iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive • Hacker News Board

Re: iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

#71

Post by sneak » Sun, Oct 26, 2014, 7:01 PM UTC

Anechoic wrote: post #51

sneak wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Washington Post documents claim otherwise: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-...

That link doesn't contradict xenadu02's claim. Do you have a link that better spells out that Apple is a willing partner in PRISM?

I doubt any of the companies are willing partners in PRISM - it's terribly bad for business, as Americans are only 4% of humans and being forced on threat of personal imprisonment to spy for the American government is not a really wise customer acquisition strategy.

It is really quite likely that the access to Apple and Google and other large providers' systems is done at an operations level, without knowledge of their management and providing for complete plausible deniability. How many network admins and ops people at Apple have physical access to the machines where keys are generated, stored, and used?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailored_Access_Operations

The #1 realtime end-to-end encrypted messaging service on the planet (where the software development and cyphertext transmission are both physically present inside the legal jurisdiction of the US) would be your first choice, no?

Re: iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

#72

Post by 13 » Sun, Oct 26, 2014, 7:05 PM UTC

whizzkid wrote: post #4

Like Adobe streaming their Photoshop software from their servers, Like Google is trying to push Chrome OS so that you DO NOT need hard drives. Big boys in market, sooner or later, will move all software and hardware power to their side leaving you with a screen, mouse and keyboard to interact with everything. As soon as companies do not have control over whatever you are doing, they are losing benefit on it. Get read…

It's at odds with the name, but Creative Cloud runs independent of Adobe. "Cloud" refers to a harsher anti piracy check under the guise of a Dropbox like file storage that nobody uses.

Re: iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

#73

Post by Anechoic » Sun, Oct 26, 2014, 7:11 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #71

Anechoic wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That link doesn't contradict xenadu02's claim. Do you have a link that better spells out that Apple is a willing partner in PRISM?

I doubt any of the companies are willing partners in PRISM - it's terribly bad for business, as Americans are only 4% of humans and being forced on threat of personal imprisonment to spy for the American government is not a really wise customer acquisition strategy. It is really quite likely that the access to Apple and Google and other large providers' systems is done at an operations level, without knowledge of the…

I doubt any of the companies are willing partners in PRISM

AFAICT that was xenadu02's point - that data from Apple et al are being collect by PRISM, but Apple is not a "partner" in the sense that "partner" implies cooperation. If intelligence agencies have to steer clear of management, that's not a partnership, that's espionage.

Re: iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

#74

Post by abalone » Sun, Oct 26, 2014, 7:17 PM UTC

Number one, if you are using Apple products in a high-security environment (e.g. HIPAA compliance) you should enable 2-factor authentication.[1] This will provide good security for data stored in the cloud.

Number two, there is an easy way to prevent data from ever even touching the cloud. Just immediately save the new document to a local non-iCloud folder before you populate it.

In terms of whether defaulting unsaved docs to iCloud is a good/bad design decision:

Defaulting unsaved documents to the cloud means if someone steals your account login and you don't have 2-factor auth enabled, they can access your unsaved docs.

Defaulting unsaved documents to local storage means continuity doesn't work and kills a lot of value of iCloud.

I think it's a good decision.

[1] http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5570

Re: iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

#75

Post by sneak » Sun, Oct 26, 2014, 7:22 PM UTC

abalone wrote: post #74

Number one, if you are using Apple products in a high-security environment (e.g. HIPAA compliance) you should enable 2-factor authentication.[1] This will provide good security for data stored in the cloud. Number two, there is an easy way to prevent data from ever even touching the cloud. Just immediately save the new document to a local non-iCloud folder before you populate it. In terms of whether defaulting unsave…

Continuity is only designed to work within a few meter range for handoff (and indeed requires bluetooth), which could easily be achieved over local bluetooth-bootstrapped p2p wifi.

Red herring.

Re: iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

#76

Post by api » Sun, Oct 26, 2014, 7:39 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #30

kps wrote: post #18

Last I looked, iCloud was not HIPAA¹-compliant. Health-care workers who previously could have iCloud enabled, as long as they did not use it for HIPAA-covered documents, may be in for a big and expensive surprise. ¹ http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/

Clouds are almost universally antithetical to HIPAA, it's extremely rare to find a SaaS provider that will sign a HIPAA BAA. And anyone working with data under HIPAA had better know this already!

Cloud is almost universally antithetical to any form of privacy, content security, or exfiltration protection.

Re: iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

#77

Post by shurcooL » Sun, Oct 26, 2014, 7:42 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #25

quesera wrote: post #23

Interesting, but: There are two kinds of users in this scenario. Those who don't care (99%) and those who do. If you count yourself among the latter group, as I do, then it's always solid advice to choose actions which clarify your intentions. In this case: - don't use iCloud - don't use iCloud sync for the app you use for private data - do explicitly choose to save the file locally - don't enable new features like C…

I'm not angry, but it does violate the principle of least surprise and the document model that's been in use for text editors forever . I opted in to iCloud Drive to synchronize files - files I chose to store in iCloud. I did not opt in to synchronize my unsaved files in apps not currently supported by Continuity, nor was there any warning or indication that that would occur. How would you feel if the OS, without war…

> my unsaved files

How would you feel if your unsaved files suddenly disappear? Would you blame apple for deleting files you explicitly chose to not save?

You were relying on a feature in an unusual and unintended way. Sooner or later, that may stop working.

The "unsaved files" being not synced to iCloud was never something that was meant to be guaranteed, it was just how it was.

What I'm suggesting is that by opting to explicitly save a file locally, you're giving more of a signal that you don't want it available remotely, compared to not saving a file at all.

Re: iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

#78

Post by abalone » Sun, Oct 26, 2014, 7:45 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #75

abalone wrote: post #74

Number one, if you are using Apple products in a high-security environment (e.g. HIPAA compliance) you should enable 2-factor authentication.[1] This will provide good security for data stored in the cloud. Number two, there is an easy way to prevent data from ever even touching the cloud. Just immediately save the new document to a local non-iCloud folder before you populate it. In terms of whether defaulting unsave…

Continuity is only designed to work within a few meter range for handoff (and indeed requires bluetooth), which could easily be achieved over local bluetooth-bootstrapped p2p wifi. Red herring.

Continuity data sync happens via iCloud. From the developer docs: "Handoff passes only enough information between the devices to describe the activity itself, while larger-scale data synchronization is handled through iCloud."

Can't say for sure whether a p2p wifi connection would really be an good substitute but I'm skeptical and I bet Apple's thought it through. I know AirDrop works that way but it seems to take a few seconds to set up the connection. Handoff is super fast, in my experience. So since AirDrop is designed to connect with unknown devices that p2p setup performance hit makes sense, but since handoff is for trusted devices, going through iCloud might be faster.

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserEx...

Re: iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

#79

Post by api » Sun, Oct 26, 2014, 7:57 PM UTC

nobbyclark wrote: post #69

amirmc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "There are two kinds of users in this scenario. Those who don't care (99%) and those who do." ... "The author is rightly sore that his bits got pushed to Apple due to his oversight " (emphasis mine) This attitude is completely unhelpful. It throws those who are otherwise ignorant under the bus simply because they don't (can't?) understand how modern tech works. Is that really fair? Must we really divide the world u…

Sadly this type of response seems to be common amongst those that do get it. "Whatever. Most people don't care anyway." If you look at the reaction of those 99% to Apple planting a U2 album on their phone, you see an angry response when people are made aware...

If only users actually changed their buying behavior on the basis of security or privacy. Until that happens "users don't care about security or privacy" will continue to be the default since economically speaking it is absolutely true.

What users care about as revealed by buying behavior is: user experience, user experience, user experience, user experience, cost, user experience, and user experience.

Re: iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

#80

Post by sneak » Sun, Oct 26, 2014, 7:59 PM UTC

shurcooL wrote: post #77

sneak wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not angry, but it does violate the principle of least surprise and the document model that's been in use for text editors forever . I opted in to iCloud Drive to synchronize files - files I chose to store in iCloud. I did not opt in to synchronize my unsaved files in apps not currently supported by Continuity, nor was there any warning or indication that that would occur. How would you feel if the OS, without war…

> my unsaved files How would you feel if your unsaved files suddenly disappear? Would you blame apple for deleting files you explicitly chose to not save? You were relying on a feature in an unusual and unintended way. Sooner or later, that may stop working. The "unsaved files" being not synced to iCloud was never something that was meant to be guaranteed, it was just how it was. What I'm suggesting is that by opting…

I'm more interested in why the default behavior of internet users is so often to blame the victim.

Does it shift the danger of the world squarely onto those who couldn't ever possibly be you, as your internal narrative has you as perfectly informed at all times?

I'm a security-conscious engineer that's been using Apple hardware and software for two decades. Today, my computer took a bunch of private text and uploaded it without my knowledge or consent, completely contrary to my expectations.

Does it threaten your worldview to consider that perhaps I didn't do anything wrong?

(To answer your question directly: I would be annoyed but it wouldn't be the end of the world; I'd simply restore those files from backup as I knew where they were being autosaved previously. That's an entirely different ballgame than silently uploading them.)