10 ms·

Corpus of network communications automatically sent to Apple by Yosemite

tkubacki 12y ago
Funny - just compare how Ubuntu was bashed for Amazon lens in Unity and how differently Apple is treated for the same (or even worse) things here on HN
- micampe 12y ago
  I see the opposite, but I always try to remind myself that it's just my (and your) bias showing and not comment on it, because I would almost certainly be wrong. For example, the highly inflammatory title for yesterday's submission (no privacy by design) stayed unmoderated for the entire day, until it went off the front page. This issue has had multiple submissions in the past two days and they received plenty of votes, it doesn't seem "HN" is giving it preferential treatment.
- the_mitsuhiko 12y ago
  My mac has not yet shown me advertisements for when I was looking for my files.
  - jasonlotito 12y ago
    It does show "advertisements" of the same type as Ubuntu did. http://i.imgur.com/1hdtCjB.png?1 http://i.imgur.com/1hdtCjB.png?1 In fact, this shows two. Enabled by default in a release product. IIRC, Ubuntu never shipped with said feature.
  - esolyt 12y ago
    They weren't advertisements. They were product search results. And the concern wasn't about the fact that it shows products, but about the fact that data was being sent to Amazon (unencrypted as well, I believe).
    - imdsm 12y ago
      My concern was that if I wanted to buy something, I'd go online and look for it. If I wanted to run an application, I'd search for it. It was a case of extremely terrible UX and wasted my time having to disable it each time I installed Ubuntu.
      - vacri 12y ago
        'apt-get remove unity-shopping-lens' hardly consumes a lot of time, particularly since you make it sound like you installed Ubuntu often enough to make it onerous - that often, and you'd remember the command without having to web-search for it.
        mattmanser 12y ago
        Uninstalling bloatware also "hardly" consumes a lot of time. It's a step which no-one should have to take.
        vacri 12y ago
        You use scare quotes, suggesting you think it takes a long time. It really doesn't, not for anyone who has frequently installed ubuntu - it really is as fast as typing that line. Also, where did I say it was a good thing? I also think that having to deselect privacy markers in two places is also a step no-one should have to take. This thread is about why Ubuntu got raked over the coals and Apple didn't, and it takes longer to navigate to and unselect the two disparate options for the Apple search issue than to uninstall the Ubuntu thing. I mean seriously, of all the arguments against the Unity shopping lens, "I install ubuntu a lot and this wastes so much of my time" is such a non-starter. It takes more time to select a wallpaper.
        mattmanser 12y ago
        Are you so completely blind to other people's computer skills? It only takes a short amount of time for you because you know precisely what to do. There are literally millions of little "but that's so easy to change" on a computer, it's a huge cognitive tax. Other people will be "Why's there shopping results, wtf? How'd I get rid of this. What's going on?". After a few weeks of it annoying them they finally google it , find old information, run an old command, doesn't work, get annoyed, go make cup of tea in annoyance. Forget about it. Get even more annoyed over the next few weeks at Amazon results popping up, google again, finally find up-to-date blog post, find the right menu, go to the right place, click, finished. Until they install the next version in a year or two and the process happens all over again as they've forgotten how they did it last time. EDIT: There's a great little idea in the book Good Omens where the devil Crowley sets up projects of small amounts of misery to huge amounts of humans, rather than going after one soul at a time like other, old fashioned, demons. Auto-callers, motorways shaped like an ancient symbol for the devil (the M25). Crapware like this would definitely be something Crowley would be proud to come up with.
  - imdsm 12y ago
    And hopefully they never will.
  - tkubacki 12y ago
    so Apple's false privacy statements are not as bad as Ubuntu's Amazon search results ?
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  Same for Microsoft. There was barely any backlash at all when Windows 8.1 introduced search that also sent your local file searches to advertisers.
  - tkubacki 12y ago
    can this be turned off ?
- sbuk 12y ago
  Are you suggesting that Apple is sending this data to advertisers? Do you have any evidence of this?
  - tkubacki 12y ago
    no - I'm suggesting both situations are equally unpleasant for users and HN crowd tends to absolve Apple for any 'crimes' they commit - it's just funny (I'm using both Ubuntu and Mac on a regular basis)
    - sbuk 12y ago
      I'm not clear why it's unpleasant and the pejorative use of 'crime' is one that puts my back up over this. Spotlight's function is clearly stated and easily disabled. It is simply alarmism and sensationalism. The same can be reasonably said of the Amazon/Ubuntu debacle. TFA doesn't indicate who the 3rd parties are (other than a frankly 'trollish' reference to Microsoft) or what they are transmitting; other than search queries. One rationally presumes that if Spotlight - a search feature that has been present in OS X in one way or another for some time - can search the internet for results, then it follows that these queries need to be sent to. TFA fails to highlight whether or not these searches can be used to identify the individual user. A case of looking for a scandal where there is none.
      - tkubacki 12y ago
        being honest - I don't care that much. Really interesting (and somehow funny) are all those Apple apologists trying to rationalize/justify everything Apple does.
        sbuk 12y ago
        There you go again! "Apple apologists". Apologising for what?
        tkubacki 12y ago
simme_ 12y ago
Original discussion can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8479958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8479958
- pilsetnieks 12y ago
  This one might be more relevant: "Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8473580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8473580 Hint: you have to uncheck two checkboxes that OS X explicitly tells you about in the very same Spotlight preferences, plus another one in Location preferences.
  - facepalm 12y ago
    The spotlight preferences are not explicit. I would never have opened them without reading this news item first. However, I can understand the philosophy of searching the wen and the desktop in parallel. Ubuntu does the same (they search Amazon, not sure if also the web in general), and they also got a lot of flak for it.
    - pilsetnieks 12y ago
      What I meant with explicit was that they are explicitly described in the text that is shown on clicking the button called "About Spotlight Suggestions and Privacy." If one would never even open Spotlight preferences, then yeah, it is not possible to see, enable or disable those preferences. But then one should also not complain that it is impossible to enable or disable these preferences. By that logic, every application that does anything with any privacy implications should have it's primary interface littered with preference toggles to make it completely obvious how it's functionality can be altered.
      - izacus 12y ago
        I think a basic warning, information or other type of system making a user aware, that all their searches are being shared with 3rd parties is not an unreasonable demand. Having people go to two preferences dialogs just to find out that contents of search box are being sent to USA datacenters is a dangerous dark pattern.
JamesBaxter 12y ago
I wonder if the iPhone does something similar
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  Yup. Fire up Charles SSL proxy and you'll observe very similar behaviour (at least with Mail and Spotlight/Safari)
abritishguy 12y ago
I like what I have seen with Apple's (apparent) focus on privacy with regards to iOS and the later iPhone models but this is pretty worrying - I'm not one to care about sending my data to some cloud service when it offers some tangible benefit to me, but some of this data is pretty intrusive and I can't see what benefit it is adding. Assuming everything here is accurate then Apple have screwed up and really ought to rectify this pretty quickly if they want anything they say about privacy to be taken seriously in the future.
- stephen_g 12y ago
  How else would they provide Apple Maps and web results in Spotlight though? It actually has an explanation of exactly what it's sending and where in the Spotlight preference pane (click 'About Spotlight Suggestions and Privacy'), and exactly how to turn it off (you switch off 'Spotlight Suggestions' and 'Bing Search' in the list of things to search). It's not like this secret...
davidw 12y ago
It searches the web as well as your local drives, so sending those searches out is exactly what I'd expect. Now, I can also see the case for not making 'do a web search too' the default, but if you can't have that and not share your searches with Apple.
- ctz 12y ago
  > you can't have that and not share your searches with Apple Why on earth not? Why can't the search box just talk to DDG?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - davidw 12y ago
    Isn't what people are getting hot and bothered about is that "local" searches are sending data out on the internet, rather than where they happen to be sending it?
    - gutnor 12y ago
      Yes, people that knows the difference between local searches and online searches are probably upset about it. As a HN user, I'm in that category of people. However, I was surprised, when using my phone that I expected Spotlight to search both locally and online. The difference is that I never use spotlight on my mobile, I just don't have that much stuff to look locally, so I had fresh user expectation: "cool I can make search anywhere", so when spotlight did not do it was a bit of a let down and since then I have never used Spotlight on IOS again, I just open the browser. Not saying that Apple is right or anything, but the reasoning may simply be "if I have a global search button not looking online by default, will regular user not think of that as a bug"
    - ctz 12y ago
      One of the problems is that you can set your search provider as DDG, and the query still goes to Apple too. GP posits that this is an essential part of doing a web search.
esolyt 12y ago
I recently replaced Spotlight with Alfred and realized how much I was missing out. It's surprisingly faster and cleaner. I would really suggest it to anyone who haven't tried it yet.
- bloke_zero 12y ago
  Alfred is great - it was my replacement for quicksilver when I got tired of endless config. Made by nice people too (as far as I can tell).
- nodata 12y ago
  Have you compared Alfred with Spotlight in Yosemite?
  - wingerlang 12y ago
    I haven't looked a lot at Yosemites spotlight, can it do custom workflows? I've make Alfred ping multiple devices for sub-second status, create files based on input>bash script, close apps and so much more than that. I've completely replaced my snippet/text-expander with Alfred (just need a basic one anyway) and the fact that it can be semi-infinitely extended (scripting etc) is a nice ground to stand on.
  - Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
    I recently replaced Alfred with Spotlight when I upgraded to Yosemite. Alfred feels like it was very much an "inspiration" for the new Spotlight but as is often the way with little helper type apps, if it's good enough, sooner or later it will get rolled into the OS. The business model Joel Spolsky referred to as grabbing nickels from the path of an on-coming steamroller.
- ntaso 12y ago
  Now is probably the time to replace Spotlight as well. I wasn't terribly satisfied with it either for one simple reason: I open one specific file called "todo.taskpaper" with Spotlight all the time. So while I type t-o-d-... Spotlight doesn't remember that I want to open this specific file. I don't open anything else from Spotlight that starts with "tod" or even "to". Quick test in Alfred: Seems to have learned that "to" = "todo.taskpaper" after 1 try.
song 12y ago
I'm very glad for that thread. I didn't know that I also needed to uncheck "Include Spotlight Suggestions" in Safari additionally to Preferences. I do not understand why there's such a backlash against anyone that points out that: 1. It's not intuitive to have to both disable "Include Spotlight Suggestions" in Safari and in Preferences. 2. People like my father who are privacy conscious but are average computer users would not think to look for this in Spotlight and Search and instead would look in the privacy tab instead 3. Apple released and advertises cool privacy features like MAC address randomization that actually do not work. It only works with Location Services and 3G disabled according to the reports which is never going to happen. This makes me feel that the new focus on privacy from Apple is more for PR purpose than something they really care for. That said, I like Apple products, I've been using macs since 2004 and I would have a hard time going back to using Linux (still have nightmares about all the work needed to support my laptop correctly) but that doesn't mean I'm giving them a pass on those privacy issues. I know a lot of people here feel that all of this is much ado about nothing but really, it's clearly not obvious and if I hadn't read yesterday's thread I wouldn't have been aware that Safari sends my search to Apple even if selected Duck Duck Go and disabled Spotlight Suggestions in preferences.
- simonh 12y ago
  >This makes me feel that the new focus on privacy from Apple is more for PR purpose than something they really care for. Clearly they are doing it for their own purposes, and your post is fair comment, but if their interests and their customer's interests align then that's good for both sides. It's also possible that while their current privacy oriented features leave gaps that are exploitable, that's just because the remaining gaps are trickier to address and will just take longer. Also just because elements of the communications infrastructure they don't control may be open, that doesn't mean they should therefore leave the elements of it they do control open as well. It certainly doesn't mean that them locking down those elemts is somehow necessarily a cynical move. That's not the sort of attitude I think we should be taking as it explicitly penalises and discourages individuals and companies from even trying to improve things.
  - song 12y ago
anuragajmera12 12y ago
nice article ..
adsr 12y ago
Can't this just be turned off with the Spotlight setting in system preferences though? For browsers it seems to be the same for all that uses the unified search field, it was last time a checked Chrome with tcpdump. I personally preferred to have the URL field separate from the search field for that reason.
- masklinn 12y ago
  > Can't this just be turned off with the Spotlight setting in system preferences though? Yes. Although note that it will not disable Safari's "spotlight suggestions" which have to be disabled separately via Safari's own preferences.
eknkc 12y ago
Am I missing something here? The web search / autocomplete functionality contacts some servers.. You can disable them. Mail client tries to fetch known IMAP / SMTP info for a given domain to ease setup. Are there some weird data being sent? Honestly, I might have missed some concerning communication but as far as I can tell, this is just for the sake of added functionality and can be disabled. Expecting OS level stuff to work without network data at year 2014 seems somewhat bizarre. This is like complaining that apt-get leaks info to home, telling about the packages you install.
- splaff 12y ago
  I think the various surveillance and privacy revelations of 2011-2013 have different opinions about network data in 2014...
- userbinator 12y ago
  Expecting OS level stuff to work without network data at year 2014 seems somewhat bizarre. This is like complaining that apt-get leaks info to home, telling about the packages you install. No, the difference is that people do have a general idea about whether things should be done locally or sent out into the Internet, and searching files stored locally does not belong in the latter category.
  - timr 12y ago
    "people do have a general idea about whether things should be done locally or sent out into the Internet, and searching files stored locally does not belong in the latter category." The irony of your comment, of course, is that this is a brand new feature that allows spotlight to include web content. So no, you don't have a general idea of what the feature does.
  - matthewmacleod 12y ago
    Spotlight is no longer a tool for searching local files, and is now a search tool which combines local and remote data. You can disable this feature.
higherpurpose 12y ago
Microsoft has been doing this, too, since Windows 8.1, and it's going to do it even more aggressively with Windows 10. I'm not saying it to mean that it's okay - in fact quite the opposite. Both are doing it wrong, and I hope they stop, or at least give me an intuitive (not hidden within 100 other settings) way to disable it.
- dvhh 12y ago
  citation required
madeofpalk 12y ago
That Mail one is probably the least alarming, and I would assume that Outlook does the same thing. When you first set up a mail account, it sends your email domain to https://mac-services.apple.com/iconfig/dconf https://mac-services.apple.com/iconfig/dconf and, provided Apple has a match for it, it will return auto-configure POP/IMAP/SMTP settings. If you enter your email as @apple.com, it returns back: <domain> <name>apple.com</name> <service> <hostname>mail.apple.com</hostname> <port>993</port> <protocol>IMAP</protocol> <ssl /> <requires>MACOSX</requires> <authentication>PLAIN</authentication> </service> <...> </domain>
- JetSpiegel 12y ago
  Thunderbird has a similar service, but you can click on Manual Config and input that by hand.
  - valleyer 12y ago
    Option-click the "Create" button in the setup wizard in Mail.app for the same thing
rplnt 12y ago
If you like the title of this post, you might like this subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/titlegore https://www.reddit.com/r/titlegore edit: all right, jokes aside, the title is horrible and unparseable for many reasons: "Yosemite" without stating it's OS X Yosemite throws you off with the first word. It "Sends Spotlight" (comma). All right, sends spotlight what? Is sends a verb, why is it capitalized? Let's move on... "Safari Searches", Safari searches what? Again with the random capitalization of searches? Or I guess it was a verb and "Spotlight, Safari" is a list. The fact that both are also common words doesn't help - it would be more obvious that we are talking about products/brands if "searches" and "sends" weren't capitalized. Continue... "to Apple" - yeah, this makes sense (first time in this sentence). Even "to" is not capitalized (but it makes you question your decision about sends/searches). Comma. Third parties. What?! Seriously, it's awful.
- zimpenfish 12y ago
  Whilst it's not great, it's hardly awful or unparseable. Headlines have been written in this kind of truncated form for decades; people know how to read them.
tsenkov 12y ago
Disclaimer: I am building the mentioned app. Pagehop (https://pagehopapp.com/ https://pagehopapp.com/), a launcher targeting only the Web, doesn't send your search queries to any server of ours, and allows searching in many different sources (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia, StackOverflow, YouTube, even some very specific sources such as jQuery's API documentation, the Mozilla Developer Network or the NPM archive). You can add sources (recipes) yourself. We don't use a central server, instead the app taps into free web services (where possible) or scrapes the sites (where not). It basically is a pack of many horizontal and vertical search engines with a single UI and the ability to use tools for post-processing of web results such as Regexes and Fuzzy Matching. Pagehop queries are a simpler version of executing commands in the Terminal and you can pipe tools, one after another, just the same. You should check it out (or not) - it has an unlimited, free and fully functional evaluation period (nothing is locked, just like SublimeText).
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
nashequilibrium 12y ago
mmmmmmm
teamhappy 12y ago
We've read plenty of interesting explanations in this thread. Anybody care to explain to me what great feature is hidden behind the "About This Mac" cookie or where to find the button to disable it?
f3llowtraveler 12y ago
I am extremely disturbed by this report. I have been a faithful Apple user for years, but this single report causes me to seriously consider switching to Linux for good.
- coldtea 12y ago
  You mean to get something like Ubuntu that does the same thing? Let's set this straight: anything that gives you suggestions (for search, products, dictionary definitions, songs, etc) from the internet, is by definition sending your query to some internet server. Next drama: Google searches send my search queries to Google.
  - 4ad 12y ago
    If you want to use OS X, you need to play by Apple's runes. If you want to use some kind of Unix-like system, you don't need to play by Canonical's rules. There's a myriad of Linux distribution, not only Ubuntu, and then there are the BSDs too.
    - coldtea 12y ago
      So, in each case, you get to decide the rules you want to play with, by going with the OS that satisfies you.
  - inclemnet 12y ago
    > You mean to get something like Ubuntu that does the same thing? He obviously means something not like Ubuntu (or at least Unity in particular) that does not do the same thing. There are many many distros meeting this requirement, it's disingenuous to try and imply everyone is doing it.
    - coldtea 12y ago
      >He obviously means something not like Ubuntu (or at least Unity in particular) that does not do the same thing. You'd be surprised: http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/09/ubuntu-bakes-amazon-search-results-into-os-to-raise-cash/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/09/ubuntu-bakes-amazon-...
steffenfrost 12y ago
What are they sending to the NSA?
blinkingled 12y ago
> About this Mac When the user selects 'About this Mac' from the Apple menu, Yosemite phones home and s_vi, a unique analytics identifier, is included in the request. (si_vi is used by Adobe/Omniture's analytics software). Wow. I am waiting for "Team Apple" to invent a radical defense on this one. But regardless this is shameful on Apple's part.
- rimantas 12y ago
  Does it by any chance depend on checking "Send usage and diagnostics data to Apple" checkbox? Is that identifier used for anything else, i.e. can it be associated with something identifying the user, not just saying that all these requests came from the same machine?
  - blinkingled 12y ago
    If you read the link it says upfront that this happens after disabling all privacy related options including usage and diagnostics data. Besides why does Apple need to know the user clicked About This Mac? A crash log I can understand but this is unprecedented level of tracking on a desktop OS.
dustinfarris 12y ago
Is the data sent to Apple personally identifiable? How long is it retained? If the NSA (inevitably) decides to crash the party, what is the nature of the information that they walk away with? These are all questions that should have readily available answers.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
jason_slack 12y ago
Has anyone found a way in 10.10 to completely disable spotlight and notification center? I know I can disable in system preferences but what about getting rid of the icons and completely stopping the services all together?

Funny - just compare how Ubuntu was bashed for Amazon lens in Unity and how differently Apple is treated for the same (or even worse) things here on HN

micampe 12y ago
I see the opposite, but I always try to remind myself that it's just my (and your) bias showing and not comment on it, because I would almost certainly be wrong. For example, the highly inflammatory title for yesterday's submission (no privacy by design) stayed unmoderated for the entire day, until it went off the front page. This issue has had multiple submissions in the past two days and they received plenty of votes, it doesn't seem "HN" is giving it preferential treatment.
the_mitsuhiko 12y ago
My mac has not yet shown me advertisements for when I was looking for my files.
- jasonlotito 12y ago
  It does show "advertisements" of the same type as Ubuntu did. http://i.imgur.com/1hdtCjB.png?1 http://i.imgur.com/1hdtCjB.png?1 In fact, this shows two. Enabled by default in a release product. IIRC, Ubuntu never shipped with said feature.
- esolyt 12y ago
  They weren't advertisements. They were product search results. And the concern wasn't about the fact that it shows products, but about the fact that data was being sent to Amazon (unencrypted as well, I believe).
  - imdsm 12y ago
    My concern was that if I wanted to buy something, I'd go online and look for it. If I wanted to run an application, I'd search for it. It was a case of extremely terrible UX and wasted my time having to disable it each time I installed Ubuntu.
    - vacri 12y ago
      'apt-get remove unity-shopping-lens' hardly consumes a lot of time, particularly since you make it sound like you installed Ubuntu often enough to make it onerous - that often, and you'd remember the command without having to web-search for it.
      - mattmanser 12y ago
        Uninstalling bloatware also "hardly" consumes a lot of time. It's a step which no-one should have to take.
        vacri 12y ago
        You use scare quotes, suggesting you think it takes a long time. It really doesn't, not for anyone who has frequently installed ubuntu - it really is as fast as typing that line. Also, where did I say it was a good thing? I also think that having to deselect privacy markers in two places is also a step no-one should have to take. This thread is about why Ubuntu got raked over the coals and Apple didn't, and it takes longer to navigate to and unselect the two disparate options for the Apple search issue than to uninstall the Ubuntu thing. I mean seriously, of all the arguments against the Unity shopping lens, "I install ubuntu a lot and this wastes so much of my time" is such a non-starter. It takes more time to select a wallpaper.
        mattmanser 12y ago
        Are you so completely blind to other people's computer skills? It only takes a short amount of time for you because you know precisely what to do. There are literally millions of little "but that's so easy to change" on a computer, it's a huge cognitive tax. Other people will be "Why's there shopping results, wtf? How'd I get rid of this. What's going on?". After a few weeks of it annoying them they finally google it , find old information, run an old command, doesn't work, get annoyed, go make cup of tea in annoyance. Forget about it. Get even more annoyed over the next few weeks at Amazon results popping up, google again, finally find up-to-date blog post, find the right menu, go to the right place, click, finished. Until they install the next version in a year or two and the process happens all over again as they've forgotten how they did it last time. EDIT: There's a great little idea in the book Good Omens where the devil Crowley sets up projects of small amounts of misery to huge amounts of humans, rather than going after one soul at a time like other, old fashioned, demons. Auto-callers, motorways shaped like an ancient symbol for the devil (the M25). Crapware like this would definitely be something Crowley would be proud to come up with.
- imdsm 12y ago
  And hopefully they never will.
- tkubacki 12y ago
  so Apple's false privacy statements are not as bad as Ubuntu's Amazon search results ?
higherpurpose 12y ago
Same for Microsoft. There was barely any backlash at all when Windows 8.1 introduced search that also sent your local file searches to advertisers.
- tkubacki 12y ago
  can this be turned off ?
sbuk 12y ago
Are you suggesting that Apple is sending this data to advertisers? Do you have any evidence of this?
- tkubacki 12y ago
  no - I'm suggesting both situations are equally unpleasant for users and HN crowd tends to absolve Apple for any 'crimes' they commit - it's just funny (I'm using both Ubuntu and Mac on a regular basis)
  - sbuk 12y ago
    I'm not clear why it's unpleasant and the pejorative use of 'crime' is one that puts my back up over this. Spotlight's function is clearly stated and easily disabled. It is simply alarmism and sensationalism. The same can be reasonably said of the Amazon/Ubuntu debacle. TFA doesn't indicate who the 3rd parties are (other than a frankly 'trollish' reference to Microsoft) or what they are transmitting; other than search queries. One rationally presumes that if Spotlight - a search feature that has been present in OS X in one way or another for some time - can search the internet for results, then it follows that these queries need to be sent to. TFA fails to highlight whether or not these searches can be used to identify the individual user. A case of looking for a scandal where there is none.
    - tkubacki 12y ago
      being honest - I don't care that much. Really interesting (and somehow funny) are all those Apple apologists trying to rationalize/justify everything Apple does.
      - sbuk 12y ago
        There you go again! "Apple apologists". Apologising for what?
        tkubacki 12y ago

simme_ 12y ago

Original discussion can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8479958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8479958

pilsetnieks 12y ago
This one might be more relevant: "Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8473580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8473580 Hint: you have to uncheck two checkboxes that OS X explicitly tells you about in the very same Spotlight preferences, plus another one in Location preferences.
- facepalm 12y ago
  The spotlight preferences are not explicit. I would never have opened them without reading this news item first. However, I can understand the philosophy of searching the wen and the desktop in parallel. Ubuntu does the same (they search Amazon, not sure if also the web in general), and they also got a lot of flak for it.
  - pilsetnieks 12y ago
    What I meant with explicit was that they are explicitly described in the text that is shown on clicking the button called "About Spotlight Suggestions and Privacy." If one would never even open Spotlight preferences, then yeah, it is not possible to see, enable or disable those preferences. But then one should also not complain that it is impossible to enable or disable these preferences. By that logic, every application that does anything with any privacy implications should have it's primary interface littered with preference toggles to make it completely obvious how it's functionality can be altered.
    - izacus 12y ago
      I think a basic warning, information or other type of system making a user aware, that all their searches are being shared with 3rd parties is not an unreasonable demand. Having people go to two preferences dialogs just to find out that contents of search box are being sent to USA datacenters is a dangerous dark pattern.

JamesBaxter 12y ago

I wonder if the iPhone does something similar

madeofpalk 12y ago
Yup. Fire up Charles SSL proxy and you'll observe very similar behaviour (at least with Mail and Spotlight/Safari)

abritishguy 12y ago

I like what I have seen with Apple's (apparent) focus on privacy with regards to iOS and the later iPhone models but this is pretty worrying - I'm not one to care about sending my data to some cloud service when it offers some tangible benefit to me, but some of this data is pretty intrusive and I can't see what benefit it is adding. Assuming everything here is accurate then Apple have screwed up and really ought to rectify this pretty quickly if they want anything they say about privacy to be taken seriously in the future.

stephen_g 12y ago
How else would they provide Apple Maps and web results in Spotlight though? It actually has an explanation of exactly what it's sending and where in the Spotlight preference pane (click 'About Spotlight Suggestions and Privacy'), and exactly how to turn it off (you switch off 'Spotlight Suggestions' and 'Bing Search' in the list of things to search). It's not like this secret...

davidw 12y ago

It searches the web as well as your local drives, so sending those searches out is exactly what I'd expect. Now, I can also see the case for not making 'do a web search too' the default, but if you can't have that and not share your searches with Apple.

ctz 12y ago
> you can't have that and not share your searches with Apple Why on earth not? Why can't the search box just talk to DDG?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- davidw 12y ago
  Isn't what people are getting hot and bothered about is that "local" searches are sending data out on the internet, rather than where they happen to be sending it?
  - gutnor 12y ago
    Yes, people that knows the difference between local searches and online searches are probably upset about it. As a HN user, I'm in that category of people. However, I was surprised, when using my phone that I expected Spotlight to search both locally and online. The difference is that I never use spotlight on my mobile, I just don't have that much stuff to look locally, so I had fresh user expectation: "cool I can make search anywhere", so when spotlight did not do it was a bit of a let down and since then I have never used Spotlight on IOS again, I just open the browser. Not saying that Apple is right or anything, but the reasoning may simply be "if I have a global search button not looking online by default, will regular user not think of that as a bug"
  - ctz 12y ago
    One of the problems is that you can set your search provider as DDG, and the query still goes to Apple too. GP posits that this is an essential part of doing a web search.

esolyt 12y ago

I recently replaced Spotlight with Alfred and realized how much I was missing out. It's surprisingly faster and cleaner. I would really suggest it to anyone who haven't tried it yet.

bloke_zero 12y ago
Alfred is great - it was my replacement for quicksilver when I got tired of endless config. Made by nice people too (as far as I can tell).
nodata 12y ago
Have you compared Alfred with Spotlight in Yosemite?
- wingerlang 12y ago
  I haven't looked a lot at Yosemites spotlight, can it do custom workflows? I've make Alfred ping multiple devices for sub-second status, create files based on input>bash script, close apps and so much more than that. I've completely replaced my snippet/text-expander with Alfred (just need a basic one anyway) and the fact that it can be semi-infinitely extended (scripting etc) is a nice ground to stand on.
- Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
  I recently replaced Alfred with Spotlight when I upgraded to Yosemite. Alfred feels like it was very much an "inspiration" for the new Spotlight but as is often the way with little helper type apps, if it's good enough, sooner or later it will get rolled into the OS. The business model Joel Spolsky referred to as grabbing nickels from the path of an on-coming steamroller.
ntaso 12y ago
Now is probably the time to replace Spotlight as well. I wasn't terribly satisfied with it either for one simple reason: I open one specific file called "todo.taskpaper" with Spotlight all the time. So while I type t-o-d-... Spotlight doesn't remember that I want to open this specific file. I don't open anything else from Spotlight that starts with "tod" or even "to". Quick test in Alfred: Seems to have learned that "to" = "todo.taskpaper" after 1 try.

song 12y ago

I'm very glad for that thread. I didn't know that I also needed to uncheck "Include Spotlight Suggestions" in Safari additionally to Preferences. I do not understand why there's such a backlash against anyone that points out that: 1. It's not intuitive to have to both disable "Include Spotlight Suggestions" in Safari and in Preferences. 2. People like my father who are privacy conscious but are average computer users would not think to look for this in Spotlight and Search and instead would look in the privacy tab instead 3. Apple released and advertises cool privacy features like MAC address randomization that actually do not work. It only works with Location Services and 3G disabled according to the reports which is never going to happen. This makes me feel that the new focus on privacy from Apple is more for PR purpose than something they really care for. That said, I like Apple products, I've been using macs since 2004 and I would have a hard time going back to using Linux (still have nightmares about all the work needed to support my laptop correctly) but that doesn't mean I'm giving them a pass on those privacy issues. I know a lot of people here feel that all of this is much ado about nothing but really, it's clearly not obvious and if I hadn't read yesterday's thread I wouldn't have been aware that Safari sends my search to Apple even if selected Duck Duck Go and disabled Spotlight Suggestions in preferences.

simonh 12y ago
>This makes me feel that the new focus on privacy from Apple is more for PR purpose than something they really care for. Clearly they are doing it for their own purposes, and your post is fair comment, but if their interests and their customer's interests align then that's good for both sides. It's also possible that while their current privacy oriented features leave gaps that are exploitable, that's just because the remaining gaps are trickier to address and will just take longer. Also just because elements of the communications infrastructure they don't control may be open, that doesn't mean they should therefore leave the elements of it they do control open as well. It certainly doesn't mean that them locking down those elemts is somehow necessarily a cynical move. That's not the sort of attitude I think we should be taking as it explicitly penalises and discourages individuals and companies from even trying to improve things.
- song 12y ago

anuragajmera12 12y ago

nice article ..

adsr 12y ago

Can't this just be turned off with the Spotlight setting in system preferences though? For browsers it seems to be the same for all that uses the unified search field, it was last time a checked Chrome with tcpdump. I personally preferred to have the URL field separate from the search field for that reason.

masklinn 12y ago
> Can't this just be turned off with the Spotlight setting in system preferences though? Yes. Although note that it will not disable Safari's "spotlight suggestions" which have to be disabled separately via Safari's own preferences.

eknkc 12y ago

Am I missing something here? The web search / autocomplete functionality contacts some servers.. You can disable them. Mail client tries to fetch known IMAP / SMTP info for a given domain to ease setup. Are there some weird data being sent? Honestly, I might have missed some concerning communication but as far as I can tell, this is just for the sake of added functionality and can be disabled. Expecting OS level stuff to work without network data at year 2014 seems somewhat bizarre. This is like complaining that apt-get leaks info to home, telling about the packages you install.

splaff 12y ago
I think the various surveillance and privacy revelations of 2011-2013 have different opinions about network data in 2014...
userbinator 12y ago
Expecting OS level stuff to work without network data at year 2014 seems somewhat bizarre. This is like complaining that apt-get leaks info to home, telling about the packages you install. No, the difference is that people do have a general idea about whether things should be done locally or sent out into the Internet, and searching files stored locally does not belong in the latter category.
- timr 12y ago
  "people do have a general idea about whether things should be done locally or sent out into the Internet, and searching files stored locally does not belong in the latter category." The irony of your comment, of course, is that this is a brand new feature that allows spotlight to include web content. So no, you don't have a general idea of what the feature does.
- matthewmacleod 12y ago
  Spotlight is no longer a tool for searching local files, and is now a search tool which combines local and remote data. You can disable this feature.

higherpurpose 12y ago

Microsoft has been doing this, too, since Windows 8.1, and it's going to do it even more aggressively with Windows 10. I'm not saying it to mean that it's okay - in fact quite the opposite. Both are doing it wrong, and I hope they stop, or at least give me an intuitive (not hidden within 100 other settings) way to disable it.

dvhh 12y ago
citation required

madeofpalk 12y ago

That Mail one is probably the least alarming, and I would assume that Outlook does the same thing. When you first set up a mail account, it sends your email domain to https://mac-services.apple.com/iconfig/dconf https://mac-services.apple.com/iconfig/dconf and, provided Apple has a match for it, it will return auto-configure POP/IMAP/SMTP settings. If you enter your email as @apple.com, it returns back: <domain> <name>apple.com</name> <service> <hostname>mail.apple.com</hostname> <port>993</port> <protocol>IMAP</protocol> <ssl /> <requires>MACOSX</requires> <authentication>PLAIN</authentication> </service> <...> </domain>

JetSpiegel 12y ago
Thunderbird has a similar service, but you can click on Manual Config and input that by hand.
- valleyer 12y ago
  Option-click the "Create" button in the setup wizard in Mail.app for the same thing

rplnt 12y ago

If you like the title of this post, you might like this subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/titlegore https://www.reddit.com/r/titlegore edit: all right, jokes aside, the title is horrible and unparseable for many reasons: "Yosemite" without stating it's OS X Yosemite throws you off with the first word. It "Sends Spotlight" (comma). All right, sends spotlight what? Is sends a verb, why is it capitalized? Let's move on... "Safari Searches", Safari searches what? Again with the random capitalization of searches? Or I guess it was a verb and "Spotlight, Safari" is a list. The fact that both are also common words doesn't help - it would be more obvious that we are talking about products/brands if "searches" and "sends" weren't capitalized. Continue... "to Apple" - yeah, this makes sense (first time in this sentence). Even "to" is not capitalized (but it makes you question your decision about sends/searches). Comma. Third parties. What?! Seriously, it's awful.

zimpenfish 12y ago
Whilst it's not great, it's hardly awful or unparseable. Headlines have been written in this kind of truncated form for decades; people know how to read them.

tsenkov 12y ago

Disclaimer: I am building the mentioned app. Pagehop (https://pagehopapp.com/ https://pagehopapp.com/), a launcher targeting only the Web, doesn't send your search queries to any server of ours, and allows searching in many different sources (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia, StackOverflow, YouTube, even some very specific sources such as jQuery's API documentation, the Mozilla Developer Network or the NPM archive). You can add sources (recipes) yourself. We don't use a central server, instead the app taps into free web services (where possible) or scrapes the sites (where not). It basically is a pack of many horizontal and vertical search engines with a single UI and the ability to use tools for post-processing of web results such as Regexes and Fuzzy Matching. Pagehop queries are a simpler version of executing commands in the Terminal and you can pipe tools, one after another, just the same. You should check it out (or not) - it has an unlimited, free and fully functional evaluation period (nothing is locked, just like SublimeText).

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

nashequilibrium 12y ago

mmmmmmm

teamhappy 12y ago

We've read plenty of interesting explanations in this thread. Anybody care to explain to me what great feature is hidden behind the "About This Mac" cookie or where to find the button to disable it?

f3llowtraveler 12y ago

I am extremely disturbed by this report. I have been a faithful Apple user for years, but this single report causes me to seriously consider switching to Linux for good.

coldtea 12y ago
You mean to get something like Ubuntu that does the same thing? Let's set this straight: anything that gives you suggestions (for search, products, dictionary definitions, songs, etc) from the internet, is by definition sending your query to some internet server. Next drama: Google searches send my search queries to Google.
- 4ad 12y ago
  If you want to use OS X, you need to play by Apple's runes. If you want to use some kind of Unix-like system, you don't need to play by Canonical's rules. There's a myriad of Linux distribution, not only Ubuntu, and then there are the BSDs too.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    So, in each case, you get to decide the rules you want to play with, by going with the OS that satisfies you.
- inclemnet 12y ago
  > You mean to get something like Ubuntu that does the same thing? He obviously means something not like Ubuntu (or at least Unity in particular) that does not do the same thing. There are many many distros meeting this requirement, it's disingenuous to try and imply everyone is doing it.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >He obviously means something not like Ubuntu (or at least Unity in particular) that does not do the same thing. You'd be surprised: http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/09/ubuntu-bakes-amazon-search-results-into-os-to-raise-cash/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/09/ubuntu-bakes-amazon-...

steffenfrost 12y ago

What are they sending to the NSA?

blinkingled 12y ago

> About this Mac When the user selects 'About this Mac' from the Apple menu, Yosemite phones home and s_vi, a unique analytics identifier, is included in the request. (si_vi is used by Adobe/Omniture's analytics software). Wow. I am waiting for "Team Apple" to invent a radical defense on this one. But regardless this is shameful on Apple's part.

rimantas 12y ago
Does it by any chance depend on checking "Send usage and diagnostics data to Apple" checkbox? Is that identifier used for anything else, i.e. can it be associated with something identifying the user, not just saying that all these requests came from the same machine?
- blinkingled 12y ago
  If you read the link it says upfront that this happens after disabling all privacy related options including usage and diagnostics data. Besides why does Apple need to know the user clicked About This Mac? A crash log I can understand but this is unprecedented level of tracking on a desktop OS.

dustinfarris 12y ago

Is the data sent to Apple personally identifiable? How long is it retained? If the NSA (inevitably) decides to crash the party, what is the nature of the information that they walk away with? These are all questions that should have readily available answers.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

jason_slack 12y ago

Has anyone found a way in 10.10 to completely disable spotlight and notification center? I know I can disable in system preferences but what about getting rid of the icons and completely stopping the services all together?