Comments on: iTunes Knows Where You Live (And It’s Going To Hunt You Down)

By: Briana

Briana — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 15:59:47 +0000

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By: Jimmy James

Jimmy James — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 20:01:36 +0000

MacBook Pro? Ehh… could’ve been worse. Apple Notepower 4512e or some other PC-like name perhaps?

As for the Mini-Store. When I saw it I thought “Crap, man…” then I turned it off. I’m rather heavily with Gareth on this… who cares? What are they going to do with the knowledge that I played “I Don’t Wanna Live Without Your Love” from Chicago 18 four times in the last 3 days?

Try to sell me Chicago MP3s?

God save us from that fate worse than death.

By: ozi

ozi — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 10:52:57 +0000

hmmm,

got me there, it actually does sound cool.

Maybe PowerBook is dead now…

By: Gareth Potter

Gareth Potter — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 10:51:03 +0000

Ozi,

How about the PowerBook Core?

By: ozi

ozi — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 09:15:22 +0000

You know, many people are complaining about the name of the MacBook Pro. I, like many other people, really like this change. I mean, tell me, what would they have called it this time that would be any beter than what it is called now.

Stop complaining and get used to it, get accustomed to change (especially those of you who are having a hard time understanding apple’s change towards intel). Most importantly, there will be a lot of change this year. so get ready.

By: Tim

Tim — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 21:26:35 +0000

The paranoid objections, I think, rely in the slippery-slope argument, which anyone who’s taken a logic class will tell you is a poor argument.

However, I’ll agree from a personal standpoint that it’s annoying and ugly, and made me like itunes a bit less than I used to. And the fact that the ministore does collect this information without telling me makes me trust Apple a bit less.

So there are real consequences.

By: Emilio Rodriguez

Emilio Rodriguez — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 16:36:14 +0000

This is a very interesting issue. I was wondering if Hotrecorder for Media (this software which enables you to play iTunes on any portable player), does also help you dodge Apple’s big brother attitude? Does anyone know?

By: since1968

since1968 — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 13:12:03 +0000

Gareth, I’m not sure who’s screaming bloody murder; certainly it’s not me. I’m asking — hold your water, this is panicky tinfoil hat time — that Apple disclose its practices. If it shares information with third party marketing firms I want to know about it.

By: Gareth Potter

Gareth Potter — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 07:44:18 +0000

Since1968,

Fair point, but consider this:

Apple is well aware that there has been something of a reaction to this (amongst, at least, the blogosphere. Most others don’t care). Apple is also well aware that people now believe the problem has been solved, on account of this assertion.

It would, therefore, be incredibly bad PR if it were to be subsquently discovered that they – or a third party facilitated by them, i.e. Omniture – were in fact collecting data and making some use of it. They might point to the fact that they had made no official statement, but one could readily submit that they made no statement to the contrary when the news went round that they were not collecting data.

In any case, foolish as this inclusion rather was, the whole argument is rather academic anyway, as a simple View…Hide MiniStore solves your problem.

It strikes me that if privacy advocates spent less time pursuing matters quite so trivial, they might gain a little more credibility amongst the world at large. If I ran around here screaming bloody murder and saying that some big corporation was “collecting data on us”, people would grunt, say “Oh, so what’s new…”, and move on.

By: since1968

since1968 — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 00:36:37 +0000

Gareth, one thing that surprises me is how quickly people, including you, have accepted Apple’s anonymously sourced assertion that they don’t collect data.

If you run ethereal, you know that iTunes sends a stream of your data not only to Apple but also to servers run by Omniture, which is — wait for it — a data collection service. This isn’t really seriously contested by anyone who’s looked at the TCP and HTTP packets.

What’s still up for debate is whether Omniture is able to uniquely identify you based on the data it receives from iTunes.