Those who care about privacy wouldn't be using macOS to begin with.
PSA: macOS updates often modify your System Preferences to violate your Privacy
11–20 of 43 posts
Re: PSA: macOS updates often modify your System Preferences to violate your Privacy
#12Those who use Windows, especially 10, are all-too-familiar with this sort of thing (and worse[1]). The "excuse" is usually something along the lines of "the configuration file has changed format so let's remove it and revert everything to defaults". (Why would it change format? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21174947 ) It's certainly taught me to treat updates as basically nearly equivalent to a new OS install --- you have to spend the time to look through everything and fix settings that were reverted, or disable whatever new horrible thing was introduced. The ultimate goal, of course, is to gradually bludgeon the "rebellious" users into docile sheeple to control and extract more profit from...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18189139
...then again, similar things have happened on the Apple side: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21229249
Re: PSA: macOS updates often modify your System Preferences to violate your Privacy
#13This report worried me, but it was timely because I was literally in the process of upgrading to macOS 11.2.3.
So, while the update was downloading, I changed my firewall settings specifically to allow built-in software to receive incoming connections, but disallow downloaded signed software. I also specifically set GarageBand to block incoming connections but not other programs among those listed.
I'm happy to report that all of these settings were maintained after updating to macOS 11.2.3 exactly as-is. I wonder if the OP is referring to a different update (none that I'm aware of recently).
There is no Privacy > Advertising > Limit Ad Tracking setting on macOS 11.2.2 or 11.2.3: there's a checkbox for "Personalized Ads," which remains turned off after the update also, just as it was before.
Re: PSA: macOS updates often modify your System Preferences to violate your Privacy
#14Apple also tries to trick you into enabling Siri every time you install a security update.
By "trick you into enabling" do you mean "asks"?
Re: PSA: macOS updates often modify your System Preferences to violate your Privacy
#15Apple's updates will clear all sorts of things, specific firewall rules was the most egregious in my mind (pf.conf).
But allowing incoming connections without a prompt, I think it may be getting worse now.
Related, what annoyed me is that 3rd party installers can gather telemetry even before you've installed. The one I recall from a year or two ago was docker. The Docker installer is doing telemetry before you've even decided to install it.
Re: PSA: macOS updates often modify your System Preferences to violate your Privacy
#16Re: PSA: macOS updates often modify your System Preferences to violate your Privacy
#17This sounds exceedingly uncharacteristic of Apple and almost certainly a bug, not intentional. I know it’s hard to get their attention filing bugs so upvoting in case anyone can help get this to the right eyes. But I definitely don’t think there was malice or even conscious intent on this one.
You forgot the /s
Which part do you think was sarcastic?
Re: PSA: macOS updates often modify your System Preferences to violate your Privacy
#18I’ve had no trouble with this since I made changes in that pane at least a year ago. Do you do expert user things with your Mac, like disabling SIP or running LittleSnitch or so on? Have you opened a bug report for Apple with sysdiagnose attached? Are you using or have you used developer betas on this device or other macOS devices linked to the signed-in iCloud account of this device, if any? Have you run out of drive space since you set those settings, and/or performed a migration from another system?
What evidence have you collected that demonstrates that this is an intentional act by Apple, as claimed in your post headline?
HN isn’t an appropriate venue for unsupported accusations of malfeasance or conspiracy. Please substantiate your post.
Re: PSA: macOS updates often modify your System Preferences to violate your Privacy
#19I’ve had no trouble with this since I made changes in that pane at least a year ago. Do you do expert user things with your Mac, like disabling SIP or running LittleSnitch or so on? Have you opened a bug report for Apple with sysdiagnose attached? Are you using or have you used developer betas on this device or other macOS devices linked to the signed-in iCloud account of this device, if any? Have you run out of driv…
I too am ready to lay down my life to defend the honor of Apple Inc. sir!
Re: PSA: macOS updates often modify your System Preferences to violate your Privacy
#20I've got 11.2.3 downloaded and ready to update. I'll set these same you've seen to have been changed and I'll report back. I know another commenter did this too, but I don't think hurts to have another test.
For reference, I've got a 2020 Intel MacBook Pro 13.