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Why does Mail app contact iCloud when sending a non-iCloud email?

lapcatsoftware.com

41–50 of 58 posts

Re: Why does Mail app contact iCloud when sending a non-iCloud email?

#41

A dead comment said It's previous recipients synced over iCloud. And said how to see this.[1] Vouch it if you can. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158388

I think this is correct, and I've now added addendums to the blog post.

Re: Why does Mail app contact iCloud when sending a non-iCloud email?

#42
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OneDrive is the most annoying of all the apps I never use that was installed alongside an app that I do use. Thankfully, I have now blocked it from notifying me that it can no longer connect to the mother ship.

Office apps no longer autosave unless you have OneDrive installed. So no autosave for me! Instead I save compulsively lie the days of floppy disk PCs. (Meanwhile Emacs has had autosave since at least 1977)

Older office 2019 or 21 I think with massgrave.

Libreoffice.

I'm more and more relying less on office nowadays.

Re: Why does Mail app contact iCloud when sending a non-iCloud email?

#43

Fun activity: install glasswire on windows for a day or 2, set it to prompt you before any connection is allowed, and watch as about 500 different windows components attempt connections with Microsoft as a result of any and every action. And how many onedrive exes randomly fire off throughout the day despite having never once used it. And how onedrive changes its version number every day when it realizes it can’t con…

You’re giving me ptsd of LittleSnitch + any Adobe (or microsoft) product. You seriously can’t even use the machine without blanket, permanent approvals… the endless flood of network requests is paralyzing.

MS Office doesn't need permanent approval. I have Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Autoupdate and Update Assistant blocked from making any outgoing connection (on MacOS). That works for about a month, then I have to unblock briefly to let the licence check work. I don't use Adobe these days.

Re: Why does Mail app contact iCloud when sending a non-iCloud email?

#44
post #17

Why’s this post below an older less popular one? https://i.ibb.co/jnpcFJz/IMG-0549.jpg

because rankings take other things into account, such as the time of the post

Time of day? (It’s newer than a lesser commented, less voted one above - at top of screenshot.)

Re: Why does Mail app contact iCloud when sending a non-iCloud email?

#46
post #28

It's previous recipients synced over iCloud. Run this and then send an email to see it: log stream --predicate 'subsystem == "com.apple.cloudkit"' --info --debug

Verified - and the actual payload to the iCloud endpoint is e2e encrypted ciphertext.

Re: Why does Mail app contact iCloud when sending a non-iCloud email?

#47
post #40
post #11

Jeff Johnson is an Apple privacy information hero and deserves every penny for his apps like StopTheMadness https://underpassapp.com/StopTheMadness

I agree, though I don’t think it’s relevant to this post.

Fair! Hope some appreciated context around author credibility nonetheless.

Also if you care about the post and its implications, you’re the target market for the app. Course these kinds of defenses are still tangential and one could stretch annoyingly.

Re: Why does Mail app contact iCloud when sending a non-iCloud email?

#48
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OneDrive is the most annoying of all the apps I never use that was installed alongside an app that I do use. Thankfully, I have now blocked it from notifying me that it can no longer connect to the mother ship.

Office apps no longer autosave unless you have OneDrive installed. So no autosave for me! Instead I save compulsively lie the days of floppy disk PCs. (Meanwhile Emacs has had autosave since at least 1977)

I remember when Adobe switched to default saving to your cloud profile rather than local. It took digging to get the default switched back to local. I know I'm old, but who wants to save large media files to a cloud like this? It's not like I'm working on a computer in one location, move to another computer entirely. Who sits at a computer to log out the cloud user just to login as yourself? You pop in a USB stick (or other storage) and use whatever account is logged in while saving back to the same storage medium. I know when you are a cloud SaaS, you want all the people to use all your things, but it always felt like a solution looking for a problem. That's a problem for me

Re: Why does Mail app contact iCloud when sending a non-iCloud email?

#49
post #8

Everyone wearing their tinfoil hat while using Gmail and drive for everything

Gmail doesn't pretend to be private.

It sure seems to.

> When you send an email or text message, send attachments, or record video meetings, it is stored securely in our world-class data centers. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. If you choose to access this data offline, we store this info on your device.

> We do not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10434152?hl=en

Re: Why does Mail app contact iCloud when sending a non-iCloud email?

#50
post #27
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while using Gmail and drive for everything I don't.

You’d be in the minority.

I don't either. My main issue is some of my recipients are so it sadly doesn't help much.

Email needs to die.

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