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Our Approach to Privacy

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Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#5
post #2

So a cop can put your phone in front of your face while you're tied up and unable to do a thing. Boom, phone unlocked. Marvelous.

AFAIK if you keep your eyes closed, it doesn't unlock.

Also, its still an improvement from when cops borrow your thumb. At least this way, you have less chance of getting hurt.

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#6
post #2

So a cop can put your phone in front of your face while you're tied up and unable to do a thing. Boom, phone unlocked. Marvelous.

You are the first person to ever think of this! Congratulations. This place is becoming reddit.

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#7
> While we do back up iMessage and SMS messages for your convenience using iCloud Backup, you can turn it off whenever you want.

Wouldn't they be able to hold that privacy promise much better if they actually allowed people to keep iCloud backup on let's say for pictures, but still be able to disable iMessage messages? I think many people would like to use iCloud but without it backing up personal conversations, too.

Also, iMessage's end-to-end encryption was rather flawed last Matthew Green checked, compared to other end-to-end messaging apps.

https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2016/03/21/attack-o...

As for their use of differential privacy, when they introduced that it was essentially a hidden way of gather more of your data than before, not less, but while still being able to say "hey, we may gather more data than ever on you starting with the new iOS, but it's pretty private, so it's cool, don't worry about it".

All of that said, I know Apple is still miles ahead of Google on privacy. If anything, over the last 1-2 years, Google has become increasingly bolder and more shameless about tracking users without them realizing (except in the EU, where they are forced to make it a little easier for users to understand how they are being tracked, and even that happened because of the anti-trust lawsuit).

Here's just one example of Google's increasingly privacy-hostile behavior:

https://www.extremetech.com/internet/238093-google-quietly-c...

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#8
post #2

So a cop can put your phone in front of your face while you're tied up and unable to do a thing. Boom, phone unlocked. Marvelous.

iOS 11 allows you to disable touch or face ID by pressing the power button 5 times.

They changed this for the iPhone X: you press the lock and one of the volume buttons at the same time.

Re: Our Approach to Privacy

#9
post #2

So a cop can put your phone in front of your face while you're tied up and unable to do a thing. Boom, phone unlocked. Marvelous.

You can disable Face ID by pressing the power and volume buttons at the same time. They are on either side of the phone. Faster than the multiple press method and more discrete.
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