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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

#251

Post by kalleboo »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #238
kemayo wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I agree -- asking users about every single minor feature is (a) incredibly annoying, and (b) quickly causes request-blindness in even reasonably security-conscious users. So restraining the nagging for only risky or particularly invasive things makes sense to me. Maybe they should lump its default state into something that already exists? E.g. assume that if you already have location access enabled for P…

Especially for a company which heavily markets about how privacy-focused it is, 1)sending my personal data to them in any way is not a "feature." It's especially not a feature because what it sets out to do is rather unnecessary because every photo has geotagging, time-based grouping, and AI/ML/whatever on-device keyword assignments and OCR. I can open up my phone right now and search for every picture that has grass…

> This was very clearly an "ask for forgiveness because the data we want is absolutely priceless and we'll get lots of it by the time people notice / word gets out.

It's very clearly not, since they've gone to huge lengths to make sure they can't actually see the data themselves see the grandparent post.

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

#252

Post by oneplane »

talldayo wrote: post #107
oneplane wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, your photos aren't sent, also not 'pieces' of it. They are creating vector data which can be used to create searchable vectors which in turn can be used on-device to find visual matches for your search queries (which are local). You can imagine it as hashes (created locally), some characters of that hash from some random positions being used to find out if those can be turned into a query (which is compute intens…

> Just like baseband firmware is not that, and activation is not that, yet using them requires communication with Apple all the same. I mean, this is just wrong. Baseband firmware and carrier activation can be managed entirely independently of Apple, they just choose to manage it themselves. The number of places where Apple chooses to insert their own services as arbitrary middlemen has been a perennially worrying to…

Baseband firmware and OS activation have nothing to do with the carrier, just like it didn't on RIM devices back in the day (which is probably the only somewhat comparable version of this).

Perhaps you are thinking about subscription activation (be it GSM or CDMA) and parameters for cell networks (which can indeed be consumed by the baseband, which will be running firmware supplied by the manufacturer, sometimes re-packaged in system images as done in OEM feature phones and many android phones).

Either way, macOS devices do the same thing (activation) as do iPads without cell networking. Same goes for radio firmware loading and updates. You'll find most wintel laptops doing the same for things like WiFi (regardless of softmac/halfmac/hardmac chips).

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

#253

Post by 1123581321 »

pton_xd wrote: post #248
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 is what a good privacy story looks like. I have an idea: send an encrypted, relayed, non-reversible, noised vector representation of your daily phone habits and interactions. That way you can be bucketed, completely anonymously of course, with other user cohorts for tracking, advertising, and other yet-to-be discovered purposes. It's a great privacy story! Why would you have a problem with that?

What would be the value to the user in your scenario? In the photos app real scenario, it’s to enable a search feature that requires pairing photos with data not on the phone. (I understand you’re being sarcastic.)

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

#254

Post by kalleboo »

threeseed wrote: post #86
Gabriel54 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with a background in mathematics I appreciate your point about cryptography. That said, there is no guarantee that any particular implementation of a secure theoretical algorithm is actually secure.

There is also no guarantee that Apple isn't lying about everything. They could just have the OS batch uploads until a later point e.g. when the phone checks for updates. The point is that this is all about risk mitigation not elimination.

> There is also no guarantee that Apple isn't lying about everything.

And at that point all the opt-in dialogs in the world don't matter and you should not be running iOS but building some custom Android ROM from scratch.

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

#255

Post by fragmede »

0points wrote: post #149
brookst wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notice is always good and Apple should implement notice. However, "my data is being sent off my device" is incorrect, as GP explained. Metadata, derived from your data, with noise added to make it irreversible, is being sent off your device. It's the equivalent of sending an MD5 of your password somewhere; you may still object, but it is not factually correct to say your password was transmitted.

> It's the equivalent of sending an MD5 of your password somewhere a) MD5 is reversible, it just cost GPU time to brute force b) It is unproven that their implementation is irreversible

BFV has been proven to be irreversible, and Apple open sourced their Swift library implementing it, so it's not totally unproven.

https://github.com/apple/swift-homomorphic-encryption

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

#256

Post by pton_xd »

1123581321 wrote: post #253
pton_xd wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is what a good privacy story looks like. I have an idea: send an encrypted, relayed, non-reversible, noised vector representation of your daily phone habits and interactions. That way you can be bucketed, completely anonymously of course, with other user cohorts for tracking, advertising, and other yet-to-be discovered purposes. It's a great privacy story! Why would you have a problem with that?

What would be the value to the user in your scenario? In the photos app real scenario, it’s to enable a search feature that requires pairing photos with data not on the phone. (I understand you’re being sarcastic.)

Maybe we can do some analysis and optimize phone battery life based on your cohorts usage patterns.

I don't know, I'm sure we'll figure something out once we have your data!

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

#257

Post by int_19h »

simondotau wrote: post #147
sensanaty wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care if all they collect is the bottom right pixel of the image and blur it up before sending it, the sending part is the problem. I don't want anything sent from MY device without my consent, whether it's plaintext or quantum proof. You're presenting it as if you have to explain elliptic curve cryptography in order to toggle a "show password" dialogue but that's disingenuous framing, all you have to say is "…

> I don't want anything sent from MY device without my consent Then don’t run someone else’s software on your device. It’s not your software, you are merely a licensee. Don’t delude yourself that you are morally entitled to absolute control over it. The only way to have absolute control over software is with an RMS style obsession with Free software.

They might not be legally entitled to it, but that's just because of our shitty "intellectual property" laws. Morally speaking, OP is absolutely entitled to have a device that they own not spying on them.

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

#258

Post by timcobb »

notyourwork wrote: post #239
user3939382 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is what a good privacy story looks like. What a good privacy story looks like is that my photos aren’t sent anywhere in any way shape or form without explicit opt in permission.

Do you not sync to iCloud?

No

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

#259

Post by matthewdgreen »

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…

The devil is in the differential privacy budget. I am in Japan and I’ve taken hundreds of photos this week. What does that budget cover?

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

#260

Post by giancarlostoro »

notyourwork wrote: post #239
user3939382 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is what a good privacy story looks like. What a good privacy story looks like is that my photos aren’t sent anywhere in any way shape or form without explicit opt in permission.

Do you not sync to iCloud?

You can choose to do so, or not do so.
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