantage for themand little more than such to
make those claims.
How they carry those claims isa whole different story, and the
way they're carrying this claimright now fumble straight
(04:30):
fumble Is the everyday userthat's not really in the know of
this kind of stuff.
Oh my God, the everyday user'sscrewed, the everyday user's
screwed.
You think my mother's evengoing to know about this, hear
about this, and even if she does, you think she's going to go
through her phone every singleapp and disable this like every
single.
Well, so now I know how I gotto spend my weekend.
Thanks, Apple, not that I don'tlove spending time with my
(04:51):
mother, but thanks Apple.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
And now to your mom's point.
Let's use her as an example.
Thanks, mom.
What is it like if she were tofind out?
What is she like?
Is she even going to understandthe severity of?
Speaker 1 (05:03):
I think she might but she'd probably also struggle
with the.
So what part of it?
It's like yeah, but how doesthat impact me?
Right?
Because it's hard to put thedots together when it's kind of
abstracted away from how itimpacts you directly.
She'll understand it onceexplained to you.
Know, like, I think, any otherreasonable person of
intelligence, right, or you know, forget one's intelligence.
(05:24):
Reasonable person ofintelligence, right, forget
one's intelligence.
I think everyone understandsthe analogies of someone just
walked into your house, openedall of your blinds and put a
camera up to the window withoutyour asking.
Wait, that hasn't happened toyou yet, mate.
I welcome it.
All I ask is for a positiveYelp review.
Is it too much to ask?
Just leave five stars.
If you like what you see, justgo ahead and leave me a review.
(05:47):
If you don't like what you see,as Cam would say, 10, you
weren't in, that's it.
Just keep it moving.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
You don't have to say anything.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Yeah, but then you didn't hear it, then you didn't
see it.
You don't like what?
Otherwise, five stars.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Well, okay, so this is, yeah, this is annoying
because, like you said, thistakes, you've already done yours
, from what I've understood.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
I've done it on one of my iOS devices.
I happen to own multiple iOSdevices.
The whole family has iOSdevices.
They're up there all over theplace and, for what it's worth,
I wasn't always an iOS man.
I used to be a hardcore Androidfan and I switched for various
reasons that were all in thecategory of the ecosystem of
other people around me and othertechnology I was using and some
(06:30):
of it, ease of use, et cetera,even some of the security
functions, or, I'd argue therewere some areas where Apple was
better than Android.
Only because, if anything,android is so very open to end
user.
It's very flexible for an enduser to customize.
That customization also meansyou can cut your hand on the
sharp edges that it has.
(06:51):
But I can tell you thefollowing After today, I am 100%
starting the process to switchas many of my devices out of the
iOS ecosystem.
I'm not even being hyperbolic.
I've been meaning to do it forsome time.
All this has done isaccelerated for me.
That being said, I'm alreadyhyper-privacy focused.
(07:12):
You're already hyper-privacyfocused.
We're not the ones that arereally going to get affected by
this.
It's mom and dad right, thoseare the ones that are going to
get affected by this stuff andit's nonsense.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yeah, I agree that's a big switch, because I know
you've been using Apple for awhile now, at least, I think,
the whole time that I've knownyou.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Yeah, that might be about right.
I'm pulling up on at least 10years.
Prior to that, I was an Androidman through and through, but
even my laptop, I think I'mgoing to switch over to Pop OS
as my daily driver.
I'll have some secondarymachines if I have to because of
different applications, but I'mout.
That's it, I'm out.
Thanks, no, thanks, I won't offthis ride.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, it's weird.
It's weird coming from.
I have so many thoughts goingon in my head and I want to get
your opinion on them.
First of all, I just want tomake the statement of you know,
I've always thought that Applehas done such a good job with
their privacy commercials andshowing consumers that they care
about their privacy, and thenthey do something like this.
Do you think that the companies, the apps themselves, do you
(08:16):
think that those companies knewabout this?
And is there an advantage forthis feature being automatically
turned on to those apps forthose companies?
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Looks like advantage is all Apple at the moment 's
all coming up.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
It's all coming up, apple at the moment so I wonder
if there's something to where,like calling all companies that
have an app.
If you're listening to this, Imean that'd be pretty cool.
If you are probably not they'repowerless.
The wall garden belongs to appleright like what I'm saying,
though, is could those companiesdo a call out like go into your
app settings if you don't wantthis turned on and turn it off,
(08:51):
like that could be a good thingfor them to kind of promote as
the company to show theirprivacy, it's true, you know
that's true, at least spreadingsome awareness to their end
users.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Yeah, no, we'll allow it.
We'll allow it.
The challenge is, thoseorganizations don't have any
real power beyond that voice.
Right, the iOS ecosystem isApple's holy to control.
They decide they don't want youon the platform.
Legally, right Like.
Right, that's it.
Right Like go back to theFortnite debacle where they
(09:22):
changed the rules.
The Fortnite debacle where theychanged the rules.
They enabled the ability to buywhatever the in-game money is
directly in-game, which violatesApple's terms of service.
They want any application thathas the ability to make in-app
purchases.
They want you to make thosein-app purchases through Apple
(09:43):
because they get a cut Automatic30%.
The folks that make Fortnite Ican't remember their name now.
Someone else will have to fillin that blank for me they took
this all the way to court andthey were like no, and while it
was all being hashed out incourt, in that meantime Apple
removed Fortnite from the appstore altogether If you were
(10:06):
playing the game on-.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Tim Sweeney.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Tim Sweeney yeah, actually, that's the founder of
the company.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, tim SweeneyGames developer.
Yep, yes, yes, epic Games, epicGames, that's it, epic Games.
And so they pulled the gamefrom being able to be played on
any iOS device.
There weren't a lot of peopleplaying it on iOS best I know
For what it's worth.
I had tried it on iOS once manyyears ago and when it got
(10:32):
pulled I was like, whatever, Idon't really game anyways, it
didn't really affect me, but itkind of sucked.
It's like oh no, you can't playanymore.
You can play it again now oniOS devices through a different
mechanism.
Right, there's a number ofdifferent ways you can still get
about it, but the point isApple's control over their
ecosystem is a dictatorship.
I might argue rightfully so.
It's their platform, but theyare now so large and so
(10:56):
ubiquitous in everyone so many Ishouldn't say everyone, but so
many people's lives certainlynot around the globe.
Around the globe, androidphones are still very much
competing well on market share.
The problem there is you havelots of other privacy issues.
Anyone who's bought I'm justgoing to pick on some folks here
too, so try not to get toooffended.
Tech companies.
But Samsung, samsung phone.
(11:18):
It comes loaded with all kindsof adware, spyware.
I'd go as far as call itmalware.
Quite frankly, I think it'smalicious and it's intense, even
if not its behavior, but it'smalicious and it's a behavior
for sure.
So there isn't a lot the appdevelopers can do, to my
knowledge, but yeah you knowit's on apple I agree.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
I think, um, we're coming to a point, and you know,
in 2025.
Besides insurance and carmechanic fraud, there's this
Apple thing the way that Appleis nowadays.
The products they're puttingout, they're not really that.
The phones aren't selling asmuch because it's not as
exciting.
It's the same thing everysingle year.
(12:03):
There's no real change orexcitement or innovation, and
it's um, I don't know, could youever see the fall of apple?
Um, from some of these kind ofthings?
Speaker 1 (12:16):
no, I mean it would take a lot to knock apple they
have their their revenue streamis also expertly diversified,
like kudos to them, rightudos tothem.
We could sit here and list allof the different lines of
businesses they have, but theyhave Apple TV, they have
MacBooks, they have phones, theyhave tablets.
(12:36):
They've got tons of services.
They've got cloud services andstorage.
They're very, very welldiversified.
There's no two ways about it.
Apple's not going to fall offtomorrow and, as grumpy as many
of us may get about this, thismay not even touch their bottom
line.
It might not.
The best way to vote is get thehell off the platform.
But again, where are you goingto go to?
(12:57):
Is the problem right?
A lot of your other choices arejust as fraught with privacy
problems.
Unless you understand and knowhow to navigate those problems
yourself, that's a problem.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
So we need somebody with privacy in mind to create
their own cell phone.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
There's a beautiful, amazing, maybe two or three
episodes on Darknet Diaries onthe topic of privacy-hooked cell
phones.
It's a wild, wild ride.
I highly advise anyone to golisten to those episodes and the
show in general.
Shout out to Darknet Diaries.
I love the show.
Yeah, it's a good show, but oneof the things that and I'm just
(13:32):
going to spoil it, so if youdon't want this to be spoiled,
you should mute for the next 30odd seconds.
Make it 60 just to be safe.
I might say more than that.
But one of the things that hetalks about in the show is that
there really are noprivacy-focused phones that they
could actually find.
Many of the privacy-focusedphones were designed for
(13:56):
criminal use, like explicitlyfor the purpose of criminal use,
and it turns out that one ofthe last existing ones, the guy
who built it, got caught no onereally knows when, and then he
disappeared for a while.
Then he came back and hereleased a whole new phone and
they were being sold tocriminals all over Europe and
Eastern Europe.
And it turns out that thesephones had a backdoor that
(14:19):
allowed the US government and acouple of other entities to just
automatically get copies of allof the messages being sent back
and forth to people.
So when you send a message tosomeone else, it would
automatically also send the copyof that message side channel
elsewhere.
Right, right, right, right,right.
Now again, the argument herewas that, look, they created a
(14:42):
device that they knew was goingto be sold to criminals for
criminal activity, and so theyleveraged it to that aim.
The problem, of course, isexactly that Even if you create
a legitimate, completelyprivacy-preserving mobile device
, it will find its way into thehands of criminals, of course.
(15:03):
So what?
We don't not sell cars becausepeople use them to run people
over, right?
Like we don't not sell cutlerybecause people use them this to
stab people like.
So what?
Like we damn sure don't notsell guns because people shoot
schools up.
So you know, like we?
This is the weird place to drawthe line.
Oh, but my privacy's and my thekids?
Like shouldn't we think aboutthe kids?
(15:24):
Yes, we should think about thekids.
They're dying every day inschools.
Let's think about the kids.
I understand that there arelegitimate privacy reasons and
security reasons why we don'twant criminals to be able to
have pedophile rings easilyadministered through
privacy-preserving technology,but I also don't want them dying
up gunshots either in thefourth grade.
(15:45):
One of those things seemsreally easy to solve for the
other one, also easy to solvefor.
It's so what there's a to thatpoint.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
There is I do you know about that one phone that's
like it kind of takes awaysocial media and it makes it
your phone simple.
I forget the name of it.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
It's like a black phone or yeah, I think I've seen
it, there might be a couplelike that, like they.
It has just the bare essentialsinside of it.
It removes those, like you know, other wi-fi antennas and I
think it doesn't even have acamera and it's like a hardware,
a microphone, so that you canlike physically disable it with
like a dip switch kind of thingyeah those are pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Those are cool.
I would say those are probablythe closest to probably a
healthy relationship with withyour phone nowadays in terms of
controlling and not having tokind of escape from social media
and all that stuff.
But I don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
I'll have to explore myself how far down that hole I
even want to go, because, I'mnot going to lie to you, I've
gotten very, very used to havingthe luxuries, like everyone
else has, of having a smartphone.
It's awesome, it's excellent.
I have not gotten comfortablewith the overreach that
technology companies have.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Well, so back to the whole latest on the iOS update.
If you haven't updated it yetand you do, or you have updated
it and you want to take a lookat this, you go into your
settings, you go into your appsand for each app, you have to go
into each app and go into Siriand turn that feature off for
each one.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
It found a way to disable it system-wide?
If it exists, someone certainlyshould comment and weigh in.
I didn't see it and I didn'thear anyone else mention it, but
otherwise it's a righteous painin the butt, especially since
you have to do it also acrossall devices, which this is how
you know it's shenanigans rightLike iOS, can track everything
you do across devices.
(17:36):
You can take a phone callacross devices.
You can move seamlessly from aFaceTime video from your phone
to your laptop, to your tablet,without skipping a heartbeat.
You can do everythingseamlessly across it, except for
preserve your privacy.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
That's wild.
I wonder if something's goingto happen with something about
this.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
And I can't wait for the EU to smack them around.
Come on, eu.
Of course, what will happen isI'll just get further jelly of
all my European brethren whenthey have more privacy
protections than I do, becausejust because the EU slaps their
head doesn't mean they'll do itto fix our states.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Well, this is a way to keep informed.
So if you weren't aware of this, hopefully this helps and you
can go do something about it.
If you care about your privacyI imagine anyone listening to
the show actually does, or youknow if not, you're just doing
it for the entertainment, thenI'm glad that we entertain you.
We are here for both.
Yeah, hopefully this wasinformative and this is
(18:35):
fascinating.
I mean, this is why this worldthat we live in, this tech world
that we live in, is sofascinating because things like
this continue to happen, andmaybe that's a good thing.
Maybe that keeps us on our toes.
Hopefully the smarter peopleout there like yourself, gabe,
or you know others that caninvent things or create
(18:55):
technologies to to make thingsbetter Hopefully we'll have some
people working on that kind ofstuff right now.
Yeah, anything else you want totalk about?
We got coming on next week.
We promised.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Dave Dave.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, we got Dave coming on.
We had to reschedule with him,but we have him coming on, so
that'll release.
Tell the listeners give them alittle tease about Dave.
So Dave works for he'sco-founder and regulatory expert
over at a company called RunwayStrategies.
Real smart guy knows a lotabout legislative things like
that.
We're going to learn hisbackstory.
Learn a little bit more aboutwhat is going to actually be
(19:34):
happening.
Monday is the 20th inauguration, so new office, new
administration is coming in forthe US MLK Day Monday is MLK Day
MLK Day as well?
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah, then it's Inauguration Day.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
See, in order, it goes MLK Day, you know what's
funny, you know, what's funny Isthat we're talking about all
these like privacy things.
Was that story true about howhis phone was tapped in his
hotel room, martin Luther King?
Story true about how his phonewas tapped in his hotel room um
martin luther king?
Yeah, yeah, hell yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
See, that's what I'm saying it's like it's all lining
up right now all the privacyissues.
They spied on everything thatman did.
He couldn't use the bathroomwithout somebody taking two
pictures from two differentangles I can't even imagine
having that.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
I wonder if he even knew about it.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Yes, okay, yes, he was aware that he was being
watched, followed by our owngovernment, by private citizens,
trying to enact that kind ofchange at a time when the world
was vehemently against change ofthat nature, in particular
(20:41):
social justice, change of anysort.
Yeah, no, he was intimatelyaware.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
He was intimately aware, crazy man that was
happening around that time.
I don't know.
That's just fascinating.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Scary, yeah, very scary, fascinating, scary, yeah,
very scary, scary, because hisactivities clearly angered some
very violent people.
So in the end he met his demiseat the business end of the
rifle From a distance.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
How dare somebody try to help give equal rights to
all humans.
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
And that's noteworthy too right.
His fight wasn't just forpeople of color by any stretch
of the imagination.
This was very much always aboutclass.
This was always wealth warfare.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Yeah, well, yeah.
So Monday MLK, which is alwayscelebratory, and then, funny
enough, it's the 20thinauguration.
All right, well, I think that'sall we have for this week.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
But tune in next week .
We've got some guests on and,as we promised, this year will
continue to get more exciting.
So welcome, come along for theride and go turn off all those
damn privacy invasive settingsin your device.
Man, do it Before you join usnext week.
You've got seven days to do it.
Make it happen, do it now.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Three two, one.
Now Do it, see you guys.
Go turn off all those damn privacy invasive settings
in your device.
Man, you've got seven days todo it.
Make it happen, do it now.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Three, two, one.
Now Do it All right.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcomeback to another episode of
Privacy Plans.
Cameron Ivey here alongside MrGabe Gumbs.
Gabe, how we doing, man, how wedoing, we are doing, well, how
are you doing?
I be doing good, my friend, I'mdoing good.
(00:29):
Right on right on right on.
I don't know about these Appleusers, though, man.
In case you missed it, gabe,why don't you give us a little
background on what we justdiscovered, or what everybody
just discovered?
Speaker 1 (00:43):
I don't know if everyone's discovered it yet,
but certainly a lot of peoplehave.
I discovered it from Heidi Sassearlier today and I was like
wait what?
So we've been told that AppleIntelligence Suite was coming to
iOS products soon.
It's a suite of local AI tools,and I suspect that local AI
tools is why Apple is going tosay that what I'm about to say
(01:06):
next isn't really a problem, butwhat they did they being Apple
is in the latest iOS update.
Those intelligence tools wereinstalled, but they also enabled
automatically the ability forthose AI tools to capture and
analyze how you're usingapplications.
It turned this on by defaultfor all of your applications.
(01:26):
It automatically opted you inby default have AI analyze your
app behavior.
Now again, presumably these aresupposed to be local apps,
local models that are runningright, which is to say, the
models are running on yourdevice.
They're not running like onApple's hardware and their
services.
I'm just going to tell you I donot know enough about, sure, the
(01:47):
models may run locally, but Ido not know enough about where
the data goes after.
I know some data is on thephone.
Is it all still in the phone?
I don't want it at all, thoughis the problem?
Why did I not get the choice tohave any application start
monitoring all of my behavioracross all of my applications,
of my behavior across all of myapplications?
This might be the singlelargest privacy of the last few
(02:12):
years.
In my opinion, it's kind ofshitty.
Honestly, it's really shitty.
Maybe I'm being a littlehyperbolic.
There certainly were massiveprivacy problems in the last few
years, but this is problematic.
Yeah, especially-.
What the hell, apple?
What in the world are yousmoking?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
I don't know, maybe we need to know.
Whatever it is man, I have thatconfidence, whatever it is.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
If you start selling that instead of my data, maybe
you get rich that way, becausethey're on something, they're on
something and it's wrong.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Well, first of all, thanks for the fart noise,
because now I don't have toinsert it, hey-o, I appreciate
that.
That saves me on editing.
Yeah, I agree, this is very,very sneaky, very, very sneaky,
sir, very sneaky, but I mean,honestly, I'm not surprised.
I don't think you are either,but maybe you are.
Maybe you are a little bitabout it.
(03:03):
It's AI too.
It's not like I've always hadan inkling that our cameras and
our microphones on all deviceshave always been somewhere that
allow for that kind of behaviorto happen.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
We know that there's software that is sold to less
than trustworthy governmentsthat use these tools to spy on
individuals all over the place.
We know that that is a truth.
We know that cameras can beturned on and the green light
can be disabled so that youdon't even know it's on.
We know microphones can beturned on.
We know all of these things aretrue.
We know that those things aretrue in the context of bad guys
(03:50):
doing bad guy things.
Got it Good Right.
But you know, presumably Apple'sbeen touting itself as the
privacy good boy.
In fact, they've spent millionsand millions of dollars on ad
campaigns and the like to tellus that.
So they were just like silentlydoing all this good stuff
altruistically, like, hey, lookat us, we are very respectful of
(04:10):
your privacy.
They wanted to let you knowabout their altruism.
They wanted you to see theirname on the check.
But then, as was alwayssuspected, that is indeed a
competitive advantage for themand little more than such to
make those claims.
How they carry those claims isa whole different story, and the
way they're carrying this claimright now fumble straight
(04:30):
fumble Is the everyday userthat's not really in the know of
this kind of stuff.
Oh my God, the everyday user'sscrewed, the everyday user's
screwed.
You think my mother's evengoing to know about this, hear
about this, and even if she does, you think she's going to go
through her phone every singleapp and disable this like every
single.
Well, so now I know how I gotto spend my weekend.
Thanks, Apple, not that I don'tlove spending time with my
(04:51):
mother, but thanks Apple.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
And now to your mom's point.
Let's use her as an example.
Thanks, mom.
What is it like if she were tofind out?
What is she like?
Is she even going to understandthe severity of?
Speaker 1 (05:03):
I think she might but she'd probably also struggle
with the.
So what part of it?
It's like yeah, but how doesthat impact me?
Right?
Because it's hard to put thedots together when it's kind of
abstracted away from how itimpacts you directly.
She'll understand it onceexplained to you.
Know, like, I think, any otherreasonable person of
intelligence, right, or you know, forget one's intelligence.
(05:24):
Reasonable person ofintelligence, right, forget
one's intelligence.
I think everyone understandsthe analogies of someone just
walked into your house, openedall of your blinds and put a
camera up to the window withoutyour asking.
Wait, that hasn't happened toyou yet, mate.
I welcome it.
All I ask is for a positiveYelp review.
Is it too much to ask?
Just leave five stars.
If you like what you see, justgo ahead and leave me a review.
(05:47):
If you don't like what you see,as Cam would say, 10, you
weren't in, that's it.
Just keep it moving.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
You don't have to say anything.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Yeah, but then you didn't hear it, then you didn't
see it.
You don't like what?
Otherwise, five stars.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Well, okay, so this is, yeah, this is annoying
because, like you said, thistakes, you've already done yours
, from what I've understood.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
I've done it on one of my iOS devices.
I happen to own multiple iOSdevices.
The whole family has iOSdevices.
They're up there all over theplace and, for what it's worth,
I wasn't always an iOS man.
I used to be a hardcore Androidfan and I switched for various
reasons that were all in thecategory of the ecosystem of
other people around me and othertechnology I was using and some
(06:30):
of it, ease of use, et cetera,even some of the security
functions, or, I'd argue therewere some areas where Apple was
better than Android.
Only because, if anything,android is so very open to end
user.
It's very flexible for an enduser to customize.
That customization also meansyou can cut your hand on the
sharp edges that it has.
(06:51):
But I can tell you thefollowing After today, I am 100%
starting the process to switchas many of my devices out of the
iOS ecosystem.
I'm not even being hyperbolic.
I've been meaning to do it forsome time.
All this has done isaccelerated for me.
That being said, I'm alreadyhyper-privacy focused.
(07:12):
You're already hyper-privacyfocused.
We're not the ones that arereally going to get affected by
this.
It's mom and dad right, thoseare the ones that are going to
get affected by this stuff andit's nonsense.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yeah, I agree that's a big switch, because I know
you've been using Apple for awhile now, at least, I think,
the whole time that I've knownyou.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Yeah, that might be about right.
I'm pulling up on at least 10years.
Prior to that, I was an Androidman through and through, but
even my laptop, I think I'mgoing to switch over to Pop OS
as my daily driver.
I'll have some secondarymachines if I have to because of
different applications, but I'mout.
That's it, I'm out.
Thanks, no, thanks, I won't offthis ride.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, it's weird.
It's weird coming from.
I have so many thoughts goingon in my head and I want to get
your opinion on them.
First of all, I just want tomake the statement of you know,
I've always thought that Applehas done such a good job with
their privacy commercials andshowing consumers that they care
about their privacy, and thenthey do something like this.
Do you think that the companies, the apps themselves, do you
(08:16):
think that those companies knewabout this?
And is there an advantage forthis feature being automatically
turned on to those apps forthose companies?
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Looks like advantage is all Apple at the moment 's
all coming up.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
It's all coming up, apple at the moment so I wonder
if there's something to where,like calling all companies that
have an app.
If you're listening to this, Imean that'd be pretty cool.
If you are probably not they'repowerless.
The wall garden belongs to appleright like what I'm saying,
though, is could those companiesdo a call out like go into your
app settings if you don't wantthis turned on and turn it off,
(08:51):
like that could be a good thingfor them to kind of promote as
the company to show theirprivacy, it's true, you know
that's true, at least spreadingsome awareness to their end
users.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Yeah, no, we'll allow it.
We'll allow it.
The challenge is, thoseorganizations don't have any
real power beyond that voice.
Right, the iOS ecosystem isApple's holy to control.
They decide they don't want youon the platform.
Legally, right Like.
Right, that's it.
Right Like go back to theFortnite debacle where they
(09:22):
changed the rules.
The Fortnite debacle where theychanged the rules.
They enabled the ability to buywhatever the in-game money is
directly in-game, which violatesApple's terms of service.
They want any application thathas the ability to make in-app
purchases.
They want you to make thosein-app purchases through Apple
(09:43):
because they get a cut Automatic30%.
The folks that make Fortnite Ican't remember their name now.
Someone else will have to fillin that blank for me they took
this all the way to court andthey were like no, and while it
was all being hashed out incourt, in that meantime Apple
removed Fortnite from the appstore altogether If you were
(10:06):
playing the game on-.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Tim Sweeney.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Tim Sweeney yeah, actually, that's the founder of
the company.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, tim SweeneyGames developer.
Yep, yes, yes, epic Games, epicGames, that's it, epic Games.
And so they pulled the gamefrom being able to be played on
any iOS device.
There weren't a lot of peopleplaying it on iOS best I know
For what it's worth.
I had tried it on iOS once manyyears ago and when it got
(10:32):
pulled I was like, whatever, Idon't really game anyways, it
didn't really affect me, but itkind of sucked.
It's like oh no, you can't playanymore.
You can play it again now oniOS devices through a different
mechanism.
Right, there's a number ofdifferent ways you can still get
about it, but the point isApple's control over their
ecosystem is a dictatorship.
I might argue rightfully so.
It's their platform, but theyare now so large and so
(10:56):
ubiquitous in everyone so many Ishouldn't say everyone, but so
many people's lives certainlynot around the globe.
Around the globe, androidphones are still very much
competing well on market share.
The problem there is you havelots of other privacy issues.
Anyone who's bought I'm justgoing to pick on some folks here
too, so try not to get toooffended.
Tech companies.
But Samsung, samsung phone.
(11:18):
It comes loaded with all kindsof adware, spyware.
I'd go as far as call itmalware.
Quite frankly, I think it'smalicious and it's intense, even
if not its behavior, but it'smalicious and it's a behavior
for sure.
So there isn't a lot the appdevelopers can do, to my
knowledge, but yeah you knowit's on apple I agree.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
I think, um, we're coming to a point, and you know,
in 2025.
Besides insurance and carmechanic fraud, there's this
Apple thing the way that Appleis nowadays.
The products they're puttingout, they're not really that.
The phones aren't selling asmuch because it's not as
exciting.
It's the same thing everysingle year.
(12:03):
There's no real change orexcitement or innovation, and
it's um, I don't know, could youever see the fall of apple?
Um, from some of these kind ofthings?
Speaker 1 (12:16):
no, I mean it would take a lot to knock apple they
have their their revenue streamis also expertly diversified,
like kudos to them, rightudos tothem.
We could sit here and list allof the different lines of
businesses they have, but theyhave Apple TV, they have
MacBooks, they have phones, theyhave tablets.
(12:36):
They've got tons of services.
They've got cloud services andstorage.
They're very, very welldiversified.
There's no two ways about it.
Apple's not going to fall offtomorrow and, as grumpy as many
of us may get about this, thismay not even touch their bottom
line.
It might not.
The best way to vote is get thehell off the platform.
But again, where are you goingto go to?
(12:57):
Is the problem right?
A lot of your other choices arejust as fraught with privacy
problems.
Unless you understand and knowhow to navigate those problems
yourself, that's a problem.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
So we need somebody with privacy in mind to create
their own cell phone.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
There's a beautiful, amazing, maybe two or three
episodes on Darknet Diaries onthe topic of privacy-hooked cell
phones.
It's a wild, wild ride.
I highly advise anyone to golisten to those episodes and the
show in general.
Shout out to Darknet Diaries.
I love the show.
Yeah, it's a good show, but oneof the things that and I'm just
(13:32):
going to spoil it, so if youdon't want this to be spoiled,
you should mute for the next 30odd seconds.
Make it 60 just to be safe.
I might say more than that.
But one of the things that hetalks about in the show is that
there really are noprivacy-focused phones that they
could actually find.
Many of the privacy-focusedphones were designed for
(13:56):
criminal use, like explicitlyfor the purpose of criminal use,
and it turns out that one ofthe last existing ones, the guy
who built it, got caught no onereally knows when, and then he
disappeared for a while.
Then he came back and hereleased a whole new phone and
they were being sold tocriminals all over Europe and
Eastern Europe.
And it turns out that thesephones had a backdoor that
(14:19):
allowed the US government and acouple of other entities to just
automatically get copies of allof the messages being sent back
and forth to people.
So when you send a message tosomeone else, it would
automatically also send the copyof that message side channel
elsewhere.
Right, right, right, right,right.
Now again, the argument herewas that, look, they created a
(14:42):
device that they knew was goingto be sold to criminals for
criminal activity, and so theyleveraged it to that aim.
The problem, of course, isexactly that Even if you create
a legitimate, completelyprivacy-preserving mobile device
, it will find its way into thehands of criminals, of course.
(15:03):
So what?
We don't not sell cars becausepeople use them to run people
over, right?
Like we don't not sell cutlerybecause people use them this to
stab people like.
So what?
Like we damn sure don't notsell guns because people shoot
schools up.
So you know, like we?
This is the weird place to drawthe line.
Oh, but my privacy's and my thekids?
Like shouldn't we think aboutthe kids?
(15:24):
Yes, we should think about thekids.
They're dying every day inschools.
Let's think about the kids.
I understand that there arelegitimate privacy reasons and
security reasons why we don'twant criminals to be able to
have pedophile rings easilyadministered through
privacy-preserving technology,but I also don't want them dying
up gunshots either in thefourth grade.
(15:45):
One of those things seemsreally easy to solve for the
other one, also easy to solvefor.
It's so what there's a to thatpoint.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
There is I do you know about that one phone that's
like it kind of takes awaysocial media and it makes it
your phone simple.
I forget the name of it.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
It's like a black phone or yeah, I think I've seen
it, there might be a couplelike that, like they.
It has just the bare essentialsinside of it.
It removes those, like you know, other wi-fi antennas and I
think it doesn't even have acamera and it's like a hardware,
a microphone, so that you canlike physically disable it with
like a dip switch kind of thingyeah those are pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Those are cool.
I would say those are probablythe closest to probably a
healthy relationship with withyour phone nowadays in terms of
controlling and not having tokind of escape from social media
and all that stuff.
But I don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
I'll have to explore myself how far down that hole I
even want to go, because, I'mnot going to lie to you, I've
gotten very, very used to havingthe luxuries, like everyone
else has, of having a smartphone.
It's awesome, it's excellent.
I have not gotten comfortablewith the overreach that
technology companies have.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Well, so back to the whole latest on the iOS update.
If you haven't updated it yetand you do, or you have updated
it and you want to take a lookat this, you go into your
settings, you go into your appsand for each app, you have to go
into each app and go into Siriand turn that feature off for
each one.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
It found a way to disable it system-wide?
If it exists, someone certainlyshould comment and weigh in.
I didn't see it and I didn'thear anyone else mention it, but
otherwise it's a righteous painin the butt, especially since
you have to do it also acrossall devices, which this is how
you know it's shenanigans rightLike iOS, can track everything
you do across devices.
(17:36):
You can take a phone callacross devices.
You can move seamlessly from aFaceTime video from your phone
to your laptop, to your tablet,without skipping a heartbeat.
You can do everythingseamlessly across it, except for
preserve your privacy.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
That's wild.
I wonder if something's goingto happen with something about
this.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
And I can't wait for the EU to smack them around.
Come on, eu.
Of course, what will happen isI'll just get further jelly of
all my European brethren whenthey have more privacy
protections than I do, becausejust because the EU slaps their
head doesn't mean they'll do itto fix our states.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Well, this is a way to keep informed.
So if you weren't aware of this, hopefully this helps and you
can go do something about it.
If you care about your privacyI imagine anyone listening to
the show actually does, or youknow if not, you're just doing
it for the entertainment, thenI'm glad that we entertain you.
We are here for both.
Yeah, hopefully this wasinformative and this is
(18:35):
fascinating.
I mean, this is why this worldthat we live in, this tech world
that we live in, is sofascinating because things like
this continue to happen, andmaybe that's a good thing.
Maybe that keeps us on our toes.
Hopefully the smarter peopleout there like yourself, gabe,
or you know others that caninvent things or create
(18:55):
technologies to to make thingsbetter Hopefully we'll have some
people working on that kind ofstuff right now.
Yeah, anything else you want totalk about?
We got coming on next week.
We promised.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Dave Dave.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, we got Dave coming on.
We had to reschedule with him,but we have him coming on, so
that'll release.
Tell the listeners give them alittle tease about Dave.
So Dave works for he'sco-founder and regulatory expert
over at a company called RunwayStrategies.
Real smart guy knows a lotabout legislative things like
that.
We're going to learn hisbackstory.
Learn a little bit more aboutwhat is going to actually be
(19:34):
happening.
Monday is the 20th inauguration, so new office, new
administration is coming in forthe US MLK Day Monday is MLK Day
MLK Day as well?
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah, then it's Inauguration Day.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
See, in order, it goes MLK Day, you know what's
funny, you know, what's funny Isthat we're talking about all
these like privacy things.
Was that story true about howhis phone was tapped in his
hotel room, martin Luther King?
Story true about how his phonewas tapped in his hotel room um
martin luther king?
Yeah, yeah, hell yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
See, that's what I'm saying it's like it's all lining
up right now all the privacyissues.
They spied on everything thatman did.
He couldn't use the bathroomwithout somebody taking two
pictures from two differentangles I can't even imagine
having that.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
I wonder if he even knew about it.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Yes, okay, yes, he was aware that he was being
watched, followed by our owngovernment, by private citizens,
trying to enact that kind ofchange at a time when the world
was vehemently against change ofthat nature, in particular
(20:41):
social justice, change of anysort.
Yeah, no, he was intimatelyaware.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
He was intimately aware, crazy man that was
happening around that time.
I don't know.
That's just fascinating.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Scary, yeah, very scary, fascinating, scary, yeah,
very scary, scary, because hisactivities clearly angered some
very violent people.
So in the end he met his demiseat the business end of the
rifle From a distance.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
How dare somebody try to help give equal rights to
all humans.
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
And that's noteworthy too right.
His fight wasn't just forpeople of color by any stretch
of the imagination.
This was very much always aboutclass.
This was always wealth warfare.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Yeah, well, yeah.
So Monday MLK, which is alwayscelebratory, and then, funny
enough, it's the 20thinauguration.
All right, well, I think that'sall we have for this week.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
But tune in next week .
We've got some guests on and,as we promised, this year will
continue to get more exciting.
So welcome, come along for theride and go turn off all those
damn privacy invasive settingsin your device.
Man, do it Before you join usnext week.
You've got seven days to do it.
Make it happen, do it now.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Three two, one.
Now Do it, see you guys.
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