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).<p>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].<p>Tim Cook has claimed a fix is coming for a while now [2], but meanwhile using iCloud for its intended purpose is a <i>huge</i>, and largely unadvertised, gaping hole in Apple's otherwise impressive privacy promises. :(<p>[0] <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/2/11144588/walt-mossberg-apple-vs-fbi-iphone-icloud-loophole" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/2/11144588/walt-mossberg-app...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.cellebrite.com/en/productupdates/move-your-investigations-forward-with-data-from-icloud-and-samsung-backups/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cellebrite.com/en/productupdates/move-your-inves...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.macrumors.com/2019/02/28/eff-user-encrypted-icloud-backups-apple/" rel="nofollow">https://www.macrumors.com/2019/02/28/eff-user-encrypted-iclo...</a>
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.
> What you share from those experiences, and who you share it with, should be up to you.<p>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.
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”.<p>Google what those services do. They’re all for sending unnecessary location data to Apple for analytics, which is all enabled by default.<p>They claim to respect your privacy, but under the hood it’s a different story.
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.
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”.<p>Google what those services actually do. They’re all for sending unnecessary location data to Apple for analytics, which is all enabled by default.<p>They claim to respect your privacy, but under the hood it’s a different story.
"Messages are only seen by who you send them to." - Unless that person shares an Apple ID with someone else.<p>I recently sent an iMessage and got a "who is this?" response. Turns out the message went to one of their family members.<p>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.
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).