I use Alfred... http://www.alfredapp.com/
Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple
21–30 of 137 posts
Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple
#22There is a war on going in search. You can see it in Google's quarterly results where this last quarter they spent nearly a billion dollars on paid distribution (aka people they pay to send them searches that they can monetize rather than people who just show up at Google.com or one of their properties). It stuns me that Apple hasn't bitten the bullet and built a search engine yet since they could make more on it than Google is paying them to send queries there way but that is just Apple. But the spotlight 'net search' like Ubuntu's Unity search box gives those folks something to sell to Google and Google is buying. It is perhaps easier than building your own search engine but not as profitable once you get above a few million queries a day.
Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple
#23If you bring up the Spotlight search window it will even tell you: "In addition to searching your Mac, Spotlight now shows suggestions from the Internet, iTunes, App Store, locations nearby, and more. To make suggestions more relevant to you, Spotlight includes your approximate location with search requests to Apple. You can change this in Preferences. Learn more…" Clicking on "Learn more" also tells you how to disab…
I actually clicked the learn more, and it took me to a help site that somehow didn't exist. Failed to load.
Then I manually went into Spotlight settings, and was presented with a bunch of checkboxes that offer zero indication as to privacy implications. How am I to magically tell that the "Movies" option won't send my query to some Apple IMDB proxy?
Sorry, but this script is spot on. This should not be enabled by default, and the privacy implications need to be spelt out in every single detail. It should be a legal requirement, really.
Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple
#24While fixing spotlight is a good idea (especially if you're opening it a lot in public), please don't blindly execute code without reading it first. While this code isn't malicious, running misc. third party code without reading it first is a bad idea for everyone.
There's always the danger of this attack, as well: http://thejh.net/misc/website-terminal-copy-paste
Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple
#25There is a war on going in search. You can see it in Google's quarterly results where this last quarter they spent nearly a billion dollars on paid distribution (aka people they pay to send them searches that they can monetize rather than people who just show up at Google.com or one of their properties). It stuns me that Apple hasn't bitten the bullet and built a search engine yet since they could make more on it tha…
Well, maybe the recent approaches to duckduckgo and their reaffirmation on user privacy are hints at the future of Apple and DDG... just a thought
Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple
#26For those interested, here's the specific language Apple offers to explain what Spotlight is doing. I didn't see it elsewhere so I figured I'd post it. From the Spotlight preferences pane: "When you use Spotlight, your search queries, the Spotlight Suggestions you select, and related usage data will be sent to Apple. Search results found on your Mac will not be sent. If you have Location Services on your Mac turned o…
Could this be considered overthinking it?
A domain, a python script, to effectively achieve tapping a couple toggles in sys prefs? And this is quite difficult for the average non terminal using person.
> This site _criticizes_ Apple for certain privacy-invading features of Mac OS X and teaches users how to fix them. So, obviously, the site is not approved by Apple.
Snark!
Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple
#27Is there a way to undo? Let's say I run this script, but don't like the results. How do I undo and revert to a previous system state?
Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple
#28I disabled both Spotlight Suggestions and Bing yet Spotlight -- via SpotlightNetHelper -- still attempts to connect to api.smoot.apple.com:443 and wu.apple.com:80.
Can anyone explain this?
Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple
#29If you bring up the Spotlight search window it will even tell you: "In addition to searching your Mac, Spotlight now shows suggestions from the Internet, iTunes, App Store, locations nearby, and more. To make suggestions more relevant to you, Spotlight includes your approximate location with search requests to Apple. You can change this in Preferences. Learn more…" Clicking on "Learn more" also tells you how to disab…
I actually clicked the learn more, and it took me to a help site that somehow didn't exist. Failed to load. Then I manually went into Spotlight settings, and was presented with a bunch of checkboxes that offer zero indication as to privacy implications. How am I to magically tell that the "Movies" option won't send my query to some Apple IMDB proxy? Sorry, but this script is spot on. This should not be enabled by def…
> [...] that offer zero indication as to privacy implications
There's a very prominent button labelled
> About Spotlight Suggestions & Privacy
on the Spotlight preferences window. If you're worried about the privacy of your searches, you can click that, and you get a detailed description of exactly what's going on, and how to disable it (to wit, uncheck "Spotlight Suggestions" and "Bing Web Searches").
Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple
#30For those interested, here's the specific language Apple offers to explain what Spotlight is doing. I didn't see it elsewhere so I figured I'd post it. From the Spotlight preferences pane: "When you use Spotlight, your search queries, the Spotlight Suggestions you select, and related usage data will be sent to Apple. Search results found on your Mac will not be sent. If you have Location Services on your Mac turned o…
Could this be considered overthinking it? A domain, a python script, to effectively achieve tapping a couple toggles in sys prefs? And this is quite difficult for the average non terminal using person. > This site _criticizes_ Apple for certain privacy-invading features of Mac OS X and teaches users how to fix them. So, obviously, the site is not approved by Apple. Snark!
Not to mention that it encourages possibly not technically inclined users to execute random scripts from the internet, which should be a capital crime.