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Safari is sending every search query to Apple
- steeve 12y agoSo nowadays Apple is posing itself as the champion of privacy, and yet they pull this shit...
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- privong 12y agoThe gist summary on TFA says: > even if you've disabled all use of Spotlight Suggestions and sharing of Usage and Diagnostics data
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- wilg 12y agopraseodym is pointing out that there are two checkboxes called "Spotlight Suggestions". One in System Preferences, and one in Safari. It's unclear which OP unchecked. Screenshots of the two options: http://imgur.com/a/TWDxy http://imgur.com/a/TWDxy
- praseodym 12y agoHad deleted my original comment because OP mentioned "all use of Spotlight Suggestions", so I assumed that OP did uncheck the Safari Preferences box. But apparently OP only unchecked the System Preferences one. As noticed elsewhere in this HN thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8480173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8480173), unchecking the Safari Preferences box fixes the issue.
- rorydh 12y agoThe DuckDuckGo guys are not gonna be happy...
- thought_alarm 12y agoSending your searches to DuckDuckGo is OK because they're committed to protecting your privacy. Sending your searches to Apple is bad because... they're also committed to protected your privacy but they're Apple so it's a big conspiracy.
- Sir_Cmpwn 12y agoYou may have missed the point. Sending them to DDG is OK because the user _intended to send them to DDG_. That was the entire purpose of the user's searching experience to begin with. Apple being strung into it is different - the user doesn't need Apple's involvement to complete the search.
- thought_alarm 12y agoDuckDuckGo Search Suggestions and Spotlight Search Suggestions are separate features in Safari. Either can be enabled or disabled by the user in the Safari settings.
- dmethvin 12y agoGoogle and Microsoft do this too when you enable real-time searching via the address bar, but both are pretty good at letting you know it happens. Doesn't Safari have some kind of first-run experience where the user gets some notice on this?
- bane 12y agoGoogle and Microsoft also run search engines.
- jfoster 12y agoPerhaps Apple internally already consider themselves a search engine. This might only be a temporary misalignment of user experience and data being sent to Apple.
- andy_ppp 12y agoWithout the requisite user data or some fantastic and soon to be copied algorithm I would expect their search experience to start off about as well as Apple Maps. You can bet they are going to build it though and it'll look nice.
- jfoster 12y agoThat might depend on whether they learnt anything from the Apple Maps debacle. They might approach something like that much more tactfully the next time they try it. With the right expertise on the team and some decent exposure to real users prior to the wide release, they may be able to deliver something that people enjoy using. The micro-features that delight users are something that Apple has traditionally done well, and are also the type of thing that go a long way in a product like a search engine.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- AznHisoka 12y ago
- privong 12y agoI wonder if the same behavior is present for the browser in iOS 8. If they have done this on the desktop, it seems plausible they would also have done the same on their mobile platform.
- err4nt 12y agoI upgraded to ios8 and the two most buggy, crashy apps are iMessage, and Safari, which have rendered my daily use of the device nearly useless. I gave the hardest time copy/pasting URLs from mobile safari into iMessage, it often pastes in something from days ago instead, no matter how many times I re-copy things I'm other apps. I want my device to 'just work' like it did when I bought it, updates shouldn't feel like downgrades
- orng 12y agoSimple workaround: don't use safari. Long term solution: don't by Apple products. Or at least don't run their software.
- lostlogin 12y agoWho's products would you suggest as an alternative?
- pserwylo 12y agoFor browsing, Mozilla is probably the least likely to want to do this sort of logging. There are probably more niche browsers that focus on privacy that I'm unaware of too. As for other Apple products, you can run Linux on a MacBook quite happily (Linus does, after all) and there are some nice Android ROMs which focus on freedom, such as Replicant.
- TheLoneWolfling 12y ago[Citation Needed] Mozilla's "Safe browsing", for instance. If you're going to go with something FF based, at least choose something with such things disabled by default. For instance, I run PM.
- eli 12y agoMozilla safe browsing does NOT phone home with sites you're visiting.
- TheLoneWolfling 12y agoQuote: > Before blocking the site, Firefox will request a double-check to ensure that the reported site has not been removed from the list since your last update. Source: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-malware-protection-work https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-m...
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- throwawayaway 12y agoIt's a bug, there's no way they did this on purpose.
- ares2012 12y agoWhy is there no way they did this on purpose? Understanding common searches would seem like valuable data to use to improve Siri, et al.
- gumby 12y agoI actually personally don't mind sending my search data to Apple but I would consider myself an outlier in this regard -- it should be opt in AND especially, given their supposed commitment to privacy, is a botch. Let's hope they did _not_ do this on purpose.
- throwawayaway 12y agoah, reading about it now, it's not deception on apple's part it's user error for not using the correct safari settings. that's what i meant when i said there was no way this was done on purpose - apple care far too much about their credibility to pull that sort of stunt.
- lumberjack 12y agoAny speculation on what they might be using this data for?
- thought_alarm 12y agohttp://www.apple.com/osx/better-apps/ http://www.apple.com/osx/better-apps/ See "Safari: A more intelligent way to search."
- shiven 12y agoSince you asked for speculation, I'd say the NSA. Well, why the hell not, eh!
- danielparks 12y agoLovely. I haven't got Yosemite, yet, but I wonder what happens when you disable api.smoot.apple.com (say via /etc/hosts)?
- johnpowell 12y agoI did earlier and there is no noticeable difference in Safari.
- fnord0 12y agocouldn't one just flood this with false positives? looks like a POST to 'api.smoot.apple.com' in JSON format. I'd suspect random entries would make the overall data collected alot less useful...
- madeofpalk 12y agoI'm going to assume that Apple (well, the engineers there) are at least as smart as you and had previously taken this into consideration.
- adamcarson 12y agoTim Cook last month: “Our business is not based on having information about you. You’re not our product ... I think everyone has to ask, how do companies make their money? Follow the money. And if they’re making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data, I think you have a right to be worried.” “We take a very different view of this than a lot of other companies have. Our view is, when we design a new service, we try not to collect data,” “We’re not in that business. I’m offended by lots of it. And so, I think people have a right to privacy.” http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/09/15/apples-cook-your-data-is-not-our-business/ http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/09/15/apples-cook-your-data...
- onewaystreet 12y agoThis doesn't contradict that. Spotlight provides web search results, how do people think that works?
- gumby 12y agoAccording to TFA, "In Yosemite, all Safari web searches are sent to not only the search engine you've selected ... but also to Apple..." So as you say Spotlight web searches have to contact some sort of search engine, but I don't know of a legitimate reason why Apple should need to know about them as well.
- Alphasite_ 12y agoSafari also shows the top spotlight search result iirc.
- cottonseed 12y agoThis is (1) in Safari, and (2) with Spotlight Suggestions disabled. Spotlight and Safari should be able to get search engine results or suggestions from the search engine without needing to go through Apple. We can speculate on what Apple is doing with this data, but it certainly seems to violate the user's "right to privacy," if not more.
- adamcarson 12y ago
- miles 12y agoHere's a tweet from Edward Marczak back in June about this behavior: https://twitter.com/marczak/status/481818945318428673 https://twitter.com/marczak/status/481818945318428673 with a recommendation to block api.smoot.apple.com.
- chockablock 12y agoThat seems to be about Spotlight searches, not web searches using Safari. (And arguably seems like a worse behavior to me, as my Spotlight search terms are often for private info I'm trying to locate on my disk.)
- miles 12y agoThanks, chockablock - I missed that. Same URL to block for both though, apparently: api.smoot.apple.com.
- thought_alarm 12y agoIf you're concerned about your privacy, you should look at System Preferences > Spotlight > About Spotlight Suggestions and Privacy: About Spotlight Suggestions & Privacy When you use Spotlight, your search queries, the Spotlight Suggestions you select, and related usage data will be sent to Apple. Search results found on your Mac will not be sent. If you have Location Services on your Mac turned on, when you make a search query to Spotlight the location of your Mac at that time will be sent to Apple. Searches for common words and phrases will be forwarded from Apple to Microsoft's Bing search engine. These searches are not stored by Microsoft. Location, search queries, and usage information sent to Apple will be used by Apple only to make Spotlight Suggestions more relevant and to improve other Apple products and services. If you do not want your Spotlight search queries and Spotlight Suggestions usage data sent to Apple, you can turn off Spotlight Suggestions. Simply deselect the checkboxes for both Spotlight Suggestions and Bing Web Searches in the Search Results tab in the Spotlight preference pane found within System Preferences on your Mac. If you turn off Spotlight Suggestions and Bing Web Searches, Spotlight will search the contents of only your Mac. You can turn off Location Services for Spotlight Suggestions in the Privacy pane of System Preferences on your Mac by clicking on “Details” next to System Services and then deselecting “Spotlight Suggestions”. If you turn off Location Services on your Mac, your precise location will not be sent to Apple. To deliver relevant search suggestions, Apple may use the IP address of your Internet connection to approximate your location by matching it to a geographic region. Information collected by Apple will be treated in accordance with Apple’s Privacy Policy, which can be found at www.apple.com/privacy.
- robryan 12y agoDo they do autocompletion suggestions like Chrome? That would seem like a good reason to collect this data.
- shekyboy 12y agoDoesn't seem like a data collection initiative. It seems more like a complementary search engine. Apple spotlight search is trying to find other contextual results which may not come back from typical search engines. For example: Apps, Music etc. I am sure you can directly search on google or duckduckgo to avoid that.
- aikah 12y agoWhatever they do,as long as they make it clear it is fine.I think that's an important thing users should be made aware of.It's not a big scandal but it's good practice whenever a soft does that to have the user's explicit consent. For instance IDEs often ask if they can submit anonymous datas to a server from the software.
- declan 12y agoAssuming that Apple does disclose this adequately -- meaning they'd be legally in the clear -- I'd still want to know the answers to: How do I delete the records of my searches saved on Apple's serves? (Google lets me delete my search history.) How do I randomize my unique ID? How many FedGov or state/local agencies have showed up demanding info on which users searched for "dirty bombs" or "how to join Al Qaeda?" Does Apple always require a warrant? Etc. Separately, Kevin McArthur (author of the Pro PHP book) is reporting this evening on Twitter that Spotlight is harvesting user locations after updating to Yosemite, apparently before the opt-out option is presented: https://twitter.com/KevinSMcArthur/status/523975643340353537 https://twitter.com/KevinSMcArthur/status/523975643340353537 https://twitter.com/KevinSMcArthur/status/523977472627335168 https://twitter.com/KevinSMcArthur/status/523977472627335168
- itg 12y ago>How do I delete the records of my searches saved on Apple's serves? (Google lets me delete my search history.) Google deletes the search history you see but everything is still stored on the servers.
- declan 12y agohttps://support.google.com/websearch/answer/465?hl=en https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/465?hl=en "When you delete items from your Search History, they are no longer associated with your Google Account." Whether you think that's sufficient or not, at least I have the option. And the last octet in my IP address is automatically modified after 9 months and deleted after 18 months even if I don't do anything. If you can tell me how I can do the same thing with Apple's search log files, and what Apple's IP address retention policy for its search log files, I'd be much obliged...
- ics 12y agoAnecdotally, it sure felt like I had to click "agree" to a lot more during the Yosemite upgrade than any other OS in recent memory.
- jonym 12y agoDisabling "Include Spotlight Suggestions" in Safari Preferences seems to make it stop.
- ajross 12y agoFTA: In Yosemite, all Safari web searches are sent to not only the search engine you've selected (e.g., Google, DuckDuckGo), but also to Apple, even if you've disabled "Spotlight Suggestions"
- threeseed 12y agoIt's because the author is completely wrong. Disable the Smart Search features in Safari and it won't send anything to Apple.
- epicfail 12y agoThis appears to just be Safari syncing with your iCloud Account across all your iCloud enabled devices. That would be why the data is getting sent to Apple.
- itazula 12y agoMight this be for sharing one's browsing history across devices? This seems like old news: http://www.tekrevue.com/safari-sync-browser-history/ http://www.tekrevue.com/safari-sync-browser-history/ Perhaps that type of syncing can be turned off? (I don't have Yosemite installed, so I don't know.)
- thought_alarm 12y agoThe author of this post is confused about Safari and Spotlight privacy settings. Spotlight search suggestions are a major new advertised feature in OS X and iOS. To disable Spotlight Search Suggestions in Safari, open the Safari preferences and de-select "Search > Include Spotlight Suggestions". To disable Spotlight Search Suggestions in the system Spotlight search menu, open the System Preferences and de-select "Spotlight -> Spotlight Suggestions".
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- mitchty 12y agoYep that looks to be spot on based on tcpdumps, although it would be nice to be made aware of this change in the release notes maybe.
- wilg 12y agoPost seems to indicate that the wrong "Spotlight Suggestions" was unchecked. One in System Preferences (which the post mentions disabling), and one in Safari itself (that the post does not mention). I would expect the one in System Preferences to disable suggestions in the system-wide search only, and the one in Safari to disable suggestions in Safari only. Screenshots of the two options: http://imgur.com/a/TWDxy http://imgur.com/a/TWDxy
- jake223 12y agoA few years ago there was a minor scandal about microsoft's Bing "stealing" google results through the internet explorer search box. It seems strange that apple would have that kind of motivations, given that they don't have a search engine of their own... Here's the accusatory blog post google made: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses-google-search.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses-...
- trollingyou 12y ago..Same as google with chrome then.
- cmelbye 12y agoThis is inaccurate alarmism. It shouldn't be surprising that the search bar makes autocomplete requests to Apple as you type. The address, phone number, and map link that popped up when you typed in the name of a local business, for example, didn't just appear out of thin air. However, it seemed suspicious to me that Apple would make it impossible, as the author claims, to type in the Safari address bar without sending queries to Apple. So, I fired up Charles proxy to confirm my suspicions. When using Safari default settings, typing in the address bar resulted in a few requests to Apple and Google autocomplete APIs. Then, I turned off "Include search engine suggestions" and "Include Spotlight Suggestions" in Safari search preferences. (Safari -> Preferences -> Search) As I initially believed, no requests were sent whatsoever when typing in the address bar after those settings were disabled. Can we put out our pitchforks yet, or am I missing something?
- declan 12y agoFWIW, the Github page says search terms in their tests were sent to Apple's API even "with all privacy options enabled": https://github.com/fix-macosx/yosemite-phone-home https://github.com/fix-macosx/yosemite-phone-home
- jsmthrowaway 12y agoYeah, Spotlight privacy options. He didn't touch Safari's; I did, and I got the same as cmelbye. To be honest, I feel like Landon found something that confirmed what he already suspected, and ran with it, rather than taking a moment to look at what he had (which is wrong). That makes me wonder about his goals, since I've been watching his work play out over the last few days. Why is the sky falling, again?
- mikeash 12y agoMaybe he did touch Safari's, but foolishly only looked in the "Privacy" section of Safari's preferences, rather than in the "Search" section where any normal person would know the privacy-related settings are actually found. OK, that's highly sarcastic, but I just went looking for these options and was gobsmacked to discover that no relevant options were present under Privacy.
- coffeedrinker 12y agoSafari private browsing is broken too. Just private browse, quit safari, reopen safari and then check in the preferences on the privacy tab and see the cookies, etc.
- axotty 12y agoI use Little Snitch to monitor and control all my outbound traffic. I've noticed a lot more requests to Apple's servers with Yosemite than with Mavericks.
- ekianjo 12y agoThe thing about Apple is the positive bias they always get on HN. In these comments: > Is there ANY evidence that Apple is collecting data. > I'm not sure it's a contradiction either, more of an omission, he doesn't specifically address search data in that interview > Doesn't seem like a data collection initiative. It seems more like a complementary search engine > Do they do autocompletion suggestions like Chrome? That would seem like a good reason to collect this data. > I actually personally don't mind sending my search data to Apple It's just amazing. When Microsoft, Google or anyone else does it, it's EVIL and there's no other way to look at it, but when Apple does it, it's somehow perfectly OK, because, you know, they are the good guys.
- madeofpalk 12y agoI guess this is where the confirmation bias comes in. As someone who would consider themselves to be a realistic 'Apple apologist' (I like Apple, as a company and their products, and tend to assume the positive for everything they do), I see a large negative bias against Apple on HN.
- ekianjo 12y agoProbably it depends where you come from. If you always spend time on MacFans kind of forums, then yeah, I guess the HN crowd can sound pretty negative to Apple. But in comparison with other stories out there on HN, I feel Apple always gets away with better feedback no matter what they do.
- maximumoverload 12y agoIt's good that Google doesn't log your Google searches with Google Chrome.
- alex4nder 12y agoOut of the corner of my eye, I read that as: Safari is sending every search query to an Apple //c. Everything started making sense.