
Apple Employee Threatens to Leak User’s iCloud Data - ytch
http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1001890/apple-employee-threatens-to-leak-users-icloud-data
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threwaway-1
Something about this article feels "off", as if it were a fabricated and
unsubstantiated story meant purely to sow uncertainty over the integrity of
Apple's security in China. It felt off enough that I bothered to look into who
this "sixth tone" publication is and create a throw-away -- according to
foreignpolicy.com[1], it's affiliated with and at least partially funded by
the state-owned Shanghai United Media Group.

[1] [http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/03/china-explained-sixth-
to...](http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/03/china-explained-sixth-tone-is-
chinas-latest-party-approved-outlet-humanizing-news/)

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jtbayly
So what's your takeaway? I would assume that the last thing the state would
want to do is sow uncertainty about Apple's security in China. This would lead
me to the conclusion that the story is real.

However, I can imagine another scenario. Assume that Apple's storage in China
is still entirely safe from the state, but that Apple's main competitors are
totally in bed with the state. In that case, the state could want to get
people off of Apple, even as Apple moves the data into China.

~~~
threwaway-1
The latter would be my takeaway as well, based on how effectively Google's
search technology was extricated from China -- to Baidu's and the surveillance
state's benefit, despite the results from Baidu being about as effective at
finding useful information as AltaVista was at the end of it's reign.

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sjroot
(Assuming this is a true story) this is very unsettling and makes me anxious,
not only for the Chinese people but also for companies that do business there.

 _" I’m really curious why you don’t want to use Guizhou-Cloud Big Data’s
service," the technical advisor asked Qin during their recorded conversation._

This quote in particular made me cringe. If you haven't read the article,
Guizhou-Cloud Big Data is a state-owned service where Chinese customers'
iCloud data is now stored. The terminated Apple employee was implying that
that Qin had something to hide, and regardless of whether that is true, Qin
will surely end up on a government watch list after this ordeal.

Chinese HNers - what is the attitude over there in light of this and recent
actions taken by Xi Jinping and the communist party?

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creator_lol
Chinese government must be just delighted with all of the data that they soon
will have access too from the US instance of iCloud coming to China. There is
so much information that people don't know that gets synced to iCloud. I am
constantly finding stuff that automatically get turn on after every OS update
from Apple.

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huebnerob
Only the Chinese users data is transferring to Chinese servers, not all of
iCloud.

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gumby
I don't understand this -- this "article" doesn't actually say that the Apple
employee had access to the customer's private data, only that the employee
made threats.

If the threats were credible that would be a big deal.

~~~
ytch
From the original post at Weibo (link in this article) in Chinese, the
affected user also claims the Apple customer support logged in his iCloud
account, since he receiving a login notification from Apple.

