Comment by JustExAWS
1 month ago
When iCloud syncs between devices how do you think that happens without storing some type of metadata?
You don’t use iCloud for anything? When you change phones do you start fresh or use your computer for backups? Do sync bookmarks? Browsing history?
Do you use iMessage?
In response to your question in the parent comment, no, I do not use iCloud. And I do not sync any of the things you mentioned here. If someone already consented to using iCloud to store their photos then I would not consider the service mentioned this post to be such a big issue, because Apple would already have the data on their servers with the user's consent.
edit: I will just add, even if we accept the argument that it's extremely secure and impossible to leak information, then where do we draw the line between "extremely secure" and "somewhat secure" and "not secure at all"? Should we trust Apple to make this decision for us?
> If someone already consented to using iCloud to store their photos then I would not consider the service mentioned this post to be such a big issue, because Apple would already have the data on their servers with the user's consent.
No, if you enable Advanced Data Protection for iCloud[1], the photos stored in Apple Photos are end to end encrypted.
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/108756
Do you start fresh with an iOS installation after each upgrade or do you back up your iPhone using your computer and iTunes?
I do not have anything backed up on any cloud servers on any provider. If I had to buy a new phone I would start from a fresh installation and move all of my data locally. It's not that I'm a "luddite", I just couldn't keep track of all of the different ways each cloud provider was managing my data, so I disabled all of them.
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None of that is relevant to my point. You seem to be trying to catch people in some kind of gotcha instead of engaging honestly with the problem at hand. But alright, I’ll bite.
Yes, I always start with clean installs, both on iOS and on macOS. Sometimes I even restart fresh on the same device, as I make sure my hardware lasts. I don’t sync bookmarks, I keep them in Pinboard and none of them has any private or remotely identifiable information anyway. I don’t care about saving browser history either, in fact I have it set to periodically auto-clear, which is a feature in Safari.
No I am trying to say with a connected device using online services, the service provider is going to have access to your data that you use to interact with them.
To a first approximation, everyone in 2024 expects their data and settings to be transferred across devices.
People aren’t working as if it is 2010 when you had to backup and restore devices via iTunes. If I’m out of town somewhere and my phone gets lost, damaged or stolen, I can buy another iPhone, log into my account and everything gets restored as it was.
Just as I expect my watch progress to work when I use Netflix between my phone, iPad, Roku devices etc.
And that should rightfully be your informed choice. Just like everyone else should have the right to know what data their devices are sending before it happens and be given the informed choice to refuse. People shouldn’t have to learn that from a random blog post shared on a random website.
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Some iOS apps synchronize data with standard protocols (e.g. IMAP, WebDAV, CalDAV) to cloud or self-hosted services.
And that doesn’t help with internally stored data within apps, settings, which apps you have installed on what screen, passwords, etc
iOS supports local device backups.
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