81–90 of 117 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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...
In this case, the phone was marked as lost immediately, but a couple of days later the thieves started trying to reset the password on the owner's iCloud account using various methods, the first of which produced 1st party push notifications asking to confirm the account password reset that were sent to the owner's other signed-in devices that were still in their possession. In the moment, it would be so easy for a confused & stressed person to accidentally or mistakenly tap those notifications and enable their own account hijacking.
The thieves then evidently called Apple Support and tried to get the iCloud account password reset over the phone, but by this point the owner had already gotten a new phone and SIM for their phone number, which meant that Apple Support's 2FA SMS codes were received by their replacement phone (in their possession) instead of the stolen phone (in the thieves' possession, and which no longer had cell service). It seems like if they had delayed in getting their new phone and left the stolen device with functional cell service, the hijacking might have succeeded at this point.
Apple's own "What to do if your iPhone is stolen" page [0] has no info these tactics that are actually used in the moment by phone thieves. That page does link to a page about social engineering scams [1] but approaches that in a general sense.
I think Apple's way of handling it should be way more intuitive. For example, they should differentiate between phones that are lost and stolen. If your phone is lost, you want to protect against someone finding it and being able to access the phone's contents. If your phone is stolen, the thieves will most likely try to hijack your iCloud account as well, and they'll try and social engineer both the owner and Apple Support to do so, so add a "Mark as Stolen" option that also adds protections against iCloud account hijacking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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...
That's not exactly the same as refusing to comply with a court order.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Apple can unlock the account from your stolen iPhone they can also unlock your account for the gestapo. Whether it's worth throwing normal people under the bus to protect a few dissidents is a matter of values on which people are going to have differing opinions of course.
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…
Is there a consensus on what you should actually do in the event your phone is stolen? Someone I know's phone was stolen and I helped them through it (remotely) in real time, and I remember looking up what to do and having to sort through a lot of straight up bad advice, including articles that seem naive as to what actually happens in real life when thieves steal a phone. In this case, the phone was marked as lost i…
That won't give them access. When you respond to the reset password notifications, it then asks for a new password on the same device you responded on, not on the device that requested the reset.
It took me a minute to figure out how this works, but it must have something to do with using a "lost password" email reset on the iCloud account, and having the relevant email account logged in (or saved to the password manager) on the phone itself, so that all you need is the passcode to get into the iCloud account. Something like that?
I still can't figure it out. My daughter had her iPhone stolen in L.A. — she immediately wiped it remotely. The thieves were unable to access it. I got her a new iPhone pretty fast (the budget one) and she was back in business, back in her iCloud account. (She was one of those that saw her device head to Asia. She got a handful of text messages pleading with her to remove the stolen device from her account but she ig…
I’ve read a couple stories where someone was held in an alley while an accomplice went to an ATM to withdraw as much cash as they could.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A security model that the user does not understand and contains traps is not a good security model.
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.
A few things you can do here:
- Own a mac with enough storage to download your entire iCloud / Apple Photos data set. Configure your mac to do so. Your mac is still activation locked to your Apple ID though, so backup that local copy through Time Machine or the service of your choice (e.x. Backblaze). A NAS is very helpful to automate this.
- Use app(s) on your phone that will copy of your data to the location of your choice, such as Photo Sync.
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…
Not exactly helpful, but I have little sympathy for people who put their digital lives in the control of a free service from a company, that, frankly, doesn't care about you at all - 'consumers are the product', etc etc.
It's not a free service. One of them had a 2TB+ iCloud account. That has a monthly cost. Not free. The free plan only gives you 5GB storage. Apple is not an advertising company. We pay for the phone and we pay for iCloud.
https://www.wired.com/story/apple-is-an-ad-company-now/
> Oct 20, 2022 - Apple Is an Ad Company Now
> There’s a side to Apple most iPhone owners don’t know. There's Apple the hardware company, the one that has spent the past several weeks showing off new phones, a more rugged Apple Watch and some confusing new iPads. Then there’s the other, quieter Apple, focused on something of a dirty word: advertising. And that part of Apple is getting bigger by the day.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/04/14/apple-rebrands-it...
> Apr 14, 2025 - Apple rebrands its advertising business as 'Apple Ads'
> As Apple expands its advertising business, the company has renamed its former "Apple Search Ads" to "Apple Ads," reflecting the expansion of ad placement.
> Previously, when a business bought ads on the App Store, they would be suggested at the top of the search screen. In 2022, Apple began expanding its advertising practices adding slots in the Today tab and in the "You Might Also Like" slot below individual app listings.