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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

#801

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

Consent for complex issues is a cop out for addressing privacy concerns. Users will accept or reject these things without any understanding of what they are doing either way. Apple seems to have taken a middle ground where they de-risked the process and made it a default.

This is a “look at me, Apple bad” story that harvests attention. It sets the premise that this is an unknown and undocumented process, then proceeds to explain it from Apple documentation and published papers.

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

#802

Post by sgammon »

jchw wrote: post #564
sgammon wrote: post #552

It is frankly nothing short of amazing that Apple ships things like homomorphic encryption, and differential privacy, and client-side vectorization, and encrypted vectors, at the scale that they inhabit... and they still get a bad report card back from consumers about privacy. Comparing Apple and Google, or Apple and Microsoft, it seems to me that Apple's track record on these issues is actually not as bad as public…

> It is frankly nothing short of amazing that Apple ships things like homomorphic encryption, and differential privacy, and client-side vectorization, and encrypted vectors, at the scale that they inhabit... and they still get a bad report card back from consumers about privacy. Personally, I don't shy away from criticizing Google, but that's not the point. Apple makes big claims about their privacy practices that ne…

“Ask App Not To Track” would like a word

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

#803

Post by sgammon »

ghjfrdghibt wrote: post #557
sgammon wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're kidding yourself if you think apple is in the business of protecting your data beyond marketing itself as such. It is entirely possible to create a business where others ignore user demands, like, say, privacy. Apple does not have a massive advertising incentive to process user data as others do. I am not a huge Apple fan (typing this from my Windows machine), but I am not ashamed to admit that some companie…

No I've not read them, I don't see why I would as I'm not an apple customer. But I do wonder if apple are in charge/control the encryption keys to your encrypted data...

They are not, that is what makes it secure and why you should read the manual.

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

#804

Post by randunel »

avianlyric wrote: post #788
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…

These issues are all addressed in the Apple blog post that talks about how this feature is implemented. Two steps are taken to deal with these risks: 1) iOS creates additional fake queries, and all queries pass through scheduler that ensures you can use time-of-lookup to either discriminate real queries from fake queries, or identify when a photo was taken. 2) All queries are performed anonymously, with the use of a…

Is there a way to verify the claims of obfuscation, security and privacy? Or is the only verifiable fact the sending of unknown data to apple by the photos app?

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

#805

Post by sgammon »

RyanHamilton wrote: post #655
sgammon wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The feature is not unsafe in the first place, so turning it on by default grants useful functionality without risk.

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

#806

Post by j45 »

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…

> So why didn't Apple just simply ask for user permission to enable this feature? My cynical opinion is because Apple knows some portion of users would instantly disallow this if prompted, but they feel they know better than those users. I don't like this attitude, and I suspect it is the same reason why there is an increasing discontent growing towards opt-out telemetry, too.

I'm just not sure why Apple needed to activate this by default, other than not draw attention to it... and doing so that was more important than the user's rights to the privacy they believe they are purchasing on their device.

I don't care what convenience i'm being offered or sold. If the user has decided what they want and the premium they are paying for Apple, it must be respected.

This makes me wonder if there is an app that can monitor all settings in an iPhone both for changes between updates, and also new features being set by default to be enabled that compromise the user's known wishes.

All this AI, and this is still overlooked.

I'm hoping it was an oversight.

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

#807

Post by j45 »

avianlyric wrote: post #602
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…

> 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…

It's a complete violation if it's a new or changed setting from the default state of the user not having it possible.

Something to consider - location is geo-encoded already into photos and doesn't need this uploaded to Apple servers. Searching can be done locally on device for location.

Apple goes as far as to offer a setting to allow the user to share photos and remove the geocoding from it.

Offering a new feature is opt-in.

Unfortunately, against my better wishes, this only erodes trust and confidence in Apple that if this is happening visibly, what could be happening that is unknown.

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

#808

Post by [deleted] »

galleywest200 wrote: post #692
spacemanspiff01 wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would there be a way to do the stats gathering on device, then once every few months send a popup with statistics? Not sure what bias it adds Like "hey, we make this app, and we care about privacy, here is the information we have gathered over your usage for the past month, can we send this to ourselves, so that we can use it to improve the app?" And then show human readable form of what data was collected.

This sort of sounds like the Steam Hardware Survey. They do not collect the data willy-nilly, they ask you every few months if you want to participate in a one-time check. I have an incentive to see if the Linux desktop share has increased, so I usually run the survey for them to get my data point in. I also suppose the "gamer" crowed likes to show off how powerful their "rig" is, so I would imagine they commonly als…

[deleted]

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

#809

Post by j45 »

benwaffle wrote: post #772
doctorpangloss wrote: post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right. But: Anyone in IT or tech, thinking deeply about the raw facts. They know it always boils down to trust, not technology. The interesting thing is that Apple has created a cathedral of seemingly objective sexy technical details that feel like security. But since it’s all trust, feelings matter! So my answer is, if it feels like a privacy violation, it is. Your technical comparison will be more persuasive…

Apple chose to implement things like OHTTP and homomorphic encryption when they could easily have done without it. Doesn't that count for something?

Nope. It's still taking the user's data away without informing them, and saying trust us we super good encrypted it.

Apple is building a location database, for free, from user's photos and saying it's anonymized.

It's not a service I want, nor one I authorize. Nor are my photos licensed to Apple to get that information from me.

Encryption is only good relative to computational power to break it available to the many, or the few.

Computational power usually seems always available in 10-20-30 years to generally break encryption for the average person, as unimaginably hard it seems in the present. I don't have interest in taking any technical bait from the conversation at hand. Determined groups with resources could find ways.. This results in no security or encryption.

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

#810

Post by j45 »

brians wrote: post #637
lapcat wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's all about soundbite replies.

The issue is much deeper for anyone who has remotely worked with EXIF data for any creative or professional work they do.

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