Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

lapcatsoftware.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

631–640 of 1001 posts

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

#631

Post by hahahacorn »

pama wrote: post #610
hahahacorn wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this comment. I found the author's ignorance to be fairly discrediting, and was surprised to find so many follow up comments equally railing on Apple. Between the quote you pointed out and: "One thing I do know, however, is that Apple computers are constantly full of privacy and security vulnerabilities, as proved by Apple's own security release notes" which just reeks of survivorship bias. I think the…

Enhanced Visual Search was enabled despite my default lockdown mode. I worry about enhanced visual search capabilities much less than several of the other risky features that lockdown mode disables, but was a bit surprised by the default opt-in in my lockdown mode phone.

Yeah that’s genuinely surprising and I disagree with that decision.

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

#632

Post by sandworm101 »

jchw wrote: post #292

What I want is very simple: I want software that doesn't send anything to the Internet without some explicit intent first . All of that work to try to make this feature plausibly private is cool engineering work, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with implementing a feature like this, but it should absolutely be opt-in. Trust in software will continue to erode until software stops treating end users and their data…

>> Trust in software will continue to erode until software stops treating end users and their data and resources

Trust in closed-source proprietary software. In other words: trust in corporate entities. Trust in open-source software is going strong.

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

#633

Post by afarah1 »

jchw wrote: post #292

What I want is very simple: I want software that doesn't send anything to the Internet without some explicit intent first . All of that work to try to make this feature plausibly private is cool engineering work, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with implementing a feature like this, but it should absolutely be opt-in. Trust in software will continue to erode until software stops treating end users and their data…

>I want software that doesn't send anything to the Internet without some explicit intent first.

I too want exactly that, which got me thinking, that's what firewalls are for! DROP OUTBOUND by default, explicit allow per-app.

On Andoid, iptables-based firewalls require root, which wasn't a good option for me (no twrp support for my device), so after some searching I stumbled upon NetGuard - open source and rootless, implements a firewall using Android's VPN service (you can configure Android to route all traffic through this "VPN" which is actually a local firewall). The downside is you can't use an actual VPN (except with some complicated setup involving work profiles and other apps). I've been using it for a couple of weeks and am very satisfied, I noticed apps phoning home which I did not want to, like a scanning app I had used to scan private documents in the past, perhaps an oversight on my part.

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

#634

Post by AlexandrB »

fragmede wrote: post #580
sneak wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once it is running on a computer you don't own, it is no longer your software. To put it in the language of someone who mistakenly thinks you can own information: data about crashes on computers that aren't yours simply doesn't belong to you.

If you don't feel a responsibility for inflicting pain on other people, that's on you. I'm not a sociopath.

The pain of a possible future panopticon dwarfs the "pain" of some software crashing. Considering long-term outcomes does not make you a sociopath - quite the opposite.

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

#635

Post by deaddodo »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #625
deaddodo wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Except that, still, to this day, most sexual consent is assumed, not explicit, even in the highest brow circles where most people are pro-explicit-sexual-consent. The same way, most tech privacy consent is assumed, not explicit. Users dismiss popups because they want to use the app and don't care what you do with the data. Maybe later they will care, but not in the moment...

> Except that, still, to this day, most sexual consent is assumed, not explicit

Did you miss my sarcastic little requote blurb that stated exactly that? Or do you normally rephrase the exact same point with added ad hominem attacks, and somehow frame it as a counterpoint?

> The same way, most tech privacy consent is assumed, not explicit.

And yet, you still have a right to it. In both instances.

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

#636

Post by t0bia_s »

Argonaut998 wrote: post #581
t0bia_s wrote: post #572

I'm genuinely surprised that there are many software developers that defend Apple products as great tool for privacy even though we are not able to inspect their code that is closed. Am I missing something or is it just hypocrisy?

It's just hypocrisy. I don't know how people can defend Apple as a privacy company when they phone home more than their Google counterparts. People will say that at least Apple don't have a vested interest in their data since they are not an advertising company like Google or Meta. But Apple collects an absurd amount of data, it is phoning home every second. Some Apple traffic is hard-coded to go through VPNs. Apple…

Degoogled Android (like LineageOS) is real thing that many use on daily basis.

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

#637

Post by brians »

lapcat wrote: post #623
avianlyric wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So why didn't Apple just simply ask for user permission to enable this feature? That’s an interesting question. Something to consider, iOS photos has allowed you to search for photos using the address the photo was taken at. To do that requires the Photos app to take the lat/long of a photos location, and do a reverse-geo lookup to get a human understandable address. Something that pretty much always involves query…

This would work only if you've already given the Camera app permission to geotag your photos, which I haven't, so it may be a nonissue.

It works if you use the Photos app to look at any image with a geo EXIF tag.

But thank you for one more demonstration that even the HN crowd can’t reliably give or deny informed consent here.

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

#638

Post by [deleted] »

mvkel wrote: post #629
jchw wrote: post #292

What I want is very simple: I want software that doesn't send anything to the Internet without some explicit intent first . All of that work to try to make this feature plausibly private is cool engineering work, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with implementing a feature like this, but it should absolutely be opt-in. Trust in software will continue to erode until software stops treating end users and their data…

This mindset is how we got those awful cookie banners. Even more dialogs that most users will blindly tap "Allow" to will not fix the problem. Society has collectively decided (spiritually) that it is ok signing over data access rights to third parties. Adding friction to this punishes 98% of people in service of the 2% who aren't going to use these services anyway. Sure, a more educated populous might tip the scales…

[deleted]

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

#639

Post by myspy »

mvkel wrote: post #629
jchw wrote: post #292

What I want is very simple: I want software that doesn't send anything to the Internet without some explicit intent first . All of that work to try to make this feature plausibly private is cool engineering work, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with implementing a feature like this, but it should absolutely be opt-in. Trust in software will continue to erode until software stops treating end users and their data…

This mindset is how we got those awful cookie banners. Even more dialogs that most users will blindly tap "Allow" to will not fix the problem. Society has collectively decided (spiritually) that it is ok signing over data access rights to third parties. Adding friction to this punishes 98% of people in service of the 2% who aren't going to use these services anyway. Sure, a more educated populous might tip the scales…

I always click disallow.

And if you design software that uses tracking and what not. Go fuck yourself.

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

#640

Post by PittleyDunkin »

mvkel wrote: post #629
jchw wrote: post #292

What I want is very simple: I want software that doesn't send anything to the Internet without some explicit intent first . All of that work to try to make this feature plausibly private is cool engineering work, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with implementing a feature like this, but it should absolutely be opt-in. Trust in software will continue to erode until software stops treating end users and their data…

This mindset is how we got those awful cookie banners. Even more dialogs that most users will blindly tap "Allow" to will not fix the problem. Society has collectively decided (spiritually) that it is ok signing over data access rights to third parties. Adding friction to this punishes 98% of people in service of the 2% who aren't going to use these services anyway. Sure, a more educated populous might tip the scales…

[flagged]
Post reply on HN