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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

#811

Post by mvkel »

csomar wrote: post #658
mvkel wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Define "significant," and do you have a source?

I'd bet if you ask people "do you care about privacy?" Close to 100% would say yes.

If you ask "you have to give up privacy to be able to log in to your email automatically. Are you ok with that?" Close to 100% would say yes.

If you ask "we will give you this email service for free but in exchange we get to squeeze every ounce of juice that we can out of it to persuade you to buy things you don't need. Are you ok with that?" Close to 100% would say yes.

It doesn't matter what people say they care about. Their actions say otherwise, if the privacy-friendly option is in any way less convenient.

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

#812

Post by j45 »

codedokode wrote: post #501
raincole wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trust in software will continue to erode > there is an increasing discontent growing towards opt-out telemetry Really? That's news to me. What I observed is people giving up more and more privacy every year (or "delegating" their privacy to tech giants).

One of the reasons is because telemetry and backdoors are invisible. If the phone was showing a message like "sending your data to Cupertino" then users were better aware of this. Sadly I doubt there will be a legal requirement to do this.

Anything is possible through lobbying for regulation and policy.

It's the same way that bills come out to crack people's policy.

Only people don't always know they can demand the opposite so it never gets messed with again, and instead get roped into fatigue of reacting to technology bills written by non-technology people.

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

#813

Post by simondotau »

Koshkin wrote: post #699
simondotau wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic. A license grants the end user permission to use the software. It is not a series of obligations for how the software operates. This would be excruciatingly obvious if you read any software license.

A license agreement is, well, an agreement between the manufacturer and the consumer which may include a requirement to acknowledge certain aspects of how the software operates (e.g. the user may be required to agree to “share” some data).

Some commercial software licenses may include various disclaimers which exist to ward away litigious assholes. They only serve to protect the vendor against legal complaints, and do not impart responsibilities upon the vendor. Such disclaimers are not necessary but corporate lawyers have a raison d'être, and at a certain scale assholes become inevitable.

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

#814

Post by j45 »

latexr wrote: post #535
raincole wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trust in software will continue to erode > there is an increasing discontent growing towards opt-out telemetry Really? That's news to me. What I observed is people giving up more and more privacy every year (or "delegating" their privacy to tech giants).

> What I observed is people giving up more and more privacy every year (or "delegating" their privacy to tech giants). Are people giving up their privacy? Looks to me it’s being taken without consent, via enormous legalese and techniques of exhaustion.

Totally.

Individuals who grew up primarily as consumers of tech, also have consented to a relationship of being consumed, bought, and sold themselves as the product.

Those who grew up primarily as creators with tech, have often experienced the difference.

This creates a really big blind spot potentially.

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

#815

Post by j45 »

Gigachad wrote: post #476
sneak wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the OP article it seems more like users demand to search their photos by text, and Apple has put in a huge effort to enable that without gaining access to your photos.

Seems?

It's important to read, and not skim.

This is extracting location based data, not content based data in an image (like searching for all photos with a cup in it).

"Enhanced Visual Search in Photos allows you to search for photos using landmarks or points of interest. Your device privately matches places in your photos to a global index Apple maintains on our servers. "

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

#816

Post by j45 »

pjmlp wrote: post #600
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…

Most people nowadays use Web based apps, which don't even need to ask anything, who knows what server side is doing. Which is kind of ironic in places like HN, where so many advocate for Chromebooks.

Your location data, encoded in photo you take with the phone's camera, being extracted by Apple is what this article is about.

How many people use a web based camera or web based photo album app?

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

#817

Post by hn3er1q »

saghm wrote: post #570
raincole wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trust in software will continue to erode > there is an increasing discontent growing towards opt-out telemetry Really? That's news to me. What I observed is people giving up more and more privacy every year (or "delegating" their privacy to tech giants).

Whether or not people in general are aware of this issue and care about it, I think it's pretty disingenuous to characterize people as willfully giving up their privacy because they own smartphone. When stuff like this is happening on both iOS and Android, it's not feasible to avoid this without just opting out of having a smartphone entirely, and representing as a binary choice of "choose privacy or choose not to ca…

Maybe not privacy in general but this is about location privacy.

If you have a smartphone in your pocket, then, for better or worse, you're carrying a location tracker chip on your person because that's how they all work. The cell phone company needs to know where to send/get data, if nothing else.

It seems disingenuous to put a tracker chip in your pocket and be up in arms that someone knows your location.

Unless this kerfuffle is only about Apple.

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

#818

Post by timeon »

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…

Better to have cookie banners than made-up 'collective decision'.

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

#819

Post by k3nx »

Maybe this feature is to turn this off?

Years ago I went to a concert with some friends. We took pictures standing in front of the stage while the staff was setting up. There were some additional pictures of the show. Nothing in any of the pictures had any information regarding the band names. This was taken with an iPhone 6s, so no "intelligence". In the past year or two I had a new "memories" album. The album title was the artist name that we went to see. At first I thought this was cool, then I was concerned, like, wait, how did they get this information?

My guess, the "intelligence" used the GPS info to pull up the venue and with the date figured out who the artist was. The album was the headliner, the group photo was of one of the opening bands.

I'm still on iOS 17, and I don't see any other way to turn this feature off. I have an option to reset suggested memories, but that's it.

It sounds more like a users are given a choice now, which would be a good thing. If it was enabled pre iOS 18 that kind of makes sense that it's enabled by default now.

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

#820

Post by diggan »

bevan wrote: post #764
necovek wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded: and we need to have worthy competitors spring up without those bad practices and lousy cookie banners, and people to flock to them. Once that happens, the "originals" will feel the pressure.

Not using those “bad practices” of third party analytics can be an existential threat to small businesses, unfortunately.

Not really. You can still get metrics and analytics, you just don't include PII in it. There are tons of privacy-respecting platforms/services (both self-hosted and not) you can use, instead of just slapping Google Analytics on the website and having to show the banner.

But even so, I'd argue that since it's a small business, you'd do much better with qualitative data rather than quantitative, since it's a small business it's hard to make choices based on small amount of data. Instead, conduct user experience studies with real people, and you'll get a ton of valuable data.

All without cookie banners :)

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