Re: Apple changed their documentation at my request but it proves they don't care about privacy

On Tue, 8 Sep 2026 22:18:02 +0400, Maria Sophia
<[email protected]> wrote:

>Jeff Liebermann wrote:
>>>But aggregators "can" track your posts across the Internet.
>>>I post to many (many!) forums (web forums like XDA, Telegram, etc.)
>> 
>> "Ads You See Online Are Now Police Surveillance"
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq36YXrfyJE>
>> "This video explores how advertising data became a powerful
>> surveillance tool."
>> 
>> We're all doomed.
>
>Hi Jeff,
>
>I was wondering where you've been as you seem to have retired from the
>Internet service business in recent years.

I officially retired on Dec 31, 2020, after the CZU fire and the
middle of the Covid 19 pandemic.  At the time, I was 72 years old,
which I thought was a good age to retire.

>I see you on the electronics
>repair ng sometimes, but rarely here nowadays.

alt.internet.wireless was intended to cover various methods of radio
communications technology (cellular, wi-fi, satellite, point to point,
etc) to obtain internet access.  Initially, most of the design and
testing work was in the US.  By the time I retired, it had mostly
moved to the far east.

>I still remember you proved how the router transmit power claims are
>completely bogus, much as Apple's claims of battery efficiency were.

Yeah, that got me rather angry.  That was a clear example of Apple
hiding what I consider to be a design error by burying the problem
under a mountain of technobabble and claiming a rubber bumper had
solved the problem.

"Cell Phone Antenna Hand Tests"
<http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/cellular/cell-test.htm>

"Apple iPhone users angry about the "death grip" won $15 in federal
court."
<https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/national-international/phapple-settles-iphone-4-death-grip-lawsuit/2078168/>

>You, of all people, have my true identity as we've conversed a few times
>over the years in email and on Usenet about our shared WISP experiences,
>e.g., surfnet, ridge, etheric, hilltop, xfinity, et al., and you and I both
>personally know most of the local operators, e.g., mike, loren, dave.

Don't worry.  I may have your secret identity somewhere on my computer
but at this time, I can't find it.  

>When I moved to the Santa Cruz Mountains from flatland in San Jose, I was
>shocked there was no wired services, so people only had satellite or WISP.

I moved to the hills in about 1974(?).  There were enough lines and
phone numbers for everyone.  Near the end of the 1970's, the BBS's
(bulleting board services) and garage ISP's arrived.  Available phone
lines and numbers suddenly became scarce.  In about 1994, the BBS and
garage ISP's moved into problem office buildings, which freed up quite
a few phone lines, which were immediately consumed by a student
population increase inspired by rapidly rising real estate costs.
<https://www.biggestuscities.com/city/santa-cruz-california>

>I ended up inviting the local WISP team to serve me, for free, and as a
>result, they serve the whole mountain as I have a repeater on my rooftop.

Nice.  Good to see you made it work.  I tried to organize something
similar but using buried twisted pair, coax cable, fiber and some
Wi-Fi distributing internet, cable TV, satellite TV, and some CATV
cameras.  It worked fairly well, until a newly arrive resident decided
to complain about the service to the county, instead of to us.  I was
tired of getting midnight support calls and was more than happy to see
the service calls disappear with the equipment.

>For years, I provided them with good business by setting up all my
>neighbors with 2.4GHz radios and eventually the 5GHz rocket dishes.
>
>At some point they started doing the installations themselves, so I no
>longer had to log into every neighbor's router to update the firmware.

Good plan.  I took the middle road by having the neighbors bring their
equipment to my house, where I had a proper messy workbench to deal
with updates and rat damage.  House calls were billable and intended
only for installations.  The parents tolerated that because it saved
them money and gave the local teenagers some networking experience.

>I want to THANK YOU for teaching me a LOT of what I know about Wi-Fi
>networking, particularly you're pretty clear on how they lie about
>decibels, where we have control over our transmit strength if we like.

That's a rather odd way to describe the problem.  Wi-Fi TPC (transmit
power control) was NOT required for the early Wi-Fi hardware.  By the
time it became mandatory, the number of Wi-Fi devices was many times
larger than was the systems were originally designed to handle.  TPC
was one solution for keeping interference down to a tolerable level. I
have some opinions on the matter, but they can wait for some other
time.
"8 reasons to turn down the transmit power of your Wi-Fi"
<https://metis.fi/en/2017/10/txpower/>

Remember the "alligator"?  Spoiler:  An alligator is an animal with a
very big mouth and tiny ears.  The Wi-Fi equivalent is a radio running
very high transmit power but had a deaf receiver.  Such a system, will
cover a wide area in transmit, but can't hear any small devices
(laptops, smartphones, IoT device, etc over the same area.

>You also taught me a lot about changing the BSSID, or not, which was well
>before Google became big so it's fundamental knowledge you imparted to me.

Y're welcome.  If you know the fundamentals, you can use them to build
a model of how the network works.  In the other direction, knowing how
the higher levels of the network works, without knowing the
fundamentals, leaves you trying to reverse engineer the fundamentals
from the upper network layers.  That's much more difficult than
starting with fundamentals.

>I very much APPRECIATE all the help you've provided over the decades.

Y'er welcome.  It's good to know someone was listening.

>You haven't posted much lately, so I'm happy to know you're still around!

Well, that's a problem.  I'm getting old (78 currently), tired and
lazy.  Debating the finer points of some technology eventually turns
into an endless time burn.  Your endless discussion with "Carlos E.R."
is a good example.  Carlos seems to baiting you with less than
brilliant one-line comments, which usually results literary effluvia
from you.  All that does is waste everyone's time.  Yours is wasted
because you write more than anyone is willing to read.  My time is
wasted, but I just don't have the time to read the entire thread.  I
suspect the typical Usenet reader thinks in a similar manner.  

Hint:  Adjust your quality and quantity to that of your audience.  Too
much is sometimes worse than too little.

>I think we're almost the same age, where I'm an octogenarian, while you're
>most likely still a young kid in your 70's, as I recall (but maybe not).

Close.  I'm 78.  I look and feel somewhat younger for a rather odd
reason.  From my parking space by the road to the upper level of my
house is about 50 stairs.  Everything that goes in and out of the
house needs to navigate those stairs.  My cardiologist believes that
the stair climbing is largely responsible for my tolerable health.
Unfortunately, exercise is not a cure of geriatric (old age) problems.
For example, I discovered that I was lactose intolerant about a month
ago.  I've also had to deal with some more serious medical problems
(and medical fire drills).  Eventually, I'll need to build a firewood
and funicular lift.

>In summary, I love the sagacious sharpness of your sarcasm, which is, like
>Paul's, well honed by decades of experience finding things out the hard
>way.

Thanks.  

>I'm HAPPY you're still around, as you, & maybe Jon, & perhaps Lawrence, &
>maybe even Andy, are the only ones seemingly capable of understanding this
>topic, where if we follow the breadcrumb of the BSSID:GPS pair, the way
>Apple does it is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the way everyone else does it.

Apple's success has been primarily from their "walled garden"
philosophy.  The implication is that everything inside their "walled
garden" is different for what is outside.  Also, if something is the
same both inside and outside of their "walled garden" (i.e.
standards), Apple will do everything they can to make their part of
the problem as different as possible.  USB-C chargers perhaps?

>Apple claims "we care about your privacy"... except when they don't.

I'll pass.  I had dinner at midnight last night and don't want a
repeat performance.  Good luck.


-- 
Jeff Liebermann                 [email protected]
PO Box 272      http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond CA 95005-0272   AE6KS    831-336-2558