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This feature makes use of homomorphic encryption, so apparently the photo itself can’t be “seen” by Apple’s servers.
It’s still very confusing wording as in the Settings app it states “Allow this device to privately match places in your photos with a global index maintained by Apple”, which to me implies that the device either downloads the whole index and then looks up places on-device or at least queries it online without sending any photo data, but it seems to send some encrypted and/or hashed variant of the photo(s) instead.
It seems to be done in a privacy-respecting manner, but being on by default and primarily the poor wording in the Settings app is not good.
I do think the article is a bit over-dramatic though when the author starts mentioning “that Apple computers are constantly full of privacy and security vulnerabilities”, which - while not entirely wrong - is true for basically every (complex) system.
~EDIT: fix two typos~
Interesting thank you, and thank you for linking the wiki page
What I want is very simple: I want software that doesn’t send anything to the Internet without some explicit intent first. All of that work to try to make this feature plausibly private is cool engineering work, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with implementing a feature like this, but it should absolutely be opt-in.
Top comment of HN sums me up best.
Another HN comment warns about other breach of privacy option. By default, Apple collects your searches in Safari, Siri, and Spotlight. You can disable it in Settings>Search>Help Apple Improve Search.
No suprise.
iOS and macOS, anti-libre software, fails to include a libre software license text file, like GPL. We do not control it.
lol
They really think they can scam us that easy. lmao
Who scammed you?
Apple really think Apple could scam us that easy. lmao
How did they scam you?
Try reading the comment. Blocked.
Yeah, that’s a whole lot of complaining without any explanation.
How are you scammed?
Android is “libre” everywhere yet Google violates every fucking privacy concern for 99% of Android users. Google is an ad company, not a tech company, sharing what you scream during sex with every ads company imaginable, selling your identifiable data with anyone with a thousand bucks.
Apple, on the other hand, is a hardware selling company.
If it’s so libre, fork it. iOS bans that. We don’t control it.
You don’t control Android either. You only have delusion of control over Android. And Google is willing to spend every dime to keep you disillusioned about what “free” Android really is.
It’s a mass data harvester for ads companies, and the world’s most widespread and lucratious billboard, owned by Google, for the end user concerned.
Anti-libre software never fixes this.
