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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

#511

Post by jchw »

mormegil wrote: post #498
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…

Completely agree, just one minor point: > I think banking apps requiring SafetyNet passing is the dumbest thing on planet earth. You guys know I can just sign into the website with my mobile browser anyways, right? No, you're not. For logging in, you need a mobile app used as an authentication token. Do not pass go, do not collect $200... (The current state of affairs in Czechia, at least; you still _do_ have the opt…

Right now I don't think there's anything like this in the United States, at the very least. That said, virtually every bank here only seems to support SMS 2FA, which is also very frustrating.

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

#512

Post by stefanve »

I wonder how much of the people that are being upset about an option that recognizes landmarks and that is build in a privacy minded way are using chatGTP, windows, google or socials

The writer of the post admits that he doesn’t understand the very tech lite explanation of Apple nor read about Apple AI in general and the way it was setup. A lot of people are upset that (maybe, but unlikely) Apple knows that you made the 10 billionth photo of the Golden Gate Bridge. But continu using all sorts of services, living in sec camera heavy cities etc.

Not an apple fan but from all big tech corporations they have the least amount of interest in mining user data from a business perspective

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

#514

Post by machinestops »

mort96 wrote: post #495
mikae1 wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you accept Android as an option, then GrapheneOS probably check a lot of your boxes on an OS level. GrapheneOS developers sit between you and Google and make sure that shit like this isn't introduced without the user's knowledge. They actively strip out crap that goes against users interests and add features that empower us. I find that the popular apps for basic operation from F-Droid do a very good job of not sc…

Running a custom ROM locks you out of almost all decent phone hardware on the market since most have locked bootloaders, and it locks you out of a ton of apps people rely on such as banking and money transfer apps. You must recognise that it's not a practical solution for most people.

Graphene mitigates the locked bootloader issue by only supporting one line of phones (Pixel), which have unlocked bootloaders.

A large amount of work has been put into making Graphene specifically work with banking apps. Mine does, for instance.

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

#515

Post by lapcat »

penguinburglar wrote: post #358
supriyo-biswas wrote: post #354

The referenced Apple blog post[1] is pretty clear on what this feature does, and I wish the author at lapcatsoftware (as well as folks here) would have read it too, instead of taking the blog post as-is. Apple has implemented homomorphic encryption[2], which they can use to compute distance metrics such as cosine similarity without revealing the original query/embedding to the server. In the case of photos, an on-dev…

Thank you for posting the apple blog post. As usual, it's really interesting research, and it's fascinating to see how they solve potentially gnarly privacy issues.

> Thank you for posting the apple blog post.

The very same blog post is linked in the submitted article.

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

#516

Post by chikere232 »

makeitdouble wrote: post #285
matthewdgreen wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a cryptographer and I just learned about this feature today while I’m on a holiday vacation with my family. I would have loved the chance to read about the architecture, think hard about how much leakage there is in this scheme, but I only learned about it in time to see that it had already been activated on my device. Coincidentally on a vacation where I’ve just taken about 400 photos of recognizable locations.…

To play Apple's advocate, this system will probably never be perfect, and stand up to full scrutinity from everyone on the planet. And they also need the most people possible activated as it's an adverserial feature. The choice probably looks to them like: A - play the game, give everyone a heads up, respond to all feedback, and never ship the feature B - YOLO it, weather the storm, have people forget about it after…

To give you feedback in your role as Apple's advocate:

"we had to sneak it out because people wouldn't consent if we told them" isn't the best of arguments

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

#518

Post by hmottestad »

chikere232 wrote: post #485
azinman2 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> like taking a photo, assuming stuff is sent to this service immediately upon adding a new photo So you jumped to a conclusion based on an incorrect premise. This is easy to see that this does not happen immediately after taking a photo. One the network traffic will show this (and it won’t), two homomorphic encryption is expensive so it cannot. Photos classically doesn’t sync on demand, as most iPhone users will kno…

you're splitting a very fine hair while ignoring the larger privacy implication of the feature. So the timestamp might or might not be delayed a bit from being perfectly accurate? So what? It still is data approximating when the photo was taken, even if the resolution were as bad as "within a few days"

The blog post outlines how Apple goes about disconnecting metadata, so at best they would know that someone took a photo at a rough point in time.

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

#519

Post by makeitdouble »

stefanve wrote: post #512

I wonder how much of the people that are being upset about an option that recognizes landmarks and that is build in a privacy minded way are using chatGTP, windows, google or socials The writer of the post admits that he doesn’t understand the very tech lite explanation of Apple nor read about Apple AI in general and the way it was setup. A lot of people are upset that (maybe, but unlikely) Apple knows that you made…

You're ignoring the part where it's opt-out.

We're way passed the point where things are accidently opt-out instead of opt-in, if you want to dig the point, it's something you should touch upon.

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

#520

Post by bergie »

sgammon wrote: post #517

Apple: Does backflips to protect your data Apple's competition: Steals your data outright Most of this thread: How could Apple act this way

> Apple: Does backflips to protect your data

That's what their marketing says. I'm not sure how far you can actually trust that. They're an ad and media company as well.

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