This is after forcing login to a store account:
At least they don’t hide in their ToS that:
“l agree to let Walmart monitor my use of Walmart WiFi, including to:
- Determine my presence in Walmart stores
- Associate information about me with my Walmart account
- Improve products and services
- Gather market insights about my in-store purchases and activities”
But that’s not enough, they need to monitor your internet activity further too.
For further reading, some greatest hits (the section headers on Wiki’s Criticism of Walmart):
- Local communities
- Allegations of predatory pricing and supplier issues
- Labor relations
- Poorly run and understaffed stores
- No AEDs in stores (automated external defibrillators)
- Imports and globalization
- Product selection
- Taxes
- Animal welfare
- Midtown Walmart
- Opioids settlement
That is true of Android as well.
And remember that while iOS is built by a tech company first and foremost, Android is built by an advertisement company first and foremost.
I have tried both, and only Android gives me the feeling that someone is constantly looking over my shoulder.
I know Apple does also, but I don’t get the same feeling.
You pay the premium price to feel better about the same thing.
Quite possible
You can literally sniff the fucking traffic and see that’s not true. You understand there are laws of physics at play here and the devices can’t sneak data/etc past them, right? Default android devices send significantly more data back to home base than a defaultly configured iOS device.
I recently acquired a used iPad and its my first real iOS experience in a decade, and I have to say I have similar feelings from using it.
Many privacy controls are set to their tightest settings by default, many things require the app to ask the user before intruding then give you clear indication if and when they are intruding, and most controls that I might want to change aren’t buried 4 layers deep in the settings.
However, I can’t install uBlock Origin on Firefox (yet?) and there’s quite a few minor customizations I’d really like to change but can’t. And honestly Android’s openness to sideloading sometimes lets me do things like load an old paid game that hasn’t been updated in several years and sometimes does or doesn’t work depending on the Android version and specifics of the vendor’s implementation, or snag random stuff off Githubor Itch if I really want to.
Aurora Store instead of Play Store, Firefox with UbO and Adguard DNS. I feel Android does look over my shoulder (why do I need to use ADB to disable uninstallable apps or install pre Android 6 apps?!) but not in the context of privacy. I don’t know how having GMS enabled w/o being signed in affects being tracked.
I’m sure your feelings are more accurate than thousands of thousand security researchers trying to make a name for themselves.
This is more “Alexa is spying on me” ignorance and paranoia.
This entire thread…
Since there are so many security researchers agreeing with you, why didn’t you link a few reports to support your claim?
Ahh right, the old disprove god doesn’t exist argument. 👌👍
I’m sure Google and Amazon have secret whistleblower tech that has some how kept any evidence of this massive program secretly stealing everyone’s data without leaving a trace.
You seemed to claim that there are thousands of security researchers that have found that iOS monitors you more than Android, yet you offer no proof, only a shit attitude.
Sure I made a snarky remark, but my point still stands, you have no links to reports confirming your claim.
I was open to read about this, but your attitude has made me less so.
You’ve made up arguments and comparisons. Google services monitor you. Android (as stated earlier) or AOSP or even pixel os doesn’t. There is a difference. The OS is quite locked down. Nobody is forcing you to use any Google services. I’m sorry you missed that nuance.
Exactly what argument did I make up?
Google is an advertisment company, this is a fact, Apple is a tech company, this is also a fact.
My own feelings are also a fact.
Meh, that’s not a great argument to make.
Yes, Google is largely an advertising company. But they’re also a tech company.
We can argue that Apple is a tech company first, but it’s also an advertising company (they do collect gobs of data about users - which we really don’t know much about how they use it).1
I could easily say they’re both data collection companies with a massive tech side.
Not sure where I was going with all this, other than this isn’t the clearest argument to make. And how you feel about it really isn’t useful. I don’t like any of them, though I feel worse when using iOS from the lack of transparency and inability to change much of anything. Root actually exists for Android, unlike iOS.
That is a fair take, but looking at it from a general user’s perspective, they just want a phone that works, they won’t tinker to get it working like they want.
In that regard I find the setup wizard on iOS and Android to have two very different personalities.
iOS guides you step by step, it talks about sharing user data and gives you controls to turn it off right in the wizard.
Last time I set up an Android phone, a Nokia 6.1, running Android One, Android was more of a “don’t worry about privacy, just logon and have fun!” personality.
So for normal users, my reaction is that iOS is better.
YOU made the positive claim.
Whatever you say my man.