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Thieves took their iPhones. Apple won't give their digital lives back

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Thieves took their iPhones. Apple won't give their digital lives back

#71

Post by underseacables »

crazygringo wrote: post #9

I'm curious why Apple has let it get this far that court cases are underway and WaPo is writing an article about it. What's in it for Apple? Surely it's easy enough to define some kind of verification process based on various pieces -- phone number, credit card, purchase receipt, etc. -- and requiring a police report to be filed or something. And this isn't like Google or Facebook where accounts are free, preventing…

I think corporate responses to most things like this is to deny and avoid until forced to get involved. It should not take WaPo getting involved but it seems to be the norm for big tech companies.

Re: Thieves took their iPhones. Apple won't give their digital lives back

#72

Post by Aloisius »

_rutinerad wrote: post #70
VincentEvans wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>hit lock button 5 times so it forces a passcode I didn’t know what that meant - so I googled it. And it says something entirely different…. Quote: Pressing the lock button (or side button) five times quickly on an iPhone or many Android devices will activate Emergency SOS. This will prompt a countdown and eventually, if not cancelled, initiate a call to emergency services, potentially alerting emergency contacts and…

I just tried on my iPhone and it does not do that, there is no countdown. It will force a passcode and give you the option to call SOS, shut off your phone or show your medical id.

It's a setting (Settings > Emergency SOS). It used to be on by default and do a little siren sound before calling emergency services.

Personally, I just open the slide-to-turn-off phone screen instead (hold volume + side button for a couple seconds). Once that screen is loaded, it'll require a passcode to unlock after you cancel out.

Re: Thieves took their iPhones. Apple won't give their digital lives back

#73

Post by unyttigfjelltol »

newsclues wrote: post #18
Hizonner wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but what model would you suggest? Apple has no adequate way to actually verify who anybody is without (a) forcing them to physically visit one of a small number of offices (it can't be every store), and (b) probably charging a significant fee to cover the cost of doing real verification. And even that demands assuming that the identifying information on the account is right.

Digital identity is an essential aspect of modern life. The fact that the government doesn’t have a great standard for identity and it’s left to banks and tech companies is crazy.

Yes, this is literally one of a handful of core government functions.

Re: Thieves took their iPhones. Apple won't give their digital lives back

#74

Post by someonehere »

I don’t trust Apple for this exact reason.

For those interested in the silver bullet to backup iCloud.

Get a Mac mini with enough space for your photo library and wire it into your network. Sign into iCloud.

For photos open the app and change the settings to store full res photos locally.

Enable iCloud desktop and documents sync.

Two options

1 - Sign up for Backblaze and ensure you map the folders from iCloud and photos that are being synced to the device. Let it run and do a full sync. I use this option.

2 - Buy an external drive with a lot of space and use Carbon Copy Cloner to mirror your drive. The caveat is your at the mercy of a local copy that a home fire or electrical incident can destroy.

I like Backblaze for the sheer constant syncing it does and they allow me to set up an encryption key so they don’t have access to my data.

Re: Thieves took their iPhones. Apple won't give their digital lives back

#75

Post by weikju »

someonehere wrote: post #74

I don’t trust Apple for this exact reason. For those interested in the silver bullet to backup iCloud. Get a Mac mini with enough space for your photo library and wire it into your network. Sign into iCloud. For photos open the app and change the settings to store full res photos locally. Enable iCloud desktop and documents sync. Two options 1 - Sign up for Backblaze and ensure you map the folders from iCloud and pho…

I do that, and I'm also planning to use icloud photos downloader [0], a python script to download photos, so I can download those directly on another machine running Linux.

[0] https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

Re: Thieves took their iPhones. Apple won't give their digital lives back

#76

Post by abetancort »

mingus88 wrote: post #30
tacker2000 wrote: post #14

Why should Apple open this can of worms and give users access to locked out data. How would this process even work on a larger scale? In the end if you dont backup your data locally, then its not your data and you risk losing it. If your business shuts down because you lost your phone its your own fault for not mitigating this type of risk enough.

Have you ever tried to fully backup data from iCloud? I try to do it every month because I am that type of techie. They don’t make it easy. For photos, i have a 2TB family plan. There is no export functionality I can centrally backup my families photos and shared albums The supported way to do this is to use a Mac, force it to store all images locally in settings, then highlight all your albums and File->export This…

Use rclone...

Re: Thieves took their iPhones. Apple won't give their digital lives back

#77

Post by nativeit »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56
crazygringo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make sense. This isn't a technical hurdle, is it? Apple already can unlock your account "for the gestapo" if they choose to. If the users have enabled Advanced Data Protection and don't have another Apple device, then I can understand why it would be lost for good. But that doesn't seem to be the case in these lawsuits. They make it clear that Apple has access to the data, and could transfer/restore it i…

> Apple already can unlock your account "for the gestapo" if they choose to But they don't.

Not sure why this is getting down-voted. There are several high-profile instances of Apple refusing to assist law enforcement in gaining access to devices. I recognize this is cold comfort, and provides only marginal reassurance for the future. That said, for the moment, "But they don't," is a perfectly accurate assessment.

Re: Thieves took their iPhones. Apple won't give their digital lives back

#78

Post by nativeit »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #69
wmf wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will Apple obey court orders? Have they ever?

> Will Apple obey court orders? Have they ever? What on earth are you referring to?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_d...

Re: Thieves took their iPhones. Apple won't give their digital lives back

#79

Post by nativeit »

lxgr wrote: post #35
nashashmi wrote: post #2

My cousin’s phone was stolen in San Francisco. My mom’s phone was hooked up to the same account. Somehow the thief was able to change the account password and email account to something else. Now my mom cannot reset her phone because she doesn’t have access to the thieves account.

> Somehow the thief was able to change the account password and email account That would be the fact that Apple lets anybody that knows the passcode reset the iCloud password as well, without any further authentication. And the passcode can be shoulder surfed by the thief... "Stolen device protection" was developed as a response to a wave of such thefts: https://support.apple.com/en-us/120340 It seems like a good ste…

> That would be the fact that Apple lets anybody that knows the passcode reset the iCloud password as well, without any further authentication

Doesn't this require at least one other device to allow access and provide a one-time code?

I can't log in to iCloud in a browser, update payment information, or do anything even remotely sensitive with just one device and my screen lock mechanism(s).

EDIT: I stand corrected. On a device that's designated as "trusted" you can indeed change the password using only the screen unlock using the instructions at https://support.apple.com/en-us/102656

Re: Thieves took their iPhones. Apple won't give their digital lives back

#80

Post by givinguflac »

mingus88 wrote: post #30
tacker2000 wrote: post #14

Why should Apple open this can of worms and give users access to locked out data. How would this process even work on a larger scale? In the end if you dont backup your data locally, then its not your data and you risk losing it. If your business shuts down because you lost your phone its your own fault for not mitigating this type of risk enough.

Have you ever tried to fully backup data from iCloud? I try to do it every month because I am that type of techie. They don’t make it easy. For photos, i have a 2TB family plan. There is no export functionality I can centrally backup my families photos and shared albums The supported way to do this is to use a Mac, force it to store all images locally in settings, then highlight all your albums and File->export This…

For whatever it’s worth, insanely enough iCloud for windows makes it really easy to download all of your iCloud stored photos into folders. I have a windows box that I back up my important photos with that way and then move them to secondary backup.
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