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Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

lapcatsoftware.com

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Re: Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

#41

Post by gigel82 »

oneplane wrote: post #31
gigel82 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want my photos to take part in any network; never asked for it, never expected it to happen. I never used iCloud or other commercial cloud providers. This is just forceful data extraction by Apple, absolutely egregious behavior.

Your photos aren't taken. Did you read the article at all?

The "network" mention was in reply to your comment about "participating in a network" which was never the case for one's personal photos (unless explicitly shared on a social network I guess).

I did read the article, yes :) Maybe our photos are not sent bit-by-bit but enough data from the photos is being sent to be able to infer a location (and possibly other details) so it is the same thing: my personal data is being sent to Apple's servers (directly or indirectly, partially or fully) without my explicit consent.

At least the last time they tried to scan everyone's photos (in the name of the children) they pinky promised they'd only do it before uploading to iCloud, now they're doing it for everyone's photos all the time - it's disgusting.

Re: Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

#42

Post by latexr »

JustExAWS wrote: post #33
latexr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not the person you asked, but I agree with them. To answer your question: No, I do not use iCloud to store my photos. Even if I did, consent to store data is not the same as consent to scan or run checks on it. For a company whose messaging is all about user consent and privacy, that matters. This would be easily solvable: On first run show a window with: > Hey, we have this new cool feature that does X and is to…

When iCloud syncs between devices how do you think that happens without storing some type of metadata? You don’t use iCloud for anything? When you change phones do you start fresh or use your computer for backups? Do sync bookmarks? Browsing history? Do you use iMessage?

None of that is relevant to my point. You seem to be trying to catch people in some kind of gotcha instead of engaging honestly with the problem at hand. But alright, I’ll bite.

Yes, I always start with clean installs, both on iOS and on macOS. Sometimes I even restart fresh on the same device, as I make sure my hardware lasts. I don’t sync bookmarks, I keep them in Pinboard and none of them has any private or remotely identifiable information anyway. I don’t care about saving browser history either, in fact I have it set to periodically auto-clear, which is a feature in Safari.

Re: Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

#43

Post by dev_tty01 »

walterbell wrote: post #16

> On macOS, I can usually prevent Apple software from phoning home by using Little Snitch. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't allow anything like Little Snitch on iOS. On Android, NetGuard uses a "local VPN" to firewall outgoing traffic. Could the same be done on iOS, or does Apple network traffic bypass VPNs? Lockdown mentions ads, but not Apple servers, https://lockdownprivacy.com/ . Apple does publish IP ranges for diff…

>On Android, NetGuard uses a "local VPN" to firewall outgoing traffic. Could the same be done on iOS, or does Apple network traffic bypass VPNs? Lockdown mentions ads, but not Apple servers, https://lockdownprivacy.com/.

Why is NetGuard more trustworthy than Apple?

Re: Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

#44

Post by scosman »

Gabriel54 wrote: post #13
scosman wrote: post #11

"I don't understand most of the technical details of Apple's blog post" I do: - Client side vectorization: the photo is processed locally, preparing a non-reversible vector representation before sending (think semantic hash). - Differential privacy: a decent amount of noise is added the the vector before sending it. Enough to make it impossible to reverse lookup the vector. The noise level here is ε = 0.8, which is q…

I appreciate the explanation. However, I think you do not address the main problem, which is that my data is being sent off my device by default and without any (reasonable) notice. Many users may agree to such a feature (as you say, it may be very secure), but to assume that everyone ought to be opted in by default is the issue.

I think I'm saying: you're not sending "your data" off device. You are sending a homomorphically encrypted locally differentially private vector (through an anonymous proxy). No consumer can really understand what that means, what the risks are, and how it would compare to the risk of sending someone like Facebook/Google raw data.

I'm asking: what does an opt in for that really look like? You're not going to be able to give the user enough info to make an educated decision. There's ton of risk of "privacy washing" ("we use DP" but at very poor epsilon, or "we use E2E encryption" with side channel data gathering).

There's no easy answer. "ask the user", when the question requires a phd level understanding of stats to evaluate the risk isn't a great answer. But I don't have another one.

Re: Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

#45

Post by stackghost »

JustExAWS wrote: post #17
Gabriel54 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the explanation. However, I think you do not address the main problem, which is that my data is being sent off my device by default and without any (reasonable) notice. Many users may agree to such a feature (as you say, it may be very secure), but to assume that everyone ought to be opted in by default is the issue.

Do you use iCloud to store your photos?

I hate this type of lukewarm take.

"Ah, I see you care about privacy, but you own a phone! How hypocritical of you!"

Re: Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

#46

Post by JustExAWS »

walterbell wrote: post #39
JustExAWS wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When iCloud syncs between devices how do you think that happens without storing some type of metadata? You don’t use iCloud for anything? When you change phones do you start fresh or use your computer for backups? Do sync bookmarks? Browsing history? Do you use iMessage?

Some iOS apps synchronize data with standard protocols (e.g. IMAP, WebDAV, CalDAV) to cloud or self-hosted services.

And that doesn’t help with internally stored data within apps, settings, which apps you have installed on what screen, passwords, etc

Re: Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

#47

Post by gigel82 »

lysace wrote: post #32
scosman wrote: post #11

"I don't understand most of the technical details of Apple's blog post" I do: - Client side vectorization: the photo is processed locally, preparing a non-reversible vector representation before sending (think semantic hash). - Differential privacy: a decent amount of noise is added the the vector before sending it. Enough to make it impossible to reverse lookup the vector. The noise level here is ε = 0.8, which is q…

> - OHTTP relay: it's sent through a 3rd party so Apple never knows your IP address. The contents are encrypted so the 3rd party never doesn't learn anything either (some risk of exposing "IP X is an apple photos user", but nothing about the content of the library). Which 3rd party is that?

The NSA, the CCP, etc. depending on jurisdiction. (joking, but not really)

Re: Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

#48

Post by ProllyInfamous »

At this point, Mac Mini M4's are cheap enough and capable enough to just purchase two: one for off-line use, another on-.

Perhaps this is marketing genius (from an AAPL-shareholder POV)?

----

I'm laughing at the insanity of all this interconnectivity, but an NDA prevents me from typing the greatest source of my ironic chuckles. Described in an obtuse way: a privacy-focused hardware product ships with an undisclosed phone-home feature, letting the feds see every time you use the product (to produce a controversial product, at home).

Kick in my fucking door / sue me: it'll just re-enforce that I'm correct about concessionary-allowances...

Re: Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

#49

Post by m463 »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #30
scosman wrote: post #11

"I don't understand most of the technical details of Apple's blog post" I do: - Client side vectorization: the photo is processed locally, preparing a non-reversible vector representation before sending (think semantic hash). - Differential privacy: a decent amount of noise is added the the vector before sending it. Enough to make it impossible to reverse lookup the vector. The noise level here is ε = 0.8, which is q…

This must be the first consumer or commercial product implementing homomorphic encryption is it not? I would be surprised if doing noisy vector comparisons is actually the most effective way to tell if someone is in front of the Eiffel tower. A small large language model could caption it just as well on device, my spider sense tells me someone saw an opportunity to apply bleeding edge, very cool tech so that they can…

It seems apple might be using it for live caller id lookup?

Re: Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

#50

Post by latexr »

stackghost wrote: post #45
JustExAWS wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you use iCloud to store your photos?

I hate this type of lukewarm take. "Ah, I see you care about privacy, but you own a phone! How hypocritical of you!"

You’re describing Matt Bors’ Mister Gotcha.

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

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