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The number of people in the comments complaining or finding new places to move the goalposts to is astounding. > what good is that encryption, if Apple obvious

The number of people in the comments complaining or finding new places to move the goalposts to is astounding. > what good is that encryption, if Apple obviously can do almost anything with your device? > They can still simply push a software update that sends the victim's keys to the mothership and/or simply decrypts everything > This all just seems like pandering while they continue to accept billions from Google in exchange for their user's privacy. > Couldn’t they simply use an encryption algorithm that has two private keys and they control one? Apple could say they are going to cease operations tomorrow, close down the company, and people would comment "Yeah but they could always create a new company". I guess for those people nothing is ever enough. This is a huge step forward (specifically iCloud E2EE) that I'm super excited about and people are busy coming up with threat models that 99% of us have zero use for and pretending as if this doesn't matter. It's disappointing.

smoldesu 4y ago
> It's disappointing. What's disappointing is that Apple has zero accountability for any of these services. Nobody would be so critical of iCloud if it wasn't your only sync option on iPhone, but they force everything to go through them. Apple says 'trust us ;)' and gives the user no way to confirm that they're not decrypting your data as soon as it hits their servers. The argument is the same as it's ever been. Apple took away too much of the user's control; if the iPhone were a more open platform, nobody would be squabbling over our only sync option. Edit: Background Sync has apparently been available as an API since iOS 13, but that doesn't change Apple's lack of accountability wrt security practices.
- julkali 4y ago
  FWIW, you can sync files with Nextcloud on IOS and it works fine. Also automatically syncs photos which makes it a viable alternative for cloud storage on iPhone. What it doesn't sync are things like settings, though.
  - teekert 4y ago
    Did your photo's also recently got synced to JPEG (by NC), whereas at first the heic's were uploaded? Heic works poorly in browser on other platform so JPEG is ok, would prefer heic to work everywhere though...
- canes123456 4y ago
  Apple offers local backups. Every cloud backup depends on "trust us", even if open source, externally audited, etc. They can offer a third party online sync option but that seems like functionality would open up more security holes than it fixes. You would just have bad actors convincing users to sync to their servers. If you don't trust Apple, you should also not trust other cloud back up services. Just turn off iCloud
- diarrhea 4y ago
  I’m syncing almost all data via Nextcloud. That includes actual files as well as contacts and calendars. The files are obviously on my iPhone, but not in iCloud. In fact, iOS makes CalDAV and CardDAV as easy as they could be. It’s natively supported, whereas Android requires an extra, paid for app (worth the money though). Other synchronisation like Joplin and Zotero happens via WebDAV. My iCloud is basically empty yet I have every file I could ever need on both iOS as well as iPadOS. Some apps I don’t care for sync via iCloud, that’s all so far. I’m not bought into the whole ecosystem (i.e. apps) too much though. If all you use are apps that only support iCloud, that’s a problem indeed.
  - rrix2 4y ago
    fwiw davx5 is libre licensed and available in fdroid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/at.bitfire.davdroid/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/at.bitfire.davdroid/ there is also a free fork of davx5 on Play as OpenSync: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.deependhulla.opensync&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.deependhul... agree that it should be bundled in to the system though....
- zuhsetaqi 4y ago
  > Apple took away too much of the user's control; Apple didn't took away anything. It wasn't there in the first place and never promised.
- teekert 4y ago
  The only sync option? My Pictures go to NextCloud, my contacts and calendar are on NextCloud, and in contrast to Android (I recently switched) I don't even need an app (like davx5, great app though, as said here) to sync them, it all just works from the standard contacts and calendar app. Oh and the mail app doens't push me anywhere, it just works with my local provider via IMAP. My vpn is a Wireguard server (and some Tailscale, recently tested mullvad, works great as well), my position is updated to my family via Home Assistant, Bitwarden pops up automatically anywhere I need to enter a password. Podverse is great for podcasts. Sure, it's a walled garden and I have my annoyances but much less so than I was led to believe before I got my first iPhone last year. I find it easy to swap out default components where I don't like them (like iCloud and Apple podcasts) and use them when they are superior (like the calendar and mail app, I was always trying 3rd party apps on Android).
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Does your NextCloud sync in the background like iCloud does? I don't believe third-party apps have access to background usage, unless something has changed since I last used iOS.
    - baxtr 4y ago
      That was a 5s google search. You’re welcome. https://help.nextcloud.com/t/ios-background-sync/145197 https://help.nextcloud.com/t/ios-background-sync/145197
    - sirn 4y ago
      Photos are synced in the background via location change events (and thus requiring Location permission). It can be a bit unreliable from time to time, but generally works. Contacts and calendars are synced in the background via iOS' CalDav/CardDav integration. Nextcloud app also exposed itself as file provider in Files.app, so it's possible to use it in place of iCloud Drive for apps that use the appropriate API. (Unfortunately most apps use CloudKit, which sync over iCloud.)
      - smoldesu 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
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- rootusrootus 4y ago
  I don't use iCloud for anything. Dropbox gets my pictures, Google has my contacts, 1Password handles my passwords, etc.
- ericmay 4y ago
  > The argument is the same as it's ever been. Apple took away too much of the user's control; if the iPhone were a more open platform, nobody would be squabbling over our only sync option. It's just moving the goalposts. If Apple gave you more control then people would demand that the source code for the chips be open source, or that you could stand over the shoulder of the person assembling your iPhone and make sure they don't plug in a USB drive and install some malware. It's a never-ending battle. You're just going to have to start trusting Apple and other companies, or build your own device from raw materials you mine yourself.
- gigantaure 4y ago
  > Apple took away too much of the user's control; Apple couldn't take away what it never gave in the first place. Anyone using an IOS device should have a basic understanding that Apple highly integrates their devices, OSes and services.
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  What? I sync to Google for instance and iCloud, and use Azure as well.
- threeseed 4y ago
  iPhone launched with local syncing 3 years before iCloud.
- scarface74 4y ago
  How is this the only sync option? My pictures go to iCloud, OneDrive, Google Photos and Amazon’s photo storage. My Contacts and calendar can sync with any provider that supports whatever porn standards are behind it. When I save and load files using the iOS file dialog, it shows every storage provider I have installed - Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud Drive and I assume Box if I had it.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > Nobody would be so critical of iCloud if it wasn't your only sync option on iPhone I sync my photos with Google Photos because they are a magnitude faster and more predictable than Apple's own Photos. My passwords are in 1Password. Can't really say I sync much else.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  This isn’t actually true. Yes they don’t give you personally the ability to conduct assurance on their controls. That couldn’t scale. But they do allow large corporations looking to standardize on apple tech, governments, and other like entities the opportunity to verify the controls, their effectiveness, and continued compliance. Further they generally have to attest to their controls under a variety of regulatory regimes with third party auditors verifying. Your startup may be able to weaken or circumvent your controls and no one would know. But is not true of apple.
karaterobot 4y ago
Shouldn't people demand more and more privacy protections? It's not like these changes solve the problem. Since Apple is managing so much data, they must keep it secure and give users the ability to maintain privacy and confidentiality, even with respect to Apple itself. I think the goal post has stayed pretty constant, Apple just keeps moving in a zig-zag pattern that occasionally involves backward steps.
- bdominy 4y ago
  In my experience having released an E2EE contact info sharing app, most people don't think about privacy protection and they won't tolerate much inconvenience to add them. So the more a large company supports efforts to mainstream E2EE, the better it is for everyone.
- brookst 4y ago
  > Shouldn't people demand more and more privacy protections? Yes! > It's not like these changes solve the problem. Perhaps because it is impossible to 100% solve the problem? A lot of people, me included, are just tired of the endless litany of "50% secure is not secure! 75% secure is not secure! 90% secure is not secure! 99% secure is not secure! 99.9% secure is not secure! 99.999% secure is not secure!" There is no 100%. Hearing the same level of outrage over a 0.001% gap that we heard over a 50% gap is just fatiguing. Especially in this audience, everyone knows there is no such thing as verifiable perfect security. Asymptotic progress towards that is interesting; decrying the latest improvement as no better than no security at all just feels... IDK, lazy.
AshamedCaptain 4y ago
> new places to move the goalposts "moving the goalposts"? Since when has closed source unverifiable crypto been a good idea? Since when has it been a good idea to trust a provider that fully controls the encryption algorithm to also be the only possible store for your supposedly encrypted data? This is no better than Facebook claiming that Whatsapp is now "E2EE" encrypted. It's a useless PR tactic. If you mistrust Facebook, why would you suddenly trust their unverifiable claim that the data is now E2EE? You could have an argument if at least 3rd party clients were allowed, so that you could detect when they silently change the protocol. But not even that. There's absolutely no _technical_ thing they could do to gain any trust. The goalpost has never been there.
- brookst 4y ago
  > why would you suddenly trust their unverifiable claim that the data is now E2EE > It's a useless PR tactic. Maybe because a single whistleblower would bring down the mother of all class action lawsuits? Hardcore anti-corporate types like to imagine that these companies are evil geniuses, where all 100,000 employees are operating in perfect alignment, with no mistakes or disagreements, and all secrets are kept perfectly. It just doesn't work like that. Threat model it for a second: how many more phones is Apple going to sell with this? Maybe a 1% increase, to wildly overestimate it? And what would be the financial harm from a single engineer popping on HN and saying "it's all BS, phones send the keys to the cloud, I worked on the system to store them."? > There's absolutely no _technical_ thing they could do to gain any trust. Well, that's true. But there's also no non-technical thing they could do. It is literally impossible to prove perfect technical compliance on an ongoing basis using any combination of technical and non-technical means. That goes for open source too. Evil compilers, etc, can turn perfectly solid source into malicious binaries. The compiler's source can even be perfectly secure. At some point you have to think about probabilities and motivations, and move away from this "anything not 100% perfect, which BTW is not possible, is 100% useless" world view.
  - AshamedCaptain 4y ago
    > Maybe because a single whistleblower would bring down the mother of all class action lawsuits? Sure, like that is going to happen. I mean, "Facebook can read your supposedly-encrypted Whatsapp messages" will raise how many eyebrows exactly? > But there's also no non-technical thing they could do No, that's untrue. For starters, release the source. Allow me to run my own backup software on their servers. Allow me to transparently run my own encryption before I upload stuff to their servers. And a very long etc. > anything not 100% perfect, which BTW is not possible, is 100% useless This is 100% useless not because it is not 100% perfect (it very well could be), but because it is 100% useless by conception. What threat model does this protect against exactly? The scenario where Apple servers get compromised? I'm quite sure this risk does not even enter the mind of the target audience here, and if it did, the hacker could very well push the silent update anyway. The scenario where Apple itself has access to the data? This does absolutely nothing to prevent it. The scenario where someone can social engineer an Apple employee to give your iCloud key to someone else? It was already not possible.
Blue111 4y ago
> The number of people in the comments complaining or finding new places to move the goalposts to is astounding. But why does Apple want to be the only administrator on your device? Note: "Apple Kills Its Plan To Scan Your Photos for CSAM"
josephcsible 4y ago
The issue is that it's not just that Apple "could" add client-side scanning or something tomorrow. It's that they've already tried to do so once.
Klonoar 4y ago
HN is increasingly not the best source for technical discussion due to the bias you're noting here. It's unfortunate given the general level of discussion that's historically been happening here. I find Matthew Green's take more useful than just about anything in this thread - someone who's very critical of Apple but able to articulate why this is overall net good: https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/1600567604015497216 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/16005676040154972...

smoldesu 4y ago

> It's disappointing. What's disappointing is that Apple has zero accountability for any of these services. Nobody would be so critical of iCloud if it wasn't your only sync option on iPhone, but they force everything to go through them. Apple says 'trust us ;)' and gives the user no way to confirm that they're not decrypting your data as soon as it hits their servers. The argument is the same as it's ever been. Apple took away too much of the user's control; if the iPhone were a more open platform, nobody would be squabbling over our only sync option. Edit: Background Sync has apparently been available as an API since iOS 13, but that doesn't change Apple's lack of accountability wrt security practices.

julkali 4y ago
FWIW, you can sync files with Nextcloud on IOS and it works fine. Also automatically syncs photos which makes it a viable alternative for cloud storage on iPhone. What it doesn't sync are things like settings, though.
- teekert 4y ago
  Did your photo's also recently got synced to JPEG (by NC), whereas at first the heic's were uploaded? Heic works poorly in browser on other platform so JPEG is ok, would prefer heic to work everywhere though...
canes123456 4y ago
Apple offers local backups. Every cloud backup depends on "trust us", even if open source, externally audited, etc. They can offer a third party online sync option but that seems like functionality would open up more security holes than it fixes. You would just have bad actors convincing users to sync to their servers. If you don't trust Apple, you should also not trust other cloud back up services. Just turn off iCloud
diarrhea 4y ago
I’m syncing almost all data via Nextcloud. That includes actual files as well as contacts and calendars. The files are obviously on my iPhone, but not in iCloud. In fact, iOS makes CalDAV and CardDAV as easy as they could be. It’s natively supported, whereas Android requires an extra, paid for app (worth the money though). Other synchronisation like Joplin and Zotero happens via WebDAV. My iCloud is basically empty yet I have every file I could ever need on both iOS as well as iPadOS. Some apps I don’t care for sync via iCloud, that’s all so far. I’m not bought into the whole ecosystem (i.e. apps) too much though. If all you use are apps that only support iCloud, that’s a problem indeed.
- rrix2 4y ago
  fwiw davx5 is libre licensed and available in fdroid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/at.bitfire.davdroid/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/at.bitfire.davdroid/ there is also a free fork of davx5 on Play as OpenSync: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.deependhulla.opensync&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.deependhul... agree that it should be bundled in to the system though....
zuhsetaqi 4y ago
> Apple took away too much of the user's control; Apple didn't took away anything. It wasn't there in the first place and never promised.
teekert 4y ago
The only sync option? My Pictures go to NextCloud, my contacts and calendar are on NextCloud, and in contrast to Android (I recently switched) I don't even need an app (like davx5, great app though, as said here) to sync them, it all just works from the standard contacts and calendar app. Oh and the mail app doens't push me anywhere, it just works with my local provider via IMAP. My vpn is a Wireguard server (and some Tailscale, recently tested mullvad, works great as well), my position is updated to my family via Home Assistant, Bitwarden pops up automatically anywhere I need to enter a password. Podverse is great for podcasts. Sure, it's a walled garden and I have my annoyances but much less so than I was led to believe before I got my first iPhone last year. I find it easy to swap out default components where I don't like them (like iCloud and Apple podcasts) and use them when they are superior (like the calendar and mail app, I was always trying 3rd party apps on Android).
- smoldesu 4y ago
  Does your NextCloud sync in the background like iCloud does? I don't believe third-party apps have access to background usage, unless something has changed since I last used iOS.
  - baxtr 4y ago
    That was a 5s google search. You’re welcome. https://help.nextcloud.com/t/ios-background-sync/145197 https://help.nextcloud.com/t/ios-background-sync/145197
  - sirn 4y ago
    Photos are synced in the background via location change events (and thus requiring Location permission). It can be a bit unreliable from time to time, but generally works. Contacts and calendars are synced in the background via iOS' CalDav/CardDav integration. Nextcloud app also exposed itself as file provider in Files.app, so it's possible to use it in place of iCloud Drive for apps that use the appropriate API. (Unfortunately most apps use CloudKit, which sync over iCloud.)
    - smoldesu 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rootusrootus 4y ago
I don't use iCloud for anything. Dropbox gets my pictures, Google has my contacts, 1Password handles my passwords, etc.
ericmay 4y ago
> The argument is the same as it's ever been. Apple took away too much of the user's control; if the iPhone were a more open platform, nobody would be squabbling over our only sync option. It's just moving the goalposts. If Apple gave you more control then people would demand that the source code for the chips be open source, or that you could stand over the shoulder of the person assembling your iPhone and make sure they don't plug in a USB drive and install some malware. It's a never-ending battle. You're just going to have to start trusting Apple and other companies, or build your own device from raw materials you mine yourself.
gigantaure 4y ago
> Apple took away too much of the user's control; Apple couldn't take away what it never gave in the first place. Anyone using an IOS device should have a basic understanding that Apple highly integrates their devices, OSes and services.
jjtheblunt 4y ago
What? I sync to Google for instance and iCloud, and use Azure as well.
threeseed 4y ago
iPhone launched with local syncing 3 years before iCloud.
scarface74 4y ago
How is this the only sync option? My pictures go to iCloud, OneDrive, Google Photos and Amazon’s photo storage. My Contacts and calendar can sync with any provider that supports whatever porn standards are behind it. When I save and load files using the iOS file dialog, it shows every storage provider I have installed - Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud Drive and I assume Box if I had it.
dmitriid 4y ago
> Nobody would be so critical of iCloud if it wasn't your only sync option on iPhone I sync my photos with Google Photos because they are a magnitude faster and more predictable than Apple's own Photos. My passwords are in 1Password. Can't really say I sync much else.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
This isn’t actually true. Yes they don’t give you personally the ability to conduct assurance on their controls. That couldn’t scale. But they do allow large corporations looking to standardize on apple tech, governments, and other like entities the opportunity to verify the controls, their effectiveness, and continued compliance. Further they generally have to attest to their controls under a variety of regulatory regimes with third party auditors verifying. Your startup may be able to weaken or circumvent your controls and no one would know. But is not true of apple.

karaterobot 4y ago

Shouldn't people demand more and more privacy protections? It's not like these changes solve the problem. Since Apple is managing so much data, they must keep it secure and give users the ability to maintain privacy and confidentiality, even with respect to Apple itself. I think the goal post has stayed pretty constant, Apple just keeps moving in a zig-zag pattern that occasionally involves backward steps.

bdominy 4y ago
In my experience having released an E2EE contact info sharing app, most people don't think about privacy protection and they won't tolerate much inconvenience to add them. So the more a large company supports efforts to mainstream E2EE, the better it is for everyone.
brookst 4y ago
> Shouldn't people demand more and more privacy protections? Yes! > It's not like these changes solve the problem. Perhaps because it is impossible to 100% solve the problem? A lot of people, me included, are just tired of the endless litany of "50% secure is not secure! 75% secure is not secure! 90% secure is not secure! 99% secure is not secure! 99.9% secure is not secure! 99.999% secure is not secure!" There is no 100%. Hearing the same level of outrage over a 0.001% gap that we heard over a 50% gap is just fatiguing. Especially in this audience, everyone knows there is no such thing as verifiable perfect security. Asymptotic progress towards that is interesting; decrying the latest improvement as no better than no security at all just feels... IDK, lazy.

AshamedCaptain 4y ago

> new places to move the goalposts "moving the goalposts"? Since when has closed source unverifiable crypto been a good idea? Since when has it been a good idea to trust a provider that fully controls the encryption algorithm to also be the only possible store for your supposedly encrypted data? This is no better than Facebook claiming that Whatsapp is now "E2EE" encrypted. It's a useless PR tactic. If you mistrust Facebook, why would you suddenly trust their unverifiable claim that the data is now E2EE? You could have an argument if at least 3rd party clients were allowed, so that you could detect when they silently change the protocol. But not even that. There's absolutely no _technical_ thing they could do to gain any trust. The goalpost has never been there.

brookst 4y ago
> why would you suddenly trust their unverifiable claim that the data is now E2EE > It's a useless PR tactic. Maybe because a single whistleblower would bring down the mother of all class action lawsuits? Hardcore anti-corporate types like to imagine that these companies are evil geniuses, where all 100,000 employees are operating in perfect alignment, with no mistakes or disagreements, and all secrets are kept perfectly. It just doesn't work like that. Threat model it for a second: how many more phones is Apple going to sell with this? Maybe a 1% increase, to wildly overestimate it? And what would be the financial harm from a single engineer popping on HN and saying "it's all BS, phones send the keys to the cloud, I worked on the system to store them."? > There's absolutely no _technical_ thing they could do to gain any trust. Well, that's true. But there's also no non-technical thing they could do. It is literally impossible to prove perfect technical compliance on an ongoing basis using any combination of technical and non-technical means. That goes for open source too. Evil compilers, etc, can turn perfectly solid source into malicious binaries. The compiler's source can even be perfectly secure. At some point you have to think about probabilities and motivations, and move away from this "anything not 100% perfect, which BTW is not possible, is 100% useless" world view.
- AshamedCaptain 4y ago
  > Maybe because a single whistleblower would bring down the mother of all class action lawsuits? Sure, like that is going to happen. I mean, "Facebook can read your supposedly-encrypted Whatsapp messages" will raise how many eyebrows exactly? > But there's also no non-technical thing they could do No, that's untrue. For starters, release the source. Allow me to run my own backup software on their servers. Allow me to transparently run my own encryption before I upload stuff to their servers. And a very long etc. > anything not 100% perfect, which BTW is not possible, is 100% useless This is 100% useless not because it is not 100% perfect (it very well could be), but because it is 100% useless by conception. What threat model does this protect against exactly? The scenario where Apple servers get compromised? I'm quite sure this risk does not even enter the mind of the target audience here, and if it did, the hacker could very well push the silent update anyway. The scenario where Apple itself has access to the data? This does absolutely nothing to prevent it. The scenario where someone can social engineer an Apple employee to give your iCloud key to someone else? It was already not possible.

Blue111 4y ago

> The number of people in the comments complaining or finding new places to move the goalposts to is astounding. But why does Apple want to be the only administrator on your device? Note: "Apple Kills Its Plan To Scan Your Photos for CSAM"

josephcsible 4y ago

The issue is that it's not just that Apple "could" add client-side scanning or something tomorrow. It's that they've already tried to do so once.

Klonoar 4y ago

HN is increasingly not the best source for technical discussion due to the bias you're noting here. It's unfortunate given the general level of discussion that's historically been happening here. I find Matthew Green's take more useful than just about anything in this thread - someone who's very critical of Apple but able to articulate why this is overall net good: https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/1600567604015497216 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/16005676040154972...