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> If anything, Apple ought to comment simply because it markets itself as a company that cares about your privacy. The clue is in this sentence. The privacy is

> If anything, Apple ought to comment simply because it markets itself as a company that cares about your privacy. The clue is in this sentence. The privacy is marketing. Seeking an explanation from them reeks of coping desparation, but not unexpected if you have bought heavily into it. I'd say this could be a lesson for many, but looking at similar past incidents with them, I am not very hopeful.

khazhoux 2y ago
I worked there for years, and privacy was taken very very seriously. It was in the DNA of every project I saw. There was open contempt for companies that extract value from your personal information.
- busymom0 2y ago
  > There was open contempt for companies that extract value from your personal information. Maybe back in the day. However, for the last few years, Apple is in the business of personalized ads in App Store, Apple News, and Stocks etc. So they do "extract value from your personal information" just like other companies such as Facebook, Google etc.
  - TechRemarker 2y ago
    Apple offers personalized ads, but as you can see from all their quarterly results, that is not their business but rather a tiny portion compared to companies such as Meta and Google that advertising is their business. Apple shows what they do with your data even at a per app level: https://www.apple.com/privacy/labels/ https://www.apple.com/privacy/labels/ as well as reviewing Apple's Privacy Policy vs Meta/Google and see they are night and day from those companies. Again this doesn't make Apple better/good, and others worse/bad, as that depends on who one is and what they value. For instance Google offers far superior services in many aspects than Apple because they take advantage of all that customer data in ways Apple chooses not to. > Maybe back in the day Assuming you may not be an Apple customer or familiar with all the constant flow of new features in the current day Apple has been releasing focusing on Privacy. https://www.apple.com/privacy/ https://www.apple.com/privacy/
    - busymom0 2y ago
      Do they "extract value from your personal information"? Answer is yes. Also, the App Store ads further help increase apple's cut from in app purchases. So one must look at ads + App Store revenue together imo.
  - sathomasga 2y ago
    If the ads that Apple shows me in the App Store, Apple News, etc. are supposed to be personalized, then Apple is really, _really,_ *really* bad at personalization. They're clearly not extracting any meaningul private information (or public information, for that matter) about me at the moment.
- brokenmachine 2y ago
  So how do you explain the lack of transparency on this issue from Apple? One person wiped their device as per Apple's instructions, sold it, and the new buyer had the seller's old photos appear on the device! https://undelete.pullpush.io/r/ios/comments/1cspwh2/my_old_photos_appeared_on_an_ipad_i_sold/ https://undelete.pullpush.io/r/ios/comments/1cspwh2/my_old_p... Wiping it should have deleted the encryption keys off that device and destroyed all data, no? A single handwavy comment about "database corruption" is not enough for such a gigantic issue.
  - turquoisevar 2y ago
    Our friend above is likely under NDA, so they won’t be able to comment on intricacies. Luckily, I am not under an NDA, and I can tell you that the Reddit post is nonsense. A straight-up lie when you assume bad faith or poor recollection if you assume good faith. The scenario described there, and further expanded upon by OP in comments is pretty much impossible. I hedge only because of an astronomical unlikely probability that everything in the universe aligned perfectly. As you seem to be aware, encryption keys are involved, and that involvement lies at the root of the impossibility. Say you’re inclined to believe that the Secure Enclave that stores this key has a massive bug that doesn’t delete the key upon wiping. That alone wouldn’t explain a scenario like that. In addition to not deleting that key, the OS must’ve been unable to detect and try to use that key until some serious potent code was introduced in 17.5. Also, during the wipe, the encrypted data partition that goes with the key must’ve not been deleted and gone unnoticed by the OS up until 17.5. In addition, the OS must’ve kept the key intact, and ignored the existence of the encrypted data partition. Creating a new encrypted data partition with an accompanying key and acting as if it was all business as usual. Then, suddenly, 17.5 comes around. It would have to have seen two encrypted data partitions with two encryption keys, mounted the most recent encrypted data partition, and decrypted it with the most recent encryption key without any issues and hiccups, only to then do something quite miraculous. It would, at that point, do something that it was never designed to do, namely decrypt and mount the old data partition, all while the most recent one is already mounted, grab only a bunch of old photos from a corrupted database, nothing to else, and merge it into the database located on the most recent data partition. All this while ignoring many complexities related to key pairs tied to iCloud accounts that I’ve omitted for simplicity’s sake and without throwing up a single error, much less a respring or, more likely, a kernel panic. Just the part about mounting two partitions alone would cause huge issues. It’s nearly impossible to do this on purpose due to hardware limitations on storage and the way the Secure Enclave works. To entertain a string of bugs that would execute this perfectly is just silly. Who needs jailbreakers and the likes of Pegasus spending hours designing chain exploits when the OS stumbles into perfectly executed bugs that defy the law of physics?
dmix 2y ago
Apple has made plenty of solid tangible contributions to privacy on both Mac and iOS. It's not fair to say it's all just marketing.
TechRemarker 2y ago
> The privacy is marketing. That makes 0 sense. If that were the case all their privacy efforts would simply be words in marketing / advertising, vs built into every single product and service they offer from the ground up. In the short term, there jobs would be 100% easier and more lucrative to not focus so much on privacy. Easier development, easier not having to fight back the government, and when data gets sold/compromised, they could just say that happens in all other companies (not focused on privacy), so they are no different. Instead they go to ungodly amounts to make it core to their company. That doesn't mean they are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. There business isn't based on advertising (like Google and Facebook) fortunately, so in the long terms their pro-consumer privacy rights, brings them in more money so they are able to still meet their fiscal obligations after a publicly traded company. Facebook and Google's business are built around advertising and selling customer data, so for them, privacy is much more about marketing since making it core would counter their entire current business model. Of course even with them, it's not just marketing, since privacy is fiscally beneficial just to far less extent.
- talldayo 2y ago
  > easier not having to fight back the government You have a lot of work to do convincing anyone that's the case: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-secretly-giving-governments-push-notification-data/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...

khazhoux 2y ago

I worked there for years, and privacy was taken very very seriously. It was in the DNA of every project I saw. There was open contempt for companies that extract value from your personal information.

busymom0 2y ago
> There was open contempt for companies that extract value from your personal information. Maybe back in the day. However, for the last few years, Apple is in the business of personalized ads in App Store, Apple News, and Stocks etc. So they do "extract value from your personal information" just like other companies such as Facebook, Google etc.
- TechRemarker 2y ago
  Apple offers personalized ads, but as you can see from all their quarterly results, that is not their business but rather a tiny portion compared to companies such as Meta and Google that advertising is their business. Apple shows what they do with your data even at a per app level: https://www.apple.com/privacy/labels/ https://www.apple.com/privacy/labels/ as well as reviewing Apple's Privacy Policy vs Meta/Google and see they are night and day from those companies. Again this doesn't make Apple better/good, and others worse/bad, as that depends on who one is and what they value. For instance Google offers far superior services in many aspects than Apple because they take advantage of all that customer data in ways Apple chooses not to. > Maybe back in the day Assuming you may not be an Apple customer or familiar with all the constant flow of new features in the current day Apple has been releasing focusing on Privacy. https://www.apple.com/privacy/ https://www.apple.com/privacy/
  - busymom0 2y ago
    Do they "extract value from your personal information"? Answer is yes. Also, the App Store ads further help increase apple's cut from in app purchases. So one must look at ads + App Store revenue together imo.
- sathomasga 2y ago
  If the ads that Apple shows me in the App Store, Apple News, etc. are supposed to be personalized, then Apple is really, _really,_ *really* bad at personalization. They're clearly not extracting any meaningul private information (or public information, for that matter) about me at the moment.
brokenmachine 2y ago
So how do you explain the lack of transparency on this issue from Apple? One person wiped their device as per Apple's instructions, sold it, and the new buyer had the seller's old photos appear on the device! https://undelete.pullpush.io/r/ios/comments/1cspwh2/my_old_photos_appeared_on_an_ipad_i_sold/ https://undelete.pullpush.io/r/ios/comments/1cspwh2/my_old_p... Wiping it should have deleted the encryption keys off that device and destroyed all data, no? A single handwavy comment about "database corruption" is not enough for such a gigantic issue.
- turquoisevar 2y ago
  Our friend above is likely under NDA, so they won’t be able to comment on intricacies. Luckily, I am not under an NDA, and I can tell you that the Reddit post is nonsense. A straight-up lie when you assume bad faith or poor recollection if you assume good faith. The scenario described there, and further expanded upon by OP in comments is pretty much impossible. I hedge only because of an astronomical unlikely probability that everything in the universe aligned perfectly. As you seem to be aware, encryption keys are involved, and that involvement lies at the root of the impossibility. Say you’re inclined to believe that the Secure Enclave that stores this key has a massive bug that doesn’t delete the key upon wiping. That alone wouldn’t explain a scenario like that. In addition to not deleting that key, the OS must’ve been unable to detect and try to use that key until some serious potent code was introduced in 17.5. Also, during the wipe, the encrypted data partition that goes with the key must’ve not been deleted and gone unnoticed by the OS up until 17.5. In addition, the OS must’ve kept the key intact, and ignored the existence of the encrypted data partition. Creating a new encrypted data partition with an accompanying key and acting as if it was all business as usual. Then, suddenly, 17.5 comes around. It would have to have seen two encrypted data partitions with two encryption keys, mounted the most recent encrypted data partition, and decrypted it with the most recent encryption key without any issues and hiccups, only to then do something quite miraculous. It would, at that point, do something that it was never designed to do, namely decrypt and mount the old data partition, all while the most recent one is already mounted, grab only a bunch of old photos from a corrupted database, nothing to else, and merge it into the database located on the most recent data partition. All this while ignoring many complexities related to key pairs tied to iCloud accounts that I’ve omitted for simplicity’s sake and without throwing up a single error, much less a respring or, more likely, a kernel panic. Just the part about mounting two partitions alone would cause huge issues. It’s nearly impossible to do this on purpose due to hardware limitations on storage and the way the Secure Enclave works. To entertain a string of bugs that would execute this perfectly is just silly. Who needs jailbreakers and the likes of Pegasus spending hours designing chain exploits when the OS stumbles into perfectly executed bugs that defy the law of physics?

dmix 2y ago

Apple has made plenty of solid tangible contributions to privacy on both Mac and iOS. It's not fair to say it's all just marketing.

TechRemarker 2y ago

> The privacy is marketing. That makes 0 sense. If that were the case all their privacy efforts would simply be words in marketing / advertising, vs built into every single product and service they offer from the ground up. In the short term, there jobs would be 100% easier and more lucrative to not focus so much on privacy. Easier development, easier not having to fight back the government, and when data gets sold/compromised, they could just say that happens in all other companies (not focused on privacy), so they are no different. Instead they go to ungodly amounts to make it core to their company. That doesn't mean they are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. There business isn't based on advertising (like Google and Facebook) fortunately, so in the long terms their pro-consumer privacy rights, brings them in more money so they are able to still meet their fiscal obligations after a publicly traded company. Facebook and Google's business are built around advertising and selling customer data, so for them, privacy is much more about marketing since making it core would counter their entire current business model. Of course even with them, it's not just marketing, since privacy is fiscally beneficial just to far less extent.

talldayo 2y ago
> easier not having to fight back the government You have a lot of work to do convincing anyone that's the case: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-secretly-giving-governments-push-notification-data/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...