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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

#651

Post by lapcat »

heartbreak wrote: post #648
lapcat wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how, pray tell, do geotagged images magically get into your Photos library? I actually couldn't get Photos address search to work right in my testing before writing my previous comment, even with a geotagged photo that I just took. So I'm not sure whether I have some setting disabled that prevents it. The only match was via character recognition of a printed form that I had photographed. To be clear, I meant that…

> And how, pray tell, do geotagged images magically get into your Photos library? By saving them from any source other than the camera app you’ve configured to not use geo-tagging.

I don't do that.

My Photos library contains camera snapshots and screenshots, nothing else.

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

#653

Post by neverartful »

sneak wrote: post #324
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…

Developers of software want, and feel entitled to, the data on your computer, both about your usage within the app, as well as things you do outside of the app (such as where you go and what you buy). Software will continue to spy on people so long as it is not technically prohibited or banned.

Years ago I developed for iOS as an employee. In my case, it was the product managers that wanted the data. I saw it as a pattern and I hated it. I made my plans to leave that space.

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

#654

Post by jncfhnb »

scratchyone wrote: post #445
jncfhnb wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you want features that require larger-than-disk datasets, or frequently changing content, you need tools like this. Well I want them to fuck off. Hidden in your commentary here is the fact that the vector representation of the image is _the contents of the image_. It very well may be that they cannot reverse the exact image. But it’s still a representation of the image that has to be good for something. Without…

If you read the research you'd know that they don't have access to the vector either. They never decrypt the data. All operations on their server are done directly on the encrypted data. They get 0 information about your photos. They cannot even see which landmark your vector was closest to.

I don’t care! I do not want them helping themselves to representations of my data. I don’t care if it’s encrypted or run through a one way hash. I don’t care if they only interact with it via homomorphic methods. They can, again, fuck the hell off.

A private corporation has no business reading my files for its own benefit.

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

#655

Post by RyanHamilton »

sgammon wrote: post #544
bergie wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I am merely comparing homomorphic encryption, client-side vectorization and ML, and so on, to not doing those things. Nothing to do with marketing. Read the manual

>>Apple: Does backflips to protect your data

Yet they enabled this feature by default. Disabled by default would be easier than a backflip?

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

#656

Post by RyanHamilton »

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…

>>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

I think it's more that they realised they couldn't beat google at that game and hoped to see personal or governmental push back like GPDR in the EU that would then give them an advantage. Which would then give them an advantage. The day they stop having that belief they will invade your privacy.

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

#657

Post by ngcc_hk »

Tbh whilst this should be improved it is more like those who lives and works in free democratic countries with market access by and large complained about their imperfect capitalism, undemocratic and not social enough country. May be it is.

But I do not think so by and large.

Keep on fight and Lee on pushing. At least Apple has a slogan you can push on.

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

#658

Post by csomar »

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…

No. A significant number of people care about Privacy which is why 1. Apply was targeting them with Ads and 2. AdBlock did hurt Google's business. Also care is different from go to war (as in install Linux and manually setup a privacy shield + Tor + only transact in Monero). Some people do that out of principal. Many people want the Privacy features but with the ease of use.

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

#659

Post by diggan »

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 want this too, but when even the two most popular base OSes don't adhere to this, I feel like it's an impossible uphill battle to want the software running on those platforms to behave like that.

"Local-first" just isn't in their vocabulary or best-interest, considering the environment they act in today, sadly.

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

#660

Post by heartbreak »

lapcat wrote: post #651
heartbreak wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And how, pray tell, do geotagged images magically get into your Photos library? By saving them from any source other than the camera app you’ve configured to not use geo-tagging.

I don't do that. My Photos library contains camera snapshots and screenshots, nothing else.

The point still stands. That’s how geo-tagged images get in your photos, and the search function still works.

For what it’s worth, I’m surprised that you never save photos to your phone that you didn’t take yourself. Do people not send you interesting pictures? Pictures of yourself?

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