5 ms·

Privacy of Photos.app's Enhanced Visual Search

19 points by latexr 2y ago

sillywalk 2y ago
related/previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42533685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42533685 Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15(https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2024/12/3.html https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2024/12/3.html) 1298 points|latexr|4 days ago|965 comments
whartung 2y ago
I don't understand what this new functionality is. I'm still on 17.x, and if I ask it to show me pictures from Angels Stadium, I get pictures from Angels Stadium. Mind, I have no idea how it "knew" I was at Angels Stadium when I took the picture. Apple Maps certainly knows where Angels Stadium is. So I'm just not quite sure what this new function is bringing to the table?
- dialup_sounds 2y ago
  As far as I can tell, "Enhanced Visual Search" is the same thing as what Google Photos calls "Estimate missing locations"[1]. In absence of GPS coordinates added by the camera, it "estimates your location from information such as landmarks and locations in your other photos". [1] Settings > Privacy > Location Options > Estimate missing locations
thisislife2 2y ago
The worse part of this is that since I am in a developing country, where laws on privacy are quite lax, Apple can just abuse us - I was going through all the privacy settings again today on my mom's iPhone 13, and noticed that Apple / ios had re-enabled this feature silently (enhanced visual search in Photos app), even though I had explicitly disabled it after reading about it here on HN, the last time. This isn't the first time something like this has happened - her phone is not signed into iMessage, and to ensure Apple doesn't have access to her SMS / RCS, I've also disabled "Filter messages from unknown senders". Two times, over a period of roughly a year, I find that this feature has silently been enabled again. Obviously, this sounds like a crazy rant, and that's how Apple gets away with it. (After all, it's just my word - how exactly can I prove this? And no, unless Apple is installing silent updates, this isn't happening during ios updates because I check the Settings with a fine comb after every update to see if Apple has reset it. When pushed, "bugs", ofcourse, will be the ready made excuse offered, just as they did when they broke all application firewalls, like Little Snitch, on macOS, to allow macOS and Apple programs to again silently contact and transfer information without the users knowledge.) The way Android and ios (and even Windows and macOS) are designed today, Google, Apple and Microsoft can remotely access and control our devices. One would think that Mozilla's widespread abuse of its users by running silent "studies" on Firefox browser, without its users knowledge, would have lead to some real outrage and meaningful political action to prevent this behaviour (https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-touting-mozilla-caught-shoving-mr-robot-add-on-into-firefox/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-touting-mozilla-caught... - https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-touting-mozilla-caught-shoving-mr-robot-add-on-into-firefox/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-touting-mozilla-caught... ) ... Sigh.
- mingus88 2y ago
  I quit Facebook in 2014 for the same reason. Their privacy settings were regularly reverted and it became clear that their business model and my privacy were not compatible. Apple “gets away with it“ because people pay them for it. Apple is not a data broker. Their business model is to sell expensive hardware that people want to buy. It’s a fundamentally different relationship than the likes of Equifax or Doubleclick/Google who will abuse us and our data and we never agreed to it or have any control over it.
mingus88 2y ago
> What I want is very simple: I want software that doesn’t send anything to the Internet without some explicit intent first. At the risk of blaming the victim, it just seems so strange that in 2025 we are still having this discussion. If you are a privacy minded individual, you simply shouldn’t use social media, cloud services, or smartphones without severe restrictions. We simply cannot trust or rely on any of these companies to act in every one of our interests at once. I use my iPhone for sharing photos with my family. I also have a dedicated digital camera that is 100% always offline that I use occasionally for things I never ever want to touch the internet. I read a ton online, but I also have an e-reader that I keep in airplane mode and only load with calibre locally. Same thing with a laptop I keep offline for managing root certificates and keys I never want to worry about leaking. These articles that reverse engineer the policies of photos.app are interesting but honestly the smartphone is yet another device we don’t fully own. It’s designed to be always online running software we don’t control. If you want actual privacy you have to take matters into your own hands. Even Apple, who I believe has good intentions and some of the best privacy practices and transparency of all the big firms, is still going to do it their way for their benefit. Photos.app will always be hooked deep into Apple services, and we should expect the same for anything Apple ships. if you don’t want to talk to Apple services, just use something else.
- latexr 2y ago
  You are blaming the victim. For one, smartphones are becoming indispensable to interact with society. Just the other day there was a submission on HN about replacing passports with smartphone apps, and today we already experience the situation where banks mostly focus on smartphone apps. For another, the more this crap goes unchecked, the more companies will do it. It’s already hard to find TVs without smart connectivity, let alone at competitive prices. “Smart” internet-connected appliances are coming out all the time and replacing the perfectly fictional “dumb” ones. You’re acting like the parable of “they came for <group> and I did not speak”. You’re already having to perform inconvenient steps and ignoring the people who don’t have the technical chops or time for it. We should stave off these privacy invasions as soon as we can, not shrug our shoulders and reduce our options ever more until there is literally nothing else.

19 points by latexr 2y ago

related/previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42533685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42533685 Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15(https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2024/12/3.html https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2024/12/3.html) 1298 points|latexr|4 days ago|965 comments

whartung 2y ago

I don't understand what this new functionality is. I'm still on 17.x, and if I ask it to show me pictures from Angels Stadium, I get pictures from Angels Stadium. Mind, I have no idea how it "knew" I was at Angels Stadium when I took the picture. Apple Maps certainly knows where Angels Stadium is. So I'm just not quite sure what this new function is bringing to the table?

dialup_sounds 2y ago
As far as I can tell, "Enhanced Visual Search" is the same thing as what Google Photos calls "Estimate missing locations"[1]. In absence of GPS coordinates added by the camera, it "estimates your location from information such as landmarks and locations in your other photos". [1] Settings > Privacy > Location Options > Estimate missing locations

thisislife2 2y ago

The worse part of this is that since I am in a developing country, where laws on privacy are quite lax, Apple can just abuse us - I was going through all the privacy settings again today on my mom's iPhone 13, and noticed that Apple / ios had re-enabled this feature silently (enhanced visual search in Photos app), even though I had explicitly disabled it after reading about it here on HN, the last time. This isn't the first time something like this has happened - her phone is not signed into iMessage, and to ensure Apple doesn't have access to her SMS / RCS, I've also disabled "Filter messages from unknown senders". Two times, over a period of roughly a year, I find that this feature has silently been enabled again. Obviously, this sounds like a crazy rant, and that's how Apple gets away with it. (After all, it's just my word - how exactly can I prove this? And no, unless Apple is installing silent updates, this isn't happening during ios updates because I check the Settings with a fine comb after every update to see if Apple has reset it. When pushed, "bugs", ofcourse, will be the ready made excuse offered, just as they did when they broke all application firewalls, like Little Snitch, on macOS, to allow macOS and Apple programs to again silently contact and transfer information without the users knowledge.) The way Android and ios (and even Windows and macOS) are designed today, Google, Apple and Microsoft can remotely access and control our devices. One would think that Mozilla's widespread abuse of its users by running silent "studies" on Firefox browser, without its users knowledge, would have lead to some real outrage and meaningful political action to prevent this behaviour (https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-touting-mozilla-caught-shoving-mr-robot-add-on-into-firefox/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-touting-mozilla-caught... - https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-touting-mozilla-caught-shoving-mr-robot-add-on-into-firefox/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-touting-mozilla-caught... ) ... Sigh.

mingus88 2y ago
I quit Facebook in 2014 for the same reason. Their privacy settings were regularly reverted and it became clear that their business model and my privacy were not compatible. Apple “gets away with it“ because people pay them for it. Apple is not a data broker. Their business model is to sell expensive hardware that people want to buy. It’s a fundamentally different relationship than the likes of Equifax or Doubleclick/Google who will abuse us and our data and we never agreed to it or have any control over it.

mingus88 2y ago

> What I want is very simple: I want software that doesn’t send anything to the Internet without some explicit intent first. At the risk of blaming the victim, it just seems so strange that in 2025 we are still having this discussion. If you are a privacy minded individual, you simply shouldn’t use social media, cloud services, or smartphones without severe restrictions. We simply cannot trust or rely on any of these companies to act in every one of our interests at once. I use my iPhone for sharing photos with my family. I also have a dedicated digital camera that is 100% always offline that I use occasionally for things I never ever want to touch the internet. I read a ton online, but I also have an e-reader that I keep in airplane mode and only load with calibre locally. Same thing with a laptop I keep offline for managing root certificates and keys I never want to worry about leaking. These articles that reverse engineer the policies of photos.app are interesting but honestly the smartphone is yet another device we don’t fully own. It’s designed to be always online running software we don’t control. If you want actual privacy you have to take matters into your own hands. Even Apple, who I believe has good intentions and some of the best privacy practices and transparency of all the big firms, is still going to do it their way for their benefit. Photos.app will always be hooked deep into Apple services, and we should expect the same for anything Apple ships. if you don’t want to talk to Apple services, just use something else.

latexr 2y ago
You are blaming the victim. For one, smartphones are becoming indispensable to interact with society. Just the other day there was a submission on HN about replacing passports with smartphone apps, and today we already experience the situation where banks mostly focus on smartphone apps. For another, the more this crap goes unchecked, the more companies will do it. It’s already hard to find TVs without smart connectivity, let alone at competitive prices. “Smart” internet-connected appliances are coming out all the time and replacing the perfectly fictional “dumb” ones. You’re acting like the parable of “they came for <group> and I did not speak”. You’re already having to perform inconvenient steps and ignoring the people who don’t have the technical chops or time for it. We should stave off these privacy invasions as soon as we can, not shrug our shoulders and reduce our options ever more until there is literally nothing else.