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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

#831

Post by colordrops »

gtdawg wrote: post #438
colordrops wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use a rooted Android phone with AFWall+ installed, with default block rules. Even just LineageOS allows you to set granular network settings per app, though it's not preemptive like AFWall.

Can't run various banking apps and can't run PagerDuty on a rooted device due to Google Play API Integrity Check. The ecosystem is closing in on any options to not send telemetry, and Google is leading the way in the restrictions on Freedom.

Naw, using Magisk and it's zygisk denylist it usually works. I haven't been blocked by an app yet, including pagerduty.

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

#832

Post by colordrops »

mschuster91 wrote: post #545
pmlnr wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, with magisk.

That's a cat and mouse game, and some banking apps still manage to detect rooting, and so does Netflix and Google Pay.

Not really though. I've been using LineageOS+Magisk for at least 6 years and haven't found an app that worked that stopped working all of a sudden. I'm using all my banking apps and everything else without issue, and have been for a long time. Doesn't seem like the app devs are hellbent on blocking those willing to use Magisk.

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

#833

Post by amazingamazing »

JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote: post #741
amazingamazing wrote: post #278

[flagged]

> if you use iCloud Photos (only that applies) It's enabled by default for most people, whether they use iCloud or not.

You cannot use iCloud Photos without iCloud. Still not seeing the issue - anyone who cares about their privacy would just turn it off, problem solved.

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

#834

Post by jeffybefffy519 »

Gabriel54 wrote: post #13
scosman wrote: post #11

"I don't understand most of the technical details of Apple's blog post" I do: - Client side vectorization: the photo is processed locally, preparing a non-reversible vector representation before sending (think semantic hash). - Differential privacy: a decent amount of noise is added the the vector before sending it. Enough to make it impossible to reverse lookup the vector. The noise level here is ε = 0.8, which is q…

I appreciate the explanation. However, I think you do not address the main problem, which is that my data is being sent off my device by default and without any (reasonable) notice. Many users may agree to such a feature (as you say, it may be very secure), but to assume that everyone ought to be opted in by default is the issue.

The big mistake here is ownership of your apple devices is an illusion...

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

#835

Post by npteljes »

andybak wrote: post #666

Users of my (free, open-source) app seem surprised to learn that we've got zero insight into usage patterns. There are situations where a small amount of anonymous telemetry would be extremely helpful but I'm not going to touch it with a barge-pole. Opt-in makes the data useless - not just in terms of the huge drop in quantity but because of the fact it introduces a huge bias in the data selected - the people that wo…

>Opt-in makes the data useless

Hardly. It just has some issues with regards to what you also pointed out, bias for one. But it still provides valuable insight into usage patterns, systemic issues, and enables tracking effects of developments over time. Correcting the bias is not a bigger task than it is now - I'm sure you already have an idea about feedback to different features according to reviews, user reports, discussions, and so on. Opt-in is the same, just much better.

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

#836

Post by robertlagrant »

mvkel wrote: post #811
csomar wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sometimes I think the real power of Gmail is the Log In With Google button.

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

#837

Post by nazcan »

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 think it's clear that users should be able to have their own agents that make these decisions. If you want an agent that always defers to you and asks about Internet access, great. If you want one that accepts it all great. If you want one that uses some fancy logic, great.

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

#839

Post by YetAnotherNick »

necovek wrote: post #644
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…

Nope, collective indifference to subpar user experiences has gotten us those lousy cookie banners. Web sites could legally use cookies for non-tracking purposes without cookie banners but considering people have not stopped visiting sites despite the fugly click-through cookie banners makes them a failure. All it takes is for 50% of the internet users to stop visiting web sites with them, and web site authors will st…

> All it takes is for 50% of the internet users to stop visiting web sites with them, and web site authors will stop tracking users with external cookies.

How would the content creators or news sites earn then? Web is built on ads, and ads are built on tracking as untargeted ads pays significantly lower than targeted.

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

#840

Post by eleveriven »

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…

You're absolutely right! And the decision to make this opt-out feels dismissive
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