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Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite

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Re: Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite

#11

Post by imdsm »

esolyt wrote: post #9
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mac has not yet shown me advertisements for when I was looking for my files.

They weren't advertisements. They were product search results. And the concern wasn't about the fact that it shows products, but about the fact that data was being sent to Amazon (unencrypted as well, I believe).

My concern was that if I wanted to buy something, I'd go online and look for it. If I wanted to run an application, I'd search for it. It was a case of extremely terrible UX and wasted my time having to disable it each time I installed Ubuntu.

Re: Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite

#12

Post by song »

I'm very glad for that thread. I didn't know that I also needed to uncheck "Include Spotlight Suggestions" in Safari additionally to Preferences.

I do not understand why there's such a backlash against anyone that points out that:

1. It's not intuitive to have to both disable "Include Spotlight Suggestions" in Safari and in Preferences.

2. People like my father who are privacy conscious but are average computer users would not think to look for this in Spotlight and Search and instead would look in the privacy tab instead

3. Apple released and advertises cool privacy features like MAC address randomization that actually do not work. It only works with Location Services and 3G disabled according to the reports which is never going to happen. This makes me feel that the new focus on privacy from Apple is more for PR purpose than something they really care for.

That said, I like Apple products, I've been using macs since 2004 and I would have a hard time going back to using Linux (still have nightmares about all the work needed to support my laptop correctly) but that doesn't mean I'm giving them a pass on those privacy issues.

I know a lot of people here feel that all of this is much ado about nothing but really, it's clearly not obvious and if I hadn't read yesterday's thread I wouldn't have been aware that Safari sends my search to Apple even if selected Duck Duck Go and disabled Spotlight Suggestions in preferences.

Re: Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite

#14

Post by pilsetnieks »

simme_ wrote: post #4

Original discussion can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8479958

This one might be more relevant: "Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8473580

Hint: you have to uncheck two checkboxes that OS X explicitly tells you about in the very same Spotlight preferences, plus another one in Location preferences.

Re: Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite

#15

Post by tkubacki »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #3
tkubacki wrote: post #2

Funny - just compare how Ubuntu was bashed for Amazon lens in Unity and how differently Apple is treated for the same (or even worse) things here on HN

My mac has not yet shown me advertisements for when I was looking for my files.

so Apple's false privacy statements are not as bad as Ubuntu's Amazon search results ?

Re: Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite

#16

Post by adsr »

Can't this just be turned off with the Spotlight setting in system preferences though? For browsers it seems to be the same for all that uses the unified search field, it was last time a checked Chrome with tcpdump. I personally preferred to have the URL field separate from the search field for that reason.

Re: Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite

#17

Post by ctz »

davidw wrote: post #7

It searches the web as well as your local drives, so sending those searches out is exactly what I'd expect. Now, I can also see the case for not making 'do a web search too' the default, but if you can't have that and not share your searches with Apple.

> you can't have that and not share your searches with Apple

Why on earth not? Why can't the search box just talk to DDG?

Re: Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite

#18

Post by [deleted] »

ctz wrote: post #17
davidw wrote: post #7

It searches the web as well as your local drives, so sending those searches out is exactly what I'd expect. Now, I can also see the case for not making 'do a web search too' the default, but if you can't have that and not share your searches with Apple.

> you can't have that and not share your searches with Apple Why on earth not? Why can't the search box just talk to DDG?

[deleted]

Re: Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite

#19

Post by davidw »

ctz wrote: post #17
davidw wrote: post #7

It searches the web as well as your local drives, so sending those searches out is exactly what I'd expect. Now, I can also see the case for not making 'do a web search too' the default, but if you can't have that and not share your searches with Apple.

> you can't have that and not share your searches with Apple Why on earth not? Why can't the search box just talk to DDG?

Isn't what people are getting hot and bothered about is that "local" searches are sending data out on the internet, rather than where they happen to be sending it?

Re: Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite

#20

Post by bloke_zero »

esolyt wrote: post #8

I recently replaced Spotlight with Alfred and realized how much I was missing out. It's surprisingly faster and cleaner. I would really suggest it to anyone who haven't tried it yet.

Alfred is great - it was my replacement for quicksilver when I got tired of endless config. Made by nice people too (as far as I can tell).
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