Apple has been analyzing your photos since September 2024

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PUBLIC DEFENDER By Brian Livingston Apple silently turned on a feature in its new iPhone iOS 18, macOS 15, and other operating systems that sends a ve
[See the full post at: Apple has been analyzing your photos since September 2024]

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IBM1130, ibe98765, bq, jburk07, Chris, fisher75, lmacri, Myst, teuhasn2, DLivesInTexas, J9438

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B. Livingston wrote:

Apple silently turned on a feature in its new iPhone iOS 18, macOS 15, and other operating systems that sends a version of every photo in your collection to a central server for “evaluation”
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But if you’ve used an Apple device with iOS 18 or a similar operating system, it long ago sent descriptions of your entire photo collection to Apple’s servers.

“Every photo” and “entire photo collection” do not appear to be correct:

First, an on-device machine learning model determines whether a photo or video in your library is likely to contain a landmark or point of interest. Then it creates a low-fidelity mathematical representation of the part of that photo that might contain the landmark, called an embedding. This embedding — not image data — is encrypted and sent to Apple servers, where it’s compared against a global list of landmarks and places that’s too big to fit on your device.

How Enhanced Visual Search protects your privacy

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AlexEiffel, wavy

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Apple goes one step farther and doesn’t associate the data sent to your Apple ID…  when I read Apple’s briefing note it sure sounds like they have made every effort for privacy and that the database of landmarks is too big for on device comparison.

In my mind their only sin was not telling people they are doing this….. it would have been easy to include an explanation and opt in screen on the 18 or 15 install.

I’m leaving it turned on…not concerning to me…

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It was also obvious in January at some of the links in this newsletter article that only details of potential landmarks are sent for matching and not all photos including little kids in bathtubs, e.g.:

Basically Apple is analyzing your photos on-device to see if there is something that looks like a landmark, calculating a hash/fingerprint vector that encodes the shape of the landmark, encrypting it (for homomorphic encryption), and adding noise (for differential privacy) and sending it to Apple’s servers where their FHE scheme allows looking up the fingerprint in a database of landmarks without revealing to Apple or anyone else what the landmark is.

Privacy of Photos app’s Enhanced Visual Search

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This would indeed explain why under that setting on the phone, there is a little description explaining that this, privately, would help you quickly find special public locations or point of interests.

Maybe I got this wrong, but it seems like your device identifies pictures that contains potential points of interests, it creates a simplified mathematical representation of it that is generic and can be compared to a database online in order to then locally identify your point of interest. This representation would not be kept on Apple servers.

It doesn’t seem as bad as it looked. Of course, you might wonder how far this could go if they decided to silently add other items of interests that could be more problematic or if they were asked to secretly use this technology to search peoples phones remotely.

 

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I think Apple in general is more focused on privacy for its end users then some. But where Apple’s lacks is in full disclosure and transparency about things. This is a company that really doesn’t act transparent about security updates either. Its like a secret society kind of company and you the end user are not always on that need to know list. I know myself trusting Apple would be easier if they would simply be more open.

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windbg, teuhasn2

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Invasion of Privacy and Use of Content to Potentially Persecute Users

Microsoft is now turning on OneDrive on new Windows 11 installs to automatically backup your private files and photos WITHOUT explicit Consent!  Same goes for most other companies like Apple and Google.

Everything in the “cloud” is not private but is scanned for certain types of allegedly illegal or copyrighted content or policy violations by Microsoft, Google, Amazon and others (unless you encrypt it first). This upload of information (photos, docs, etc.) happens AUTOMATICALLY in most cases (e.g., iCloud, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc.). Opting out is difficult as well! That’s an invasion of privacy. Unfortunately many people just don’t seem to care anymore… 

If these cloud providers think they’ve found any prohibited content, they report you so you can be arrested or sued. Putting aside the invasion of privacy, mistakes have been made in the past resulting in a police investigation of innocent people including a mother. Not to mention that your private data is subject to breaches when stored online.

There have been several court cases in the United States related to the constitutionality of cloud providers scanning customer content and reporting potential illegal material to law enforcement authorities. However, there is no definitive ruling from the Supreme Court on this issue, and the decisions from lower courts have been mixed.

Some countries have laws limiting or prohibiting cloud platforms from scanning customer content without consent. The USA “land of the free” is not one of them.

Legislation in the USA is needed to better delineate privacy boundaries for the cloud era. Mistakes and overreach violate civil liberties.

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jburk07, wavy, rbailin, gwt10

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Intrepid wrote:

Microsoft is now turning on OneDrive on new Windows 11 installs to automatically backup your private files and photos WITHOUT explicit Consent!

Installer presents a choice:

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Thanks. They must have added that recently. I tested this last July and filed a complaint with Microsoft and they responded.

 

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b wrote:

Intrepid wrote:

Microsoft is now turning on OneDrive on new Windows 11 installs to automatically backup your private files and photos WITHOUT explicit Consent!

Installer presents a choice:

And then OneDrive gets mysteriously turned back on without your consent.

For those who don’t want OneDrive, the best way to deal with it is to block it or even uninstall it, ahead of time.

Then periodically check to see if it’s been reinstalled after every patch Tuesday to see if it’s come back or not.

Vigilance is the key, unfortunately…

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windbg, teuhasn2

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Apple does offer an ‘Advanced data protection’ feature.  All of your data in iCloud is encrypted on device before being uploaded to iCloud. Apple does not have access nor does law enforcement. They don’t have the encryption key.

I’m tempted but hesitant. If you lose access to your devices or apple account all of your data is gone…  (I do back up my data on my own but it would be far less convenient to restore and set up my devices)

Alternatively, if you use the default setting the iCloud data is end to end encrypted, and resides in an encrypted state on their servers but apple has the encryption key.  So.. they can get your data back if there is a problem. Law enforcement can gain access via a warrant..

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Guess that itty-bitty Powershot pocket camera I bought was a smart investment.  Far as I know, that data stays on the memory card.

"War is the remedy our enemies have chosen. And I say let us give them all they want" ----- William T. Sherman

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A thought on these privacy breaches and the punishments received…

Apple’s net worth is $3.27 trillion.  Does anyone really thing a paltry $95 million fine is going to even be noticed.  That’s a measly 0.003% of net.

These big companies need to be hit with appropriate fines when they harm our security.  How about $3.3 billion dollars instead, divided amongst everyone who was affected.   That would make them think twice in the board meetings when they discuss stealing peoples data.

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WSbobby-p, teuhasn2, Intrepid

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@KevSpa

I own Apple products and like much about what the company does, but you are so right. We are playing with a deck that is stacked, and not in our favor. It’s Robber Baron Era II. Corporations are running the show. I hope there’s a correction back to balance and normalcy soon.

 

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WSbobby-p

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THANK YOU, BRIAN!

I knew there was more than one reason I am still on iOS 17.2. Please, Apple, return to your previous respect for my privacy! And my settings!

Today, OSX Daily reports that latest versions of Mac and iOS updates will also enable future automatic updates. Like Will’s comment about the Microsoft “poll” on Copilot, I don’t think this is an April Fool’s Day joke.

https://osxdaily.com/2025/04/01/psa-automatic-update-enables-itself-with-macos-sequoia-15-4-ios-18-4/

My current plan remains to skip the updates and keep as much PII as possible off my devices and out of all “clouds” which are server farms, god-knows-where. Call me a Luddite if you wish.

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ClearThunder wrote:

Guess that itty-bitty Powershot pocket camera I bought was a smart investment. Far as I know, that data stays on the memory card.

Way to go, it may sound incredible but I’ve never used any of my cell phones to take a picture.  I have a small Sony digital camera that I bought in 2007 and I have it set to three megapixels.  Not only is it secure, my “snapshots” only use an average of 650 KB per picture, not 6 or 7 Megabytes that today’s smartphones do.

Being 20 something in the 70's was far more fun than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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windbg

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