
Apple's New Privacy Page - andrewgioia
https://www.apple.com/privacy/
======
jakejarvis
Don't get me wrong, I'm impressed with the progress Apple has made in
spearheading consumer privacy practices — but unfortunately, half of the
benefits listed here are negated by the fact that my iCloud backups are fully
unencrypted (or "encrypted" with a common key that Apple holds; same thing in
my view).

So, if I want convenient nightly backups (without plugging my phone in and
using the "new" Catalina apps, which I'm still convinced are just new iTunes
skins), Apple — and adversaries — will still have unfettered access to all my
iMessages, Maps history, photos, health records, almost everything listed here
and more [0][1].

Tim Cook has claimed a fix is coming for a while now [2], but meanwhile using
iCloud for its intended purpose is a _huge_ , and largely unadvertised, gaping
hole in Apple's otherwise impressive privacy promises. :(

[0] [https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/2/11144588/walt-mossberg-
app...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/2/11144588/walt-mossberg-apple-vs-fbi-
iphone-icloud-loophole)

[1] [https://www.cellebrite.com/en/productupdates/move-your-
inves...](https://www.cellebrite.com/en/productupdates/move-your-
investigations-forward-with-data-from-icloud-and-samsung-backups/)

[2] [https://www.macrumors.com/2019/02/28/eff-user-encrypted-
iclo...](https://www.macrumors.com/2019/02/28/eff-user-encrypted-icloud-
backups-apple/)

~~~
ls612
It’s largely only a hole against state level adversaries, which may not be a
realistic element of many people’s threat model.

~~~
yumraj
Or an insider at Apple.

Please refer to the recent issue regarding Saudis and Twitter.

You can argue that that was a _state level adversary_ , but the people who
accessed data could as well may have done that of their own volition.

------
084537
Apple cares more about privacy than, e.g., Google, for sure, but it is
extremely complicated to use an iOS device without an Apple ID, and Apple
employs "know your customer" logic that caused me to give up after a few hours
trying to create an Apple ID not connected with my real name and credit card.

~~~
newscracker
Not sure what you tried and from which location, but Apple doesn’t need the
real name or a valid payment method for creating an account to be used for
purchases. Such an account can be used to get all the free apps and content on
its stores.

On the other side, does stock Android allow one to use a phone without
creating a Play Store account and associating it for other services from
Google? I’m just curious how that works. I’d presume that Google doesn’t need
a payment method or one’s real name either.

~~~
californialife
I rejected buying an iPhone because I could not find reliable information
saying how to use one without an account. By contrast it's easy on Android.
Follow the "skip" path. Of course then you can't get access to the play store
for apps, but there are other sources for apps.

~~~
Terretta
You don’t need an Apple ID, you can “set up later” aka “the skip path”.

If you do need an Apple ID, say, for free apps, you can make one without real
name or ID and yes, you can get set up for free downloads from the app store
without a credit card.

The UI is no longer the same, but the approach still works from when I wrote
about this in 2011:

[https://www.engadget.com/2011/01/07/get-an-itunes-or-mac-
app...](https://www.engadget.com/2011/01/07/get-an-itunes-or-mac-app-store-
account-without-a-credit-card/)

The latest UI looks like this:

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204034](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT204034)

------
trca
Those animations videos are so well done, very pleasing to the eye to watch

~~~
rchaud
I was in the desktop site on Chrome and I didn't see any animations.

------
type0
> What you share from those experiences, and who you share it with, should be
> up to you.

They should have added this: ultimately it's up to you to trust us, you don't
control Apple devices, we do :-) and we make decisions that are best for you -
just give us money.

------
byteshock
Privacy coming from Apple is laughable. If you have an iPhone and have
location services on ( which most of us do) go to location settings and check
“system services”.

Google what those services do. They’re all for sending unnecessary location
data to Apple for analytics, which is all enabled by default.

They claim to respect your privacy, but under the hood it’s a different story.

------
dagdesheren
Privacy my ass. Allow me to setup MY phone without a ping back to the
mothership, and allow us to side-load apps or download free apps from the
store without an apple ID.

~~~
thephyber
> allow us to side-load apps

It's a _feature_ to me that I can't accidentally download an (potentially
hostile) app from a (potentially hostile) app store, but a bug.

~~~
m45t3r
> It's a feature to me that I can't accidentally download an (potentially
> hostile) app from a (potentially hostile) app store, but a bug.

I don't really understand this point. It is not like Android implementation of
side load is insecure.

As a user, you need to explicitly enable it in settings. After Android 8 I
think, each application that tries to install a application is blocked first
and need an explicitly permission too. Even with all that, you still need to
explicitly consent installation and upgrade of any sideloaded application.
Nothing is automatic.

------
byteshock
Privacy coming from Apple is laughable. If you have an iPhone and have
location services on ( which most of us do) go to location settings and check
“system services”.

Google what those services actually do. They’re all for sending unnecessary
location data to Apple for analytics, which is all enabled by default.

They claim to respect your privacy, but under the hood it’s a different story.

------
ssfrr
"Messages are only seen by who you send them to." \- Unless that person shares
an Apple ID with someone else.

I recently sent an iMessage and got a "who is this?" response. Turns out the
message went to one of their family members.

I guess they shouldn't be sharing an Apple ID, but I don't think it's a super
crazy thing to do among family members (e.g. a parent who provides a phone for
their child), and having private text messages go to the wrong person seems
like a pretty bad failure mode.

~~~
maineldc
Are you saying that 2 people logged into iMessages on 2 devices with the same
Apple ID and you want only one of those people to see an iMessage? How would
that work?

I either don't understand the scenario you are describing or I don't
understand the failure mode you mention?

~~~
ssfrr
My intended recipient doesn't actually have an iPhone (but I didn't know that
at the time). In my contacts I have both their phone number and their email
address, and I'm assuming that email is what's associated with their Apple ID.

I normally don't pay much attention to whether a message is being sent out
over iMessage or SMS, and less technical folks probably pay even less, so it's
a bad situation when those two methods end up going to different people.

That said, I'm actually not sure what the best behavior for iOS would be here
- I get that they want to use the "best" transport and send over iMessage
rather than SMS if it's available. Ideally there would be some kind of warning
if the phone number I have in my contacts doesn't match the one on the device
that's going to receive the message, but that seems finicky as well (what if I
only have their land-line?).

~~~
pfranz
How recent was this? Years ago I remember hearing the scenario where people
who switched from iPhone -> Android (keeping the same number) would continue
to have iMessages go to their old phone. Or the messages would just get lost
in the ether if their old phone was off or sold.

For awhile, at least at the Apple store, they were very deliberate about
disabling "Find my iPhone" and iMessage when handing off or wiping a phone. I
don't remember them doing this recently, so I figured it was built into the
process now.

I do think we need some basic awareness about digital devices, just like
people do when they let someone borrow the keys to their house (although, many
people are terrible at managing that). I recently sold a house with a Nest and
a few other IoT things. I wiped them and reset them to factory settings. The
realtor and new owner were asking me for my login/password (I'm sure this
happens often for them) because they figured it was still tied to my old
account.

~~~
ssfrr
This was last week. It seems like the same mechanism though, if the phone is
still tied to their Apple ID.

~~~
pfranz
I wonder if the only part that changed is now the have a user-facing way to
deactivate: [https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-
imessage/](https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/)

iMessage was launched in 2011 and archive.org shows that page first showing up
in late 2014. I remember hearing very few options for removing your old phone
early on.

------
bibbitybobbity
I don't think privacy works when I don't trust Apple period. They have done
shady anti consumer things like decreasing battery life. This feels like lip
service till I see implementation details(and even then I want to see the
code).

~~~
StevenRayOrr
When you say "implementation details", do you mean things like their Safari
Privacy White Paper[0], their Photos Tech Brief[1], their Location Services
White Paper[2], or their Apple Sign On White Paper[3]?

[0]:
[https://www.apple.com/safari/docs/Safari_White_Paper_Nov_201...](https://www.apple.com/safari/docs/Safari_White_Paper_Nov_2019.pdf)

[1]:
[https://www.apple.com/ios/photos/pdf/Photos_Tech_Brief_Sept_...](https://www.apple.com/ios/photos/pdf/Photos_Tech_Brief_Sept_2019.pdf)

[2]:
[https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Location_Services_White_P...](https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Location_Services_White_Paper_Nov_2019.pdf)

[3]:
[https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Sign_in_with_Apple_White_...](https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Sign_in_with_Apple_White_Paper_Nov_2019.pdf)

~~~
thanatos_dem
No no no, they mean things that confirm their biases.

