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Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

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

#451

Post by ustad »

scosman wrote: post #75
ustad wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're presenting a false dichotomy between "perfect user understanding" and "no user choice." The issue isn't whether users can fully comprehend homomorphic encryption or differential privacy – it's about basic consent and transparency. Consider these points: 1. Users don't need a PhD to understand "This feature will send data about your photos to Apple's servers to enable better search." 2. The complexity of the pr…

I don't believe I said or implied that anywhere: 'You're presenting a false dichotomy between "perfect user understanding" and "no user choice."'? Happy to be corrected if wrong. Closest I come to presenting an opinion on the right way UX was "I'm not sure what the right call is here.". The thing I disagreed with was a technical statement "the only way to guarantee computing privacy is to not send data off the device…

I appreciate your passion for privacy-respecting technology and your clarification. You make good points about the nuances of privacy-preserving techniques. However, I think we can separate two distinct issues:

1. The technical excellence of Apple's privacy protections (which you've explained well and seem robust)

2. The ethical question of enabling data transmission by default

Even with best-in-class privacy protections, the principle of user agency matters. A simplified prompt like "This feature will analyze your photos locally and send secure, anonymized data to Apple's servers to enable better search" would give users the basic choice while being technically accurate. The technical sophistication of the privacy measures, while commendable, doesn't override the need for informed consent.

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

#452

Post by Krasnol »

Aachen wrote: post #439
amatecha wrote: post #123

Completely, 100% agreed: > the only way to guarantee computing privacy is to not send data off the device. > It ought to be up to the individual user to decide their own tolerance for the risk of privacy violations. [...] By enabling the "feature" without asking, Apple disrespects users and their preferences. I never wanted my iPhone to phone home to Apple. Regardless of how obfuscated or "secure" or otherwise "priva…

So Signal messages aren't secure because they're transmitted and so their "obfuscation" isn't enough to protect your data? Have you read what the author cited (and then admitted to not understanding) what Apple says they actually do to the data before transmission? I could see an argument in the metadata (though there are multiple assumptions involved there, not least that they don't truly do OHTTP but instead conspi…

The obvious difference is that by sending your photos with Signal, you are doing it willingly. You let it encrypt and decrypt willingly. You decide who gets it.

Here, Apple does that for you.

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

#453

Post by randunel »

spoaceman7777 wrote: post #430
jchw wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely! The important bit is that users have no choice in the matter. They're pushed into agreeing to whatever ToS and updating to whatever software version. The backlash against Microsoft's Windows Recall should serve as a good indicator of just how deeply people have grown to distrust tech companies. But Microsoft can keep turning the screws, and don't you know it, a couple years from now everyone will be runni…

fwiw, on Android, you can install a custom certificate and have an app like AdGuard go beyond just DNS filtering, and actually filter traffic down to a request-content level. No root required. (iOS forbids this without jailbreaking though :/)

Both android and ios allow root certificates, but most apps nowadays use SSL pinning, so that's no longer an option, either.

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

#454

Post by rmbyrro »

Aachen wrote: post #427

> I don't understand most of the technical details of Apple's blog post. I did understand the cited bits, and sorry to say but this could have been an optimistic post ("look at this cool new thing!") I dislike Apple's anti-hacker (in the HN sense of the word) practices as much as the next person and don't own any Apple device for that and other reasons, but saying "it doesn't matter how you solved the privacy problem…

the main criticism is about sending private and sensitive data to Apple without consent and warning

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

#455

Post by pmlnr »

gtdawg wrote: post #438
colordrops wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use a rooted Android phone with AFWall+ installed, with default block rules. Even just LineageOS allows you to set granular network settings per app, though it's not preemptive like AFWall.

Can't run various banking apps and can't run PagerDuty on a rooted device due to Google Play API Integrity Check. The ecosystem is closing in on any options to not send telemetry, and Google is leading the way in the restrictions on Freedom.

You can, with magisk.

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

#456

Post by inkyoto »

unethical_ban wrote: post #426
inkyoto wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a notification summary. There is a large number of people out there who receive hundreds of notifications (willingly but mostly unwillingly) daily from apps they have installed (not just messengers), and nearly all of them can't cope with the flood of the notifications. Most give up on tending to the notifications altogether, but some resort to the notification summaries which alleviate the cognitive overload (…

Hundreds of notifications daily is not unwillingly, nor is it healthy. You can disable IG trash notifications, for example.

My IG notifications are disabled in perpetuity precisely for that reason, even if it has come at a cost of not receiving IM arrival notifications from a couple of friends who message me exclusively via IG (another enigma – why, as both have my contact details on proper messaging platforms).

Frankly, hundreds of daily notifications is the reality we can't change, and the question is: why do people choose to succumb to the misery of it rather than availing themselves of the proper implements so readily at their disposal?

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

#457

Post by pmlnr »

mdmsknrjjdndd wrote: post #437
colordrops wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use a rooted Android phone with AFWall+ installed, with default block rules. Even just LineageOS allows you to set granular network settings per app, though it's not preemptive like AFWall.

“Use a rooted…” Aaaaand no.

So you don't want to actually own your devices?

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

#458

Post by dwaite »

s3p wrote: post #397
gigel82 wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point of the outrage though (at least not for me). They enabled by default a feature that analyzes my pictures (which I never upload to iCloud) and sends information about them to their (and others') servers. That is a gross violation of privacy. To be clear, I don't care about any encryption scheme they may be using, the gist is that they feel entitled to reach into their users' most private data (the…

If you really didn't want your photos to be analyzed, would you be using an iPhone? Or any modern smartphone? Google photos doesn't have nearly the privacy focus and no HE whatsoever but I rarely see that mentioned here. It almost seems like Apple gets held to a higher standard just because they have privacy preserving initiatives. Do you use a keyboard on your iphone? You may not have heard but apple is tracking whi…

> It almost seems like Apple gets held to a higher standard just because they have privacy preserving initiatives

It doesnt' seem this way at all. It is rare to see someone talking about current behavior, they are always talking about the slippery slope - such as landmark detection obviously being the first step in detecting propaganda on a political dissident's phone.

This isn't driven by trying to hold them to a higher standard; it is an emotional desire of wanting to see them caught in a lie.

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

#459

Post by scratchyone »

jchw wrote: post #436
scratchyone wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd also like to ask a different question: if there's no reason to ever worry about this feature, then why is there even an option to turn it off in the first place? I mean for one, because of people like you that are concerned about it. Apple wants you to have the choice if you are against this feature. It's silly to try to use that as some sort of proof that the feature isn't safe. My iPhone has a button to disab…

> I mean for one, because of people like you that are concerned about it. Apple wants you to have the choice if you are against this feature. It's silly to try to use that as some sort of proof that the feature isn't safe. If they know some people will be against the feature, why not ask instead of enabling it for them? > My iPhone has a button to disable the flash in the camera app. Does that imply that somehow usin…

Honestly I'm a little tired so I'm not gonna completely/perfectly address everything you said here but

> If they know some people will be against the feature, why not ask instead of enabling it for them?

Honestly I would just say this is because you can only ask so many things. This is a hard to explain feature, and at some point you have to draw a line on what you should and shouldn't ask for consent on. For many people, the default reaction to a cookie popup is to hit "accept" without reading because they see so many of them. Consent fatigue is a privacy risk too. Curious where you'd choose to draw the line?

> Do you really not see how this is not a good faith comparison? I'm not going to address this.

Yes, my point is that your reasoning isn't good faith either. We both know it's silly and a bit conspiratorial to imply that Apple adding a setting for it means they know a feature is secretly bad. If they wanted to hide this from us, neither of us would be talking about it right now because we wouldn't know it existed.

> We all just learned about today! We don't even need to speculate about whether it is impractical, we know it can't be done, and that's before we consider that loss of privacy and agency over devices is a death-by-a-thousand-cuts situation.

That's fair, but there's honestly no perfect answer here. Either you appease the HN crowd on every feature but overwhelm most non-technical users with too many popups to the point they start automatically hitting "yes" without reading them, or you make features that you truly consider to be completely private opt-out but upset a small subset of users who have extremely strict privacy goals.

How do you choose where that dividing line is? Obviously you can't ask consent for every single feature on your phone, so at some point you have to decide where the line between privacy and consent fatigue is. IMO, if a feature is genuinely cryptographically secure and doesn't reveal any private data, it probably should be opt-out to avoid overwhelming the general public.

Also, how would you phrase the consent popup for this feature? Remember that it has to be accurate, be understandable to the majority of the US population, and correct state the privacy risks and benefits. That's really hard to do correctly, especially given "21 percent of adults in the United States (about 43 million) fall into the illiterate/functionally illiterate category"[0].

[0] https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/How-Serious-Is-Americas...

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

#460

Post by simondotau »

ryandrake wrote: post #337
simondotau wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You've succinctly identified a (maybe the) huge problem in the computing world today. And getting downvoted for saying it, which is a fascinating incongruity.

It’s amazing how hostile Silicon Valley (and HN commenters) are to the basic idea of consent. It’s as if simply asking the user for permission is a grave insult to these technologists. “I shouldn’t have to ask permission! It implies I’m doing something bad!” they might be thinking. If the world was a nightclub, “Silicon Valley” would be a creepy guy who walks up to every woman and says “You’re now dating me. To stop,…

You're inverting morality and infantilising the consumer. Apple is a corporation. Corporations don't owe you moral anything, except as required by law.

Choosing an Apple product is consent to trusting Apple. Continued use their products represents ongoing consent. This is an objective fact about all complex connected devices and it cannot possibly be otherwise.

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