[wkat4242]

No they can't. Apple doesn't know who has which tag. It's built with privacy in mind. I know Apple listen touts privacy while having ulterior motives but I looked at the technical design specs and this is pretty great

I doubt Samsung and Google have gone to such lengths with their trackers.

[andy_xor_andrew]

Apple always seems to design services the way a privacy-obsessed nerd would, (if you forced said privacy nerd to design a P2P tracking network).

It's like, "oh, you want all your photos to be searchable, like 'dogs' or 'Eiffel tower'? Fine, we'll create an on-device embedding of each photo, use homomorphic encryption so you can share it with us and we can match it to its contents without even knowing what they are, then we'll send that back to your device for storage. Oh, and we'll use a relay so we don't even see your IP address while doing this, not that it matters since we can't decrypt the content anyway." It's pretty wild, like they could have easily skipped all this and only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of users would even know or care.

In fact, I was pretty annoyed that the news story from the above example was "Apple is looking at all your photos and violating your privacy", since they spent so much effort doing it the right way, in a way that respects your privacy, it makes it less likely they will bother going through the effort again

https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/03/apple_enhanced_visual...

[extraduder_ire]

I think when you're at apple's scale, the cost of doing all of that difficult engineering pales in comparison to the cost of responding to subpoenas and bad press/lost sales from compromising user privacy. (google did something similar when they stopped storing per-user location data)

Separately; it doesn't matter how good your technology is or how much you believe in it, you need to win the PR battle of convincing people of how it works. An example is VPN companies who claim not to keep logs testifying in court under oath that they can't produce requested logs, or Mullvad being unable to comply with a search warrant for storage drives because their servers didn't contain any.

[lern_too_spel]

You misunderstood the point of the news story. Apple automatically opted in everybody's iPhones to sending data to Apple, unlike every other company that requires explicit opt in.

[averageRoyalty]

> unlike every other company that requires explicit opt in.

Not defending Apple here, but that's silly. User hostility and auto gobbling up data without consent is perfectly normal for most companies out there.

[lern_too_spel]

No other company automatically sends data about pictures users take on their phones off the phone. Not a single one. All required explicit opt-in except for Apple. Hence, the news story.

[andy_xor_andrew]

I guess it's a matter of informing the public that homomorphic encryption means no information is visible to Apple, so Apple never receives any information about your pictures at all.

I guess you could make the argument "well what if one day they stop using homomorphic encryption", but that argument doesn't make much sense since 1) why would they and 2) you could already ask the same question today "what if they just started sending info anyway"

[wkat4242]

Still. Asking the user is important. Even when there isn't anything you can see.

[izacus]

> I doubt Samsung and Google have gone to such lengths with their trackers.

You are wrong and it's trivially verifiable. You can watch this years 38c3 video comparing them or read the nicely public specification.

[wkat4242]

I was mainly thinking of Samsung's SmartTag, not Google's recent venture. I have looked for info on the SmartTags in the past and couldn't find it. I have some Samsung ones myself.

I didn't look at the Google ones because I don't use a Google account. So I couldn't use them anyway.

But good to hear that they did design it well, I'll check that video.

[extraduder_ire]

Do you have the title of that video? I'm having trouble finding it.

[lern_too_spel]

Google's trackers are more private than Apple's to the point of stupidity. https://www.androidpolice.com/google-find-my-device-privacy-...

The PMs don't understand that they should be catering to the people purchasing the devices.

[wkat4242]

Yeah I gather now. That's pretty cool for a company like Google. I still think they're evil though. But in this case it appears they did a good job.

[lern_too_spel]

All companies are evil. Google tends to provide more control to the user than Apple, so from a consumer's perspective, it is less evil than Apple.

[bitpush]

I was without until you made that swipe about Samsung and Google. Don't be a fanboy. No company is your friend.

[wkat4242]

I'm absolutely not an Apple fanboy actually. I use Samsung phones. And FOSS on my computers. I moved away from iOS and Mac years ago because I found them too locked in.

I don't trust Samsung and Google as far as I can throw them but apparently in this case they did an ok job. And unfortunately there's no meaningful alternative to the duopoly of iOS and Android. So I was left with two bad choices.

But I don't trust any big tech no. It's just really hard to do without them, sadly.