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Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple

fix-macosx.com

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Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple

#51

Post by dstein64 »

mwfunk wrote: post #47

I applaud them for publicizing the implications of the default privacy settings for Spotlight, but hyperbolic titles like the one used here hurt their credibility unnecessarily. I know some people think that using hyperbole for effect is a thing. They tend to be very young, smart people who are starting to realize what they're capable of but are still trapped on the wrong side of the Dunning-Kruger curve. The most co…

> I don't think the author(s) of this site are any of those things, but I also know that Yosemite as a whole is not designed to take away 100% of your privacy, which is what the title implies. This is also what turns me off about a lot of FSF propaganda, and most politicians regardless of their beliefs.

Are your referring to the title of the HN submission, "Mac OS X Yosemite – No Privacy, by Design"? That text does not appear on the website. The website refers to "parts of Mac OS X which are invasive to your privacy."

Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple

#52

Post by nkozyra »

leepowers wrote: post #27

Is 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?

Just modify these lines in the dict/list:

   {'enabled' : True, 'name' : 'MENU_WEBSEARCH'},
   {'enabled' : True, 'name' : 'MENU_SPOTLIGHT_SUGGESTIONS'},
And re-run.

Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple

#53

Post by ljfuller »

mwfunk wrote: post #47

I applaud them for publicizing the implications of the default privacy settings for Spotlight, but hyperbolic titles like the one used here hurt their credibility unnecessarily. I know some people think that using hyperbole for effect is a thing. They tend to be very young, smart people who are starting to realize what they're capable of but are still trapped on the wrong side of the Dunning-Kruger curve. The most co…

> I applaud them for publicizing the implications of the default privacy settings for Spotlight, but hyperbolic titles like the one used here hurt their credibility unnecessarily.

That particular title seems to be an editorial flourish on the part of the submitter -- that phrase does not appear on the actual site.

Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple

#54

Post by eropple »

eridius wrote: post #29
revelation wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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").

This is literally the first I've heard of this, and I upgraded yesterday. I didn't see whatever warning supposedly appears on the first use of Spotlight because--as I always do--I hit it and started typing.

The idea that having a button in the bowels of a preference menu is sufficient is...I don't want to say "nuts", but I'm thinking it pretty hard. I'm not happy. Not unhappy enough to subject myself to a Linux desktop, but Apple is making it closer and closer with every release.

Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple

#55

Post by eropple »

eridius wrote: post #44
ChuckMcM wrote: post #22

There 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…

Based on Apple's past history, they do not want to sell your personal data. That's Google's modus operandi, and common for other companies too, but Apple has demonstrated time and time again that they are focused on the user. To that end, there's 2 things going on here: 1. Apple added functionality called Spotlight Suggestions, which pulls in data from the internet, including things like iTunes and App Store results,…

Doing this without actually bothering to let people know in an up-front, opt-in way certainly doesn't make the user experience better. While there's some conceivable value to the feature, turning it on without even letting users know is pretty bullshit and you're perturbing a lot of electrons in this thread with your defense of a really shitty default behavior.

Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple

#56

Post by mwfunk »

dstein64 wrote: post #51
mwfunk wrote: post #47

I applaud them for publicizing the implications of the default privacy settings for Spotlight, but hyperbolic titles like the one used here hurt their credibility unnecessarily. I know some people think that using hyperbole for effect is a thing. They tend to be very young, smart people who are starting to realize what they're capable of but are still trapped on the wrong side of the Dunning-Kruger curve. The most co…

> I don't think the author(s) of this site are any of those things, but I also know that Yosemite as a whole is not designed to take away 100% of your privacy, which is what the title implies. This is also what turns me off about a lot of FSF propaganda, and most politicians regardless of their beliefs. Are your referring to the title of the HN submission, "Mac OS X Yosemite – No Privacy, by Design"? That text does n…

Yep. I could be wrong here, but I thought that HN had a policy where the titles used are taken verbatim from the page being linked to, unless they're so completely terrible that an alternative title is needed. If the HN title doesn't come from the site, then my apologies to the authors for harping about this.

Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple

#57

Post by petemc_ »

ljfuller wrote: post #49
kingnight wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Howdy. Author here. By way of introduction, I'm also the author of PLCrashReporter ( https://www.plcrashreporter.org/ ), ported Java 6 to Mac OS X (a.k.a Soylatte), and -- this might lower some folk's estimation of me here -- started the MacPorts project almost 15 years ago at Apple, along with co-workers Jordan Hubbard and Kevin Van Vechten. That slightly snarky disclaimer you quoted actually has a serious backstory…

Hey, this is great. Thanks for your work. Site and code are easy to read and they do a great job. Thanks again.

Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple

#58

Post by eridius »

eropple wrote: post #55
eridius wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on Apple's past history, they do not want to sell your personal data. That's Google's modus operandi, and common for other companies too, but Apple has demonstrated time and time again that they are focused on the user. To that end, there's 2 things going on here: 1. Apple added functionality called Spotlight Suggestions, which pulls in data from the internet, including things like iTunes and App Store results,…

Doing this without actually bothering to let people know in an up-front, opt-in way certainly doesn't make the user experience better. While there's some conceivable value to the feature, turning it on without even letting users know is pretty bullshit and you're perturbing a lot of electrons in this thread with your defense of a really shitty default behavior.

They did let people know. You should really research this a bit before going of half-cocked, accusing Apple of doing something shitty, and me of defending this shitty behavior, when they're not actually doing the shitty thing you think they're doing.

The first time you initiate Spotlight after installing Yosemite, it gives you a very big message, explaining how Spotlight changed, explaining that it now sends search queries to the internet, and providing a big "Learn More" link that opens the built-in help document on the subject (I think it's https://help.apple.com/machelp/mac/10.10/index.html?localePa..., which I found via the (?) button in the Spotlight Preference Pane, but since I've already bypassed the warning I'm talking about I can't double-check).

Not only is the message very obvious and blatant, but Spotlight itself looks radically different than it used to (among other things, it's now a floating window in the center of the screen, instead of being attached to the magnifying glass button in the upper-right), so the risk of someone thinking it's exactly the same Spotlight as before is pretty low.

Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple

#59

Post by IBM »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #22

There 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…

Apple knows what they are and what they aren't and they aren't going to leave their circle of competence. It's why they aren't trying to "disrupt" credit cards and banks with Apple Pay and why they're partnering with IBM in order to sell to enterprise (even though they could extract more value by doing it themselves) because it would mean becoming an enterprise company.

Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple

#60

Post by blantonl »

pilsetnieks wrote: post #46
mukmuk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thought, but I disabled that too. Edit: Twitter discussion regarding one of these issues. Note that Spotlight is doing this despite all relevant settings disabled (spotlight suggestions, bing, privacy, and logging). https://twitter.com/marczak/status/481818945318428673

wu.apple.com is an address associated with location service requests. If you've disabled location for spotlight, it's possible that it was something else requesting the location. No idea about that smoot thing, though.

A quick fix would be to add wu.apple.com to your hosts file with an address of 127.0.0.1 - not long term and certainly not an overall fix.
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