Any thoughts on apple announcing they will begin e2e encryption on iCloud backups soon?
iCloud as a backup system is quite seamless but the fact that it was not encrypted was always a big issue for me. I haven’t been able to find quite a seamless backup option since switching my personal device to graphene (my work phone continues to be an iPhone)
As it’s closed source, I guess we still have to take their word for it, but seems unlikely they’d lie about this.
Don't get me wrong. I love my iPhone hardware more than Pixel. I put up with the walled garden. The recent revelations about Apple tracking its users and the vpn leaking has pushed me to GrapheneOS.
As much as i like Apple-i have some ios mobile devices and these things just work-but whether the backup is encrypted or not is not a diffrence. Most of the data about the user they get whenever he uses the devices. If they only collect that and combine it, it is easy to tell what will probably be in your backups.
Also with their scanning on device approach is a hint to that. That is not Apple alone, Google does the same with their integration of live text for audio, foto scanning for text and faces, and so on. It looks convenient in first place, just like the ios ecosystem, but in the end it is all about collection of data.
What does it help to encrypt your contacts for example. I can do that, but about 100% of the people i call do not. So at their end, all my encryption would be useless. Same goes for pictures. You can hide yours from the companies, but your friends and colleagues will take a picture of you once in a while and then it ends in the big scanning wheel.
I have no doubts that the intelligence services have their foot in this and sooner or later they will have personal data about anybody in real time.
The only solution then is, that anybody either does not use the internet for personal information (might never happen), or people shift to degoogled and deappled devices like Graphene and others (giving up a lot of nanny software that keeps them hooked like a slot machine), or anybody will live in a totalitarian world.
This is not something the individual can prevent or run away from. Depending on what the masses will do, in the end, just abandon everything digital might make us free again.
applesbana
I wonder how many users haven't known that iCloud wasn't and isn't end to end encrypted. Apple gave many times impression that your back ups are save. Even now they wrote in
https://support.apple.com/guide/security/advanced-data-protection-for-icloud-sec973254c5f/web
that Apple will create checksums of your files, ie. Apple knows what you put in your iCloud and can easily cross check this data with data of other users.
It is important to remember that Apple wanted, started and pushed CSAM scanning on YOUR device, not in cloud, but on YOUR device, and Apple delayed this privacy abuse only after backlash from users. Even though as it was shown from the leaked e-mails from Apple executives they actually laughed and dismissed users privacy concerns with the statement that Apple should ignore "screeching voice of the minority". This defines Apple for me similarly as the notorious fragment from Mark Zuckerberg's e-mail where he wrote about Facebook users "they trust me the dumb fucks".
It is crucial to judge these companies not on their PR, but on what they are actually doing. Apple's execs always say in unisono, privacy is a human right, yet they colaborate with China's goverment, help China to punish disidents there - always remove from App store thoses apps that are helpful for the minorities there, because if there is a choice between money and privacy, all values are nonexistent and money is the priority. Funnily enough Google - which is usually laughed at for their privacy practices - was in the same position in China and Google rather left than to stay and cooperate with Chinese goverment.
If I would want privacy, I wouldn't step into monitored garden.
I was living in China when the famous San Bernardino Apple vs. FBI case was going on. Apple made a good business choice to fight the FBI on that. It gave them an almost unquestionable pro customer privacy reputation in the US. Apple has pushed their claim that they have super safe everything. Super safe phones, super safe computers, super safe infrastructure.
While Apple was the champion of customers' right to privacy in the West, Apple was quietly moving all Chinese users' data to local server farms run by a local company with ties to the Chinese Government. Apple claimed that only they, Apple, held the encryption keys, but of course that's total BS since Apple moved the data to China to comply with Chinese laws. There's no way they'd comply with only some of the laws (China has some encryption laws that basically say encryption is advised only as long as the government can access the data). At the same time Apple was actively removing apps from the App Store and removing the Taiwanese flag from phones. And when the CSAM scanning stuff blew up, Apple expects people to believe that it's "impossible" for them or governments to add other photos, like Tank Man, to the database. Yeah right.
That's just China, but I recall reading Apple also bends over backwards to not make other authoritarian governments angry. It makes me wonder how their E2EE is going to work in other countries, if at all.
True, Apple makes its money by selling hardware and collecting a cut of App Store purchases. They don't have the same kind of business model as Google or Facebook. So, can we trust them? I guess it all depends on where you are. I kind of feel since their software is all closed source and since they can't be trusted in certain countries around the world, I wouldn't trust them anywhere.
I like their "privacy" push from the past few years, but they still collect data on you. Graphene simply doesn't and it gives me peace of mind and it works great for me.
