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Safari is sending every search query to Apple

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Re: Safari is sending every search query to Apple

#71

Post by thought_alarm »

chockablock wrote: post #59
miles wrote: post #24

Here's a tweet from Edward Marczak back in June about this behavior: https://twitter.com/marczak/status/481818945318428673 with a recommendation to block api.smoot.apple.com.

That seems to be about Spotlight searches, not web searches using Safari. (And arguably seems like a worse behavior to me, as my Spotlight search terms are often for private info I'm trying to locate on my disk.)

If you're concerned about your privacy, you should look at System Preferences > Spotlight > About Spotlight Suggestions and Privacy:

About Spotlight Suggestions & Privacy

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 on, when you make a search query to Spotlight the location of your Mac at that time will be sent to Apple. Searches for common words and phrases will be forwarded from Apple to Microsoft's Bing search engine. These searches are not stored by Microsoft. Location, search queries, and usage information sent to Apple will be used by Apple only to make Spotlight Suggestions more relevant and to improve other Apple products and services.

If you do not want your Spotlight search queries and Spotlight Suggestions usage data sent to Apple, you can turn off Spotlight Suggestions. Simply deselect the checkboxes for both Spotlight Suggestions and Bing Web Searches in the Search Results tab in the Spotlight preference pane found within System Preferences on your Mac. If you turn off Spotlight Suggestions and Bing Web Searches, Spotlight will search the contents of only your Mac.

You can turn off Location Services for Spotlight Suggestions in the Privacy pane of System Preferences on your Mac by clicking on “Details” next to System Services and then deselecting “Spotlight Suggestions”. If you turn off Location Services on your Mac, your precise location will not be sent to Apple. To deliver relevant search suggestions, Apple may use the IP address of your Internet connection to approximate your location by matching it to a geographic region.

Information collected by Apple will be treated in accordance with Apple’s Privacy Policy, which can be found at www.apple.com/privacy.

Re: Safari is sending every search query to Apple

#72

Post by scintill76 »

threeseed wrote: post #50
adamcarson wrote: post #22

Tim Cook last month: “Our business is not based on having information about you. You’re not our product ... I think everyone has to ask, how do companies make their money? Follow the money. And if they’re making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data, I think you have a right to be worried.” “We take a very different view of this than a lot of other companies have. Our view is, when we design a new service,…

And ? Is there ANY evidence that Apple is collecting data. Because it seems to me that all that is happening is that Safari is contacting an Apple service which searches Wikipedia, news, articles etc. Pretty sure it's easy to disable by switching off Smart Search Field in Safari.

Even if you trust them to "don't be evil", i.e., don't "collect" it, they could accidentally retain it, get compromised, waste users' bandwidth, etc. All of which encroaches on privacy and personal freedom, even if it can be said they're not "collecting."

See also: NSA's definition of "collect." [0]

P.S. This is assuming the portrayal is accurate. People in the thread are saying it's not. Default-enabled stuff like this is kind of scummy IMO, though, either way.

[0] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201...

Re: Safari is sending every search query to Apple

#73

Post by jsmthrowaway »

cmelbye wrote: post #61

This is inaccurate alarmism. It shouldn't be surprising that the search bar makes autocomplete requests to Apple as you type. The address, phone number, and map link that popped up when you typed in the name of a local business, for example, didn't just appear out of thin air. However, it seemed suspicious to me that Apple would make it impossible, as the author claims, to type in the Safari address bar without sendi…

Landon feels that disabling Spotlight Suggestions in OS X System Preferences would have an effect on Safari. I'm as mystified as you.

Re: Safari is sending every search query to Apple

#74

Post by ekianjo »

The thing about Apple is the positive bias they always get on HN. In these comments:

> Is there ANY evidence that Apple is collecting data.

> I'm not sure it's a contradiction either, more of an omission, he doesn't specifically address search data in that interview

> Doesn't seem like a data collection initiative. It seems more like a complementary search engine

> Do they do autocompletion suggestions like Chrome? That would seem like a good reason to collect this data.

> I actually personally don't mind sending my search data to Apple

It's just amazing. When Microsoft, Google or anyone else does it, it's EVIL and there's no other way to look at it, but when Apple does it, it's somehow perfectly OK, because, you know, they are the good guys.

Re: Safari is sending every search query to Apple

#75

Post by jsmthrowaway »

declan wrote: post #68
cmelbye wrote: post #61

This is inaccurate alarmism. It shouldn't be surprising that the search bar makes autocomplete requests to Apple as you type. The address, phone number, and map link that popped up when you typed in the name of a local business, for example, didn't just appear out of thin air. However, it seemed suspicious to me that Apple would make it impossible, as the author claims, to type in the Safari address bar without sendi…

FWIW, the Github page says search terms in their tests were sent to Apple's API even "with all privacy options enabled": https://github.com/fix-macosx/yosemite-phone-home

Yeah, Spotlight privacy options. He didn't touch Safari's; I did, and I got the same as cmelbye.

To be honest, I feel like Landon found something that confirmed what he already suspected, and ran with it, rather than taking a moment to look at what he had (which is wrong). That makes me wonder about his goals, since I've been watching his work play out over the last few days. Why is the sky falling, again?

Re: Safari is sending every search query to Apple

#76

Post by mitchty »

thought_alarm wrote: post #56

The author of this post is confused about Safari and Spotlight privacy settings. Spotlight search suggestions are a major new advertised feature in OS X and iOS. To disable Spotlight Search Suggestions in Safari, open the Safari preferences and de-select "Search > Include Spotlight Suggestions". To disable Spotlight Search Suggestions in the system Spotlight search menu, open the System Preferences and de-select "Spo…

Yep that looks to be spot on based on tcpdumps, although it would be nice to be made aware of this change in the release notes maybe.

Re: Safari is sending every search query to Apple

#77

Post by bo1024 »

cmelbye wrote: post #61

This is inaccurate alarmism. It shouldn't be surprising that the search bar makes autocomplete requests to Apple as you type. The address, phone number, and map link that popped up when you typed in the name of a local business, for example, didn't just appear out of thin air. However, it seemed suspicious to me that Apple would make it impossible, as the author claims, to type in the Safari address bar without sendi…

It's not at all inaccurate.

Might be alarmism, I don't know. But I think it just demonstrates the ways in which users' expectations about privacy are mismatched with the products they use. For example, your average non-tech-savvy user would never realize that an important privacy setting is in a search setting marked "suggestions".

It's hard to say more without seeing the text of Apple's Privacy Documentation that is referred to at the top of the article.

Re: Safari is sending every search query to Apple

#78

Post by mikeash »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #66
threeseed wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And ? Is there ANY evidence that Apple is collecting data. Because it seems to me that all that is happening is that Safari is contacting an Apple service which searches Wikipedia, news, articles etc. Pretty sure it's easy to disable by switching off Smart Search Field in Safari.

Weekly Outrage Time on HN. Have any of the commentors used the latest Safari? Safari does not passively collect data. It is doing much more. It has what can be called search actions. Example Type in a Nissan dealer's name => Brings up with an Icon a clicky that would take you to the nearest Nissan dealer location on Maps. Type in wiki X => Brings up with wiki page for X. Pray tell how would they accomplish without pr…

Who's assuming something nefarious is happening?

I find it odd how quickly Apple defenders jump to "let's not assume they're evil" in these cases, when no speculation on motivation is presented.

I personally don't care about motivation. I'm not even sure that a large company like Apple can meaningfully have motivations the way that we as individual humans think of them. All that matters is what they do.

Re: Safari is sending every search query to Apple

#79

Post by [deleted] »

scintill76 wrote: post #72
threeseed wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And ? Is there ANY evidence that Apple is collecting data. Because it seems to me that all that is happening is that Safari is contacting an Apple service which searches Wikipedia, news, articles etc. Pretty sure it's easy to disable by switching off Smart Search Field in Safari.

Even if you trust them to "don't be evil", i.e., don't "collect" it, they could accidentally retain it, get compromised, waste users' bandwidth, etc. All of which encroaches on privacy and personal freedom, even if it can be said they're not "collecting." See also: NSA's definition of "collect." [0] P.S. This is assuming the portrayal is accurate. People in the thread are saying it's not. Default-enabled stuff like t…

[deleted]

Re: Safari is sending every search query to Apple

#80

Post by miles »

thought_alarm wrote: post #71
chockablock wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to be about Spotlight searches, not web searches using Safari. (And arguably seems like a worse behavior to me, as my Spotlight search terms are often for private info I'm trying to locate on my disk.)

If you're concerned about your privacy, you should look at System Preferences > Spotlight > About Spotlight Suggestions and Privacy: About Spotlight Suggestions & Privacy 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 on, when you make a…

If you're concerned about your privacy, you should look at System Preferences > Spotlight > About Spotlight Suggestions and Privacy

The problem is that even after disabling it there, Spotlight still attempts to phone home. Here's a screenshot with "Spotlight Suggestions" and "Bing Web Searches" disabled in System Preferences with a Little Snitch window showing an attempted connection while searching: http://imgur.com/w09aNpz

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