If You're Connected, Apple Collects Your Data

fyngyrz (762201) writes It would seem that no matter how you configure Yosemite, Apple is listening. Keeping in mind that this is only what's been discovered so far, and given what's known to be going on, it's not unthinkable that more is as well. Should users just sit back and accept this as the new normal? It will be interesting to see if these discoveries result in an outcry, or not. Is it worse than the data collection recently reported in a test version of Windows?

Comments

Yay :D

[jimmetry]

2015 will the the year of Desktop Linux!

Re:Yay :D

[mysidia]

Desktop linux will collect data too, otherwise they will be at a huge disadvantage.

Instrumenting how users interact with your OS informs the process of upgrading UI / UX designs.

Re: Yay :D

[Anonymous Coward]

please do not feed the troll everyone

Re:Yay :D

[anagama]

Yeah, it should be opt-in. At the very least, opt-out.

Re:Yay :D

[davydagger]

at least in debian you can dpkg-reconfigure popularity-contest, and it asks you if you want to participate and is fairly transparent about the proccess.

Re:Yay :D

[Teresita]

Desktop Linux will be at a disadvantage? As in, revenues will be halved? What?

Re:Yay :D

[peragrin]

except you can turn it all off. I have. Yosemite still works as it should. I just lose some safari and spotlight options

Re:Yay :D

[master5o1]

What do you lose in Safari and Spotlight?

Re:Yay :D

[mysidia]

Yeah, it should be opt-in. At the very least, opt-out.

The challenge is that it will skew the statistics.

Collecting anonymized UI instrumentation data doesn't really have privacy concerns, other than revealing your OS.

However, whether you choose to opt-in or opt-out says something about you that may very well be closely connected to other behavior traits that affect your usage of the user interface --- such as whether you prefer GUI or CLI, how much computer/Linux expertise you have, how comfortable you are editing text-based config files, etc.

I personally believe that the more experienced computer users are likely to have acquired more skepticism surrounding software vendors, and users who are more ignorant are also likely to be more trusting of the marketing message, resulting in skewed data due to selection bias: in other words, less useful data which mostly only reflects a segment of the audience.

Re:Yay :D

[anagama]

In TFA, the author claims he did turn stuff off. Have you run a network sniffer to watch your computer's behavior, or are you trusting that "off" means off.

Re:Yay :D

[mysidia]

Desktop Linux will be at a disadvantage? As in, revenues will be halved? What?

I'm saying that the proprietary vendors will continue to have a competitive edge in improving their user interfaces to compete, since the vendors that require the stats will have more datapoints about OS usage which are also less biased.

As for revenues.... half of zero is still zero, and it's theoretical rate of increase in market share which could eventually be affected.

Probably, there must eventually be some way of addressing privacy concerns besides just "opt-out"

Re: Yay :D

[Teresita]

I used Unity for about five minutes maybe, long enough to go with MATE instead.

Re:Yay :D

[bigfinger76]

So when can we expect these UI "improvements"?

Re:Yay :D

[anagama]

There is a distinction in how you interact with a browser, and the actual content of your searches. Blurring this line is pretty ugly. Apple needs to know stuff like: The user clicked in the search field, typed stuff, and then because of a 60s delay in executing the search, probably couldn't see or understand the search icon, and clearly didn't know to press return (or the phone rang). To get this, Apple doesn't need to know what the person typed. But if that is the claim -- the need to know what is typed -- why not just enable the video camera and microphone too -- that would make it easier to figure out if the person is having problems with the Safari interface, or just answering a text on his phone. I'm guessing people would be sort of grossed out by that, but it fits right in with what you say they need, so why not go total surveillance?

Re: Yay :D

[infolation]

please do not feed the troll everyone

Especially in the UK

Re:Yay :D

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm saying that the proprietary vendors will continue to have a competitive edge in improving their user interfaces to compete

Designs as competitive as Windows 8, you mean?

Re:Yay :D

[Noah Haders]

the suggestions. the spotlight suggestions that you see in the spotlight window and also in the safari url bar.

Re:Yay :D

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like Windows 8 had a competitive edge because of all the improvements with the UI?

UI experts are notoriously bad at creating a good UI. They're trying too hard to find a reason for their jobs and they end up trying to fix things which are not broken.

Re: Yay :D

[slazzy]

Personally I always use little snitch to see what is going on, but I have upgraded yet.

Re:Yay :D

[mysidia]

To get this, Apple doesn't need to know what the person typed.

Correct... for browser GUI design Apple doesn't need to know what they were looking for.

It would be the search engine provider who needs to know what the user typed, and based on what they clicked --- if they found what they were looking for, and which result they found most relevant.

But the search engine provider doesn't need access to other information like what brand of mouse they were using, or which particular search box the user utilized.

Re:Yay :D

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

TFA specifically notes that the behavior described was observed with all visible 'privacy' settings adjusted. Presumably the story is even cheerier if those aren't switched off.

Re: Yay :D

[Trogre]

Yes, just like that one. But preferably one that actually stops the system from sending data back to Apple.

Re: Yay :D

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If you don't trust an OS vendor, isn't using a network monitoring tool on a different host entirely, with physical access to the wire, pretty much the only way to go? If they were so motivated, the OS would basically be a rootkit with device drivers and a userspace API...

Re:Yay :D

[Sarten-X]

Enabling the video camera or microphone won't actually help. You'd need both to determine if the user was actually using their phone, and the processing cost needed to perform that kind of recognition on a large scale would be so ridiculously expensive that it would undermine any additional benefit from the research.

Statistically, a user waiting 60 seconds before searching is uninteresting. It's an outlier, so the developers really don't care what happened. Far more useful would be an observation that 75% of users use the center enter key to submit queries, 20% use the mouse, and 5% use the enter key on the numeric keypad, combined with an observation that 80% of mouse users move the cursor around after a period of inactivity before clicking. To a design team, that means that the users' attention has shifted to typing, and they've forgotten where the mouse is. Perhaps the mouse should highlight in some way when it first moves...

Similarly, the actual content of searches doesn't matter from a UI perspective. If you're having trouble searching for something, it doesn't matter if you're looking for instructions to knit a sweater for a kitten, or the mixture used in the Oklahoma City bombing. On the other hand, the exact search text is useful to the folks developing the search engine, so they can put the most relevant results at the top of the list. Of course, the search engine team doesn't care about how long it takes the user to find their mouse cursor.

This leads to one of the most entertaining aspects of the whole privacy debate. Gathering data is easy, but proper anonymizing is hard. Practically speaking, the analysis of the gathered data is often easier than ensuring that data is anonymous. For example, there are certain combinations of ZIP code and state that identify as few as 30 people within the continental United States, so any data set that includes both ZIP code and state is probably not sufficiently anonymous. It's far easier to simply collect only what's needed for a particular team, and make sure nothing else can be connected to that record. One database records that somebody searched for "geriatric german grandmas spanking spanish men", and another knows that user submitted a search with a mouse, and perhaps another knows that the user is located in western Iowa. With no way to connect the records, the business need is fulfilled and the user's privacy is effectively safe... but the legal disclosure will still simply say that the company collects all those things, stirring up a nice panic.

Re:Yay :D

[Anonymous Coward]

So when can we expect these UI "improvements"?

When the last data miner is hanged with the intestines of the last UX designer.

Re:Yay :D

[Rosyna]

TFA specifically notes that the behavior described was observed with all visible 'privacy' settings adjusted. Presumably the story is even cheerier if those aren't switched off.

He only disabled Spotlight Suggestions in the Spotlight preferences, he did not disable it for Safari, which is in the Safari preferences, right next to the search engine preference.

  (Because you may not want Spotlight sending strings to Apple when searching for files on the computer, but you may not care if you are only searching the internets via safari).

Re: Yay :D

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen, bro. But why so angry?

Re:Yay :D

[Anonymous Coward]

It is opt-out. You don't need to buy an Apple product, no matter what your friends or the commercials tell you.

Re:Yay :D

[Anonymous Coward]

it should not be either one, because it shouldn't be in the software at all in the first place. fuck off, apple.

Re: Yay :D

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not?

Re: Yay :D

[saloomy]

Because regardless of weather or not you have a point, a lot of people will write off your opinion as "the rantings of an idiot".

Re: Yay :D

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a quote from a fine upstanding CEO who didn't give a Shit about your privacy, before 9/11 and while he was helping to compromise any reasonable expectation that such a thing as privacy would ever make it out of the 20th cenutury.

http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/news/1999/01/17538

Re:Yay :D

[Savage-Rabbit]

To get this, Apple doesn't need to know what the person typed.

Correct... for browser GUI design Apple doesn't need to know what they were looking for.

It would be the search engine provider who needs to know what the user typed, and based on what
they clicked --- if they found what they were looking for, and which result they found most relevant.

But the search engine provider doesn't need access to other information like what brand of mouse they were using, or which particular search box the user utilized.

Right!! And Google would never record your searches in a non ananomized history which you have to explicitly turn off in your google account.

Re:Yay :D

[ruir]

dpkg-reconfigure popularity-contest? I always delete it. My policy in servers is to have only installed the bare minimum it is needed to deliver the service.

Re: Yay :D

[Anonymous Coward]

An idiot that can spell "whether"?

Re:Yay :D

[grep -v '.*' *]

are you trusting that "off" means off.

Well in California, Yes now means "Yes". I'm afraid that it's only "off" in some context you don't (aren't meant to) understand. But it's OK, it's Apple, after all --they're just backing up all of your keystrokes and swipes to the iCloud in case you forget them. After all: you might forgot how to reenable it and they only want to help.

OTOH, I've got a current Onkyo amp with a bright blue OFF light. It recently confused a friend of mine who was trying to turn off the stereo. She couldn't get both the light and the speakers off at the same time and complained that it was broken.

I agreed.

Re: Yay :D

[jafiwam]

If you don't trust an OS vendor, isn't using a network monitoring tool on a different host entirely, with physical access to the wire, pretty much the only way to go? If they were so motivated, the OS would basically be a rootkit with device drivers and a userspace API...

Put the host to be inspected on a secured wireless network, then use another host on the same network to sniff wireless packets. That works too.

Re:Yay :D

[Polizei]

First thing I did when installed Yosemite on Saturday was to disable all kinds of "nice" suggestions in Spotlight.
Second thing - Safari. I've disabled everything that has to do something with "Search" and the "new smart location bar".

Re:Yay :D

[mysidia]

Right!! And Google would never record your searches in a non ananomized history which you have to explicitly turn off in your google account.

This is why a search engine should not be allowed to run their own advertisement channel provider or share search/user profile information with advertisement channel services or 3rd party companies.

Because Google runs Adsense, they have a perverse incentive to act against their customers'/users' best interests.

Re:Yay :D

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because if there is 1 thing apple users are good at, it's correctly evaluating and implementing security.

Re:Yay :D

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, so a lawyer oversaw the design of how the settings are done so as to maximize the ability to snoop?

Re: Yay :D

[chihowa]

That's completely true, but if you're mostly concerned with third party apps phoning home, a local application like Little Snitch works well enough. Using it to get (at least for now) a decent view of how system processes are communicating is just gravy.

The fact that Little Snitch (which uses a kernel module to put itself into the flow of traffic) is capable of blocking OS traffic and sometimes borking system processes in ways that their logs indicate is unexpected shows that, at least for now, Apple probably isn't hiding traffic from it.

Re: Yay :D

[Anonymous Coward]

Google was started as an advertising company.

Re:Yay :D

[Jaegs]

I'll make it easier for you:

desktopLinuxYear=$(date +%Y -d "$DATE + 1 year"); echo $desktopLinuxYear 'will be the year of Desktop Linux!';

Re:Yay :D

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you turn off a feature that you don't know about / don't know it leaks information?

Re:Yay :D

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect. The Browser GUI design may change if the company in question realizes what's being searched for.

For example, my parents don't understand what an address bar is and will often just simply pop a website into Google or, for example, perhaps 95% of people who search for "50 shades" aren't looking for paint stores and offers the previously downloaded copy of said book..

This is probably why Firefox eventually just made the search box and address bar the same (aka Awesome Bar).

Re:Yay :D

[Anonymous Coward]

Google's Nexus series devices have been doing Face Unlock for years now.

The amount of resources is rather quite minimal, especially if you do it intelligently -- assume it's the same user and only rescan for a few moments if the device is idle for __ minutes.

Re:Yay :D

[Anonymous Coward]

So who, would you say, is good at creating a UI?

Re: Yay :D

[davydagger]

yeah, just like that one, except it actually does what it says it does

Re:Yay :D

[Anonymous Coward]

Mice have done that for quite some time?

Cursor trails? Not the same as highlighting but...

Re:Yay :D

[cmarkn]

I believe you are forgetting who the customers of Google are. Hint, they're not you. The people who give money to Google are their customers - the advertisers. The "customers/users" you mention are not customers at all, they are the product Google delivers to its paying customers. The searching they do for you is how they produce their product.

Re: Yay :D

[MidnightBrewer]

Thank you. It's true, although we don't like to brag.

The information sent is anonymous, using an ephemeral session ID, which resets every 15 minutes. The data is sent over HTTPS, meaning it can't be intercepted. No personal data. The only purpose of all this is to improve search suggestions. Nothing to see here.

Re:Yay :D

[mysidia]

I believe you are forgetting who the customers of Google are. Hint, they're not you. The people who give money to Google are their customers - the advertisers.

Actually, both the free users of the search service AND the paid buyers of the advertising service are both customers of Google.

Just because you are providing the service for free, does not mean the buyer is not your customer.

Google is providing you a service if you use their search tool; it is the reason to visit their website and enter your search queries.

There is a related service being sold to various companies that choose to advertise.

But this doesn't exclude users of the other service from being a customer.

Just like if you buy a magazine, you are still a customer, even though there is another company paying to list ads in the magazine you read.

You are still a customer, even if your magazine is provided on a complimentary or promotional basis free of charge.

Re:Yay :D

[kmoser]

That's even more confusing than when you want Windows to shut down, you must first select "Start".

Re: Yay :D

[jmcvetta]

Unity is awesome. It's the main reason I stay with Ubuntu.

Yes, worse

[Zaelath]

Of course it's much worse than the data collection from a "technical preview". It's whole purpose is to discover how people use the damn thing and you sign up to be a guinea-pig in exchange for getting the advanced access.

However, it's "to be expected" from Apple. You don't own their phones or laptops, they own you.

Re:Yes, worse

[beakerMeep]

Try not to feed timothy's' trolling. I am no fan of Windows but that was an unnecessary distraction meant to provoke a coke vs pepsi debate.

Two privacy wrongs don't make anything remotely resembling a right.

Re:Yes, worse

[bloodhawk]

The Windows one is not even a privacy wrong, it is more an example of the right way to do it. You are signing up to provide them feedback, they state it when you download it to install, it is part of the conditions.

Re:Yes, worse

[beakerMeep]

Which is fine but Windows comments belong on that thread. This is irrelevant to if / how / why macs are phoning home. Timothy just added it to incite comments like yours.

Back on topic: I am kinda curious about the Omniture cookie. Why would they send it when I open the "about this mac" dialog?

Re:Yes, worse

[devilspgd]

Except that the /. article discusses Windows, making comparisons between Windows and OSX on this topic on-topic by definition.

Re:Yes, worse

[beakerMeep]

Huh? Timothy added that to be incendiary. It's not part of the submission. And there is nothing about it in the github repo / article.

Re:Yes, worse

[devilspgd]

Sure. But it's in the item that started every thread in this discussion, so by definition, it's on-topic anywhere in this /. article, being downstream of the incendiary comment.

Re:Yes, worse

[Anonymous Coward]

The Windows one is not even a privacy wrong, it is more an example of the right way to do it. You are signing up to provide them feedback, they state it when you download it to install, it is part of the conditions.

Sorry, if you read the terms and conditions that you click through on the way to installing Yosemite (or any other Apple product) there are clear provisions for what they do with whatever they collect, and that they do collect data. Just because you didn't feel like reading the fine print doesn't mean something nefarious is going on.

Re:Yes, worse

[Anonymous Coward]

And Microsoft's instrumentation in the Windows 10 Technical Preview does not report anything traceable to a single user or machine. Its purpose is to gather info about how the software is used and is fully disclosed when you sign up.

@timothy, you need to get more foil for that hat and remember to take your meds every day, no matter how good you think you feel.

Re:Yes, worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Putting something nefarious in the fine print does not mean that something nefarious is not going on.

Re:Yes, worse

[hairyfeet]

I would only add there is a legitimate REASON for it in an ALPHA BUILD, its so that MSFT can find out which ones of the literally tens of millions of software programs that run on Windows need shims,compatibility modes, or be outright blocked for being incompatible. there is no way in hell even a company the size of MSFT can test THAT many programs so they let us try it before it comes out (which benefits guys like me who can see if our customers would be able to use it) and in return you do just as I've done and let 'em find out which programs don't work and give 'em feedback. They tell you exactly what they are doing ahead of time and again it costs you NOTHING to install this OS and try it on as many boxes as you want.

With Apple the cheapest unit is...what $600 for the Mini? And most have Macbooks which start at like a grand...and they are gonna datamine your ass on TOP of the insane amount of profit margin they are making on their hardware? really? There is greedy and there is fucking greedy piggies, it sounds like we have a case of the latter here folks. I wish this surprised me but sadly it don't, I have customers that were hardcore Macbook users and I've seen Applecare go from "If we built it we service it" to "Oh that an older model we don't fix those...wanna buy a new one?" so this really doesn't surprise me, should have known with Cook starting out in supply that quality would go down while monetizing would go up.

Re: Yes, worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I'm sure that when Microsoft monitored and required approval of your hardware configuration or any change to it in Winblows XP, that's exactlty what they intended too, to stir debate.

Re:Yes, worse

[smallfries]

I would guess that it is part of a system survey. About this mac takes a snapshot of OS version / point release / software installed / modules active etc. Or it certainly does when you press More Info, but I guess it does it when you trigger the dialog. The cookie sounds like a GUID. Firing off both would allow them to build up a distribution of platforms that Yosemite is running on, similar to the Steam hardware survey. Can be useful for finding out how and where the code is used (i.e. in combination with which hardware / software). Would work better than a periodic push of the data from every machine, and it would bias the sample towards people having problems with their configuration (because that is when most people hit that menu item).

Re:Yes, worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh so as long as they put they are going to butt rape you in small print its fine? The big difference between what MS is doing and What Apple is doing is that MS tones it all down if the release versions, whereas apple goes full arse bandit.

Re:Yes, worse

[Ryanrule]

I expect you get a free copy of windows too. Thats what they did for windows 7, I have two free copies from letting them track my porn searches in college.

Re:Yes, worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Except, if you're going to log what the user does, keystroke for keystroke, you need to be upfront that you're collecting usernames and passwords.

Like, a big red flag: YOU ARE GIVING MICROSOFT YOUR GMAIL PASSWORD.

Re:Yes, worse

[beakerMeep]

And has any of that coke vs pepsi shit been worth reading? It seems like you are arguing *for* the stupid bs.

Re:Yes, worse

[devilspgd]

No, I mostly ignore it. But this *is* still /.

Mac is for work only

[ToasterTester]

That why I just use my Mac for work, and everything elses on my Linux box.

Re:Mac is for work only

[Anonymous Coward]

For open source work maybe, but often companies work on confidential projects where spying can't be tolerated.

Re:Mac is for work only

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be headed that way shortly myself. I've one question however :

Won't someone write a tool that blocks all access to Apple, except perhaps form the update utility?

Re:Mac is for work only

[Anonymous Coward]

"everything elses"... LOL.

Must be an 'Americanism'.

Of course it's worse

[msobkow]

Microsoft is testing a release candidate and is informing users of what they're monitoring.

So far no one has complained about onerous licensing agreements with Yosemite, which seems to imply that Apple is not informing users about it.

Until Microsoft has a production release, it's not even fair to compare the two.

Re:Of course it's worse

[SeaFox]

Until Microsoft has a production release, it's not even fair to compare the two.

Agreed. Not to use the old joke, but in this case comparing a pre-release beta build to a finished, released product is an apples to oranges comparison (or maybe apples to lemons would be more appropriate).

Re:Of course it's worse

[Anonymous Coward]

So thats what I would do if I went back in time. Go to Albuquerque and get Gates to name his software 'Orange' rather than windows.

Re:Of course it's worse

[Anonymous Coward]

So thats what I would do if I went back in time. Go to Albuquerque and get Gates to name his software 'Orange' rather than windows.

Sorry, that name was already taken.

Re:Of course it's worse

[Anonymous Coward]

They're Apple fanbois. Even if Apple *did* inform them, their cognitive dissonance would find some way to justify the data collection.

If you want results from the web

[Rosyna]

If you want live search results from the web, of course the client has to send the search string to a server each time the search string changes. Why is this surprising? If you don't want live search results from the web, disable it (in the Spotlight preferences and/or in the Safari Preferences) and the search string will stop being sent.

If you want any kind of information from the internets, some data has to be sent to a server on the internets at some point in time. There's no way around this.

Re:If you want results from the web

[blackest_k]

um no.
you didn't read the link the string was sent to duck duck go and also sent to apple there is no need for the search string to go to both.

if the user was using apple to search then of course the search string should go to apple but if its sent to google then it shouldn't go to apple as well.

Re:If you want results from the web

[Rosyna]

Oh, I read it. But you didn't read my response to your other comment, which was,

Even if you change search engines in safari, it doesn't disable Spotlight suggestions in Safari. That's a separate checkbox in the Search tab in the Safari preferences. (There are a bunch of options in the Search preferences in Safari)

Searching maps is part of Spotlight suggestions

Re:If you want results from the web

[anagama]

From TFA:

Having read DuckDuckGo's privacy statements, you might decide to switch Safari's default search to DuckDuckGo. If we enter a new search in Safari, we can then search the logged data to see who the search terms are actually sent to.

The logs show that a copy of your Safari searches are still sent to Apple, even when selecting DuckDuckGo as your search provider, and 'Spotlight Suggestions' are disabled in System Preferences > Spotlight.

Or why when setting up an email account does the mail app send the domain name you enter to apple?

I say all this as a person who has been using mac laptops for the last 9 or 10 years. I'm obviously not an apple hater but this seriously makes me question whether I'll buy another one. It's a pretty astounding intrusion demonstrating some rather staggering hubris.

Re:If you want results from the web

[Rosyna]

Or why when setting up an email account does the mail app send the domain name you enter to apple?

It's part of the automatic configuration settings. When you first set up a new email address using "Add other Mail Account" in Mail.app, it just asks your for your name, email address, and the password for the account. It then sends the domain to Apple to get the imap/pop3/smtp servers and other configuration information for that domain, if it is available, so the user doesn't have to enter them all separately. It's part of a good UI.

Re:If you want results from the web

[Hewligan]

Or why when setting up an email account does the mail app send the domain name you enter to apple?

I don't know for sure, but when you set up an email account, based on the address you supply, the Mac does try to auto configure stuff for a wide range of popular email services. I'm guessing it's probably sending off the address to search for that auto configuration information.

Re:If you want results from the web

[beakerMeep]

They specifically said they turned off Spotlight suggestions.

Even if that were not so, changing search engine should never mean you have to find another configuration option to turn off the old search engine. That's just wrong.

This is actually my only issue. It seems many of the things they found in TFGHR have a legit uses, but if you turn it off, then it should be off.

Re:If you want results from the web

[Jane Q. Public]

Actually you don't SEEM to have read it, since TFA says even with Spotlight suggestions disabled, it still sends the data to Apple.

Re:If you want results from the web

[anagama]

Are you joking? Why not have the local program test the server itself with the usual prefixes for mail servers? Then the local app can try the usual ports for SSL. Then it can tell the user the results. After a failure, it could even say, "hey, that server isn't responding to the usual requests, would you like me to check with Apple to see if there is something special about it and Apple knows that secret sauce?"

Do you want to tell me with a straight face that this interaction could not be programmed into a local application that sends nothing to Apple (except by express request on the user's part)? That this interaction is so amazingly hard, it has to be done remotely on a bank Apple's servers?

Re:If you want results from the web

[Rosyna]

They specifically said they turned off Spotlight suggestions.

No, he said he turned off Spotlight suggestions in Spotlight. Not Spotlight suggestions in Safari. (Because you may not want Spotlight sending strings to Apple when searching for files on the computer, but you may not care if you are only searching the internets via safari).

Even if that were not so, changing search engine should never mean you have to find another configuration option to turn off the old search engine. That's just wrong.

It's in the same window!

Re:If you want results from the web

[Rosyna]

He turned off Spotlight suggestions for Spotlight, not Spotlight suggestions in Safari.

(Because you may not want Spotlight sending strings to Apple when searching for files on the computer, but you may not care if you are only searching the internets via safari).

Re:If you want results from the web

[Rosyna]

Because then you are sending a lot of requests to random domains that may not be designed to handle the traffic? And a lot, a hell of a lot of mail servers out there for common email services use legacy mail servers not related to the domain of the email address (because the mail servers were set up before that particular email domain became popular).

Super quick example, if you have a @windowslive.com email address, the IMAP server is imap-mail.outlook.com. The Exchange ActiveSync server is s.outlook.com. Neither one would be found but your suggestion of randomly hitting subdomains.

There is actually an included list of common Mail Servers and common mail configurations. Mail.app only sends the domain when the domain is not on the list or the configuration fails. It also means that if enough users look for a domain, Apple can immediately include the information without waiting for an update.

Have you ever done tech support for email problems before? It's a nightmare. Anything to help the user is best.

Re:If you want results from the web

[Jane Q. Public]

He turned off Spotlight suggestions for Spotlight, not Spotlight suggestions in Safari.

I see. What you said was similar enough to TFA that a brief reading made me think you were saying the same things.

So I stand corrected.

Still, this one should be tested. Does it send a string when Spotlight Suggestions are turned off in Safari as well? We won't know until somebody tries it.

Also, the s_vi issue is very troubling.

Re:If you want results from the web

[beakerMeep]

Thanks for the screenshot. It explains what you're saying better.

Still, do you think that they changed the search engine, left all those options for smart search on, then went to the OS setting for spotlight and turned that off, then sounded the alarm? Would seem a bit like manufactured outrage to me, but I suppose it's not impossible.

If those options were actually left on, then is a very non-story (at least that part)

Re:If you want results from the web

[Rosyna]

Still, do you think that they changed the search engine, left all those options for smart search on, then went to the OS setting for spotlight and turned that off, then sounded the alarm? Would seem a bit like manufactured outrage to me, but I suppose it's not impossible.

Yes, yes, that is what I think Landon did.

Re:If you want results from the web

[Rosyna]

Still, this one should be tested. Does it send a string when Spotlight Suggestions are turned off in Safari as well? We won't know until somebody tries it.

No, it does not.

Re:If you want results from the web

[Noah Haders]

a reasonable explanation was posted elsewhere - apple maintains configuration profiles for certain web addresses, and perhaps it's uploading the account address to see if they have a configuration profile for it.

Re:If you want results from the web

[Jane Q. Public]

I'm tempted to take your word for it, but I prefer evidence. Who tested this, how, and when?

Re:If you want results from the web

[Rosyna]

He said he'll update the TFA tomorrow with the correct information.

Re:If you want results from the web

[Jane Q. Public]

I see. Thanks!

Re:If you want results from the web

[Silvrmane]

"Or why when setting up an email account does the mail app send the domain name you enter to apple?"

It's so that IF your domain is one that is known to Apple, they can reply back with the correct IMAP and SMTP server settings, allowing you to not have to enter those things. If you are in a big company, or use a very popular email provider, this is a help if Apple happens to know the correct settings for your domain. If you are in a small company, not so much. But there's nothing sinister about it.

Re:If you want results from the web

[sjames]

Because then you are sending a lot of requests to random domains that may not be designed to handle the traffic? And a lot, a hell of a lot of mail servers out there for common email services use legacy mail servers not related to the domain of the email address (because the mail servers were set up before that particular email domain became popular).

So what magical thing is it that you think apple can do on it's servers that the mail client couldn't do for itself that somehow doesn't pester the domain the user enters?

Of course, if the MX for the domain falls over from 3 or 4 probes, you won't be getting any mail anyway.

Re:If you want results from the web

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Apple could set up records in their servers that say, "Hey, if the user wants to set up an email address for a domain that maps to these MX hosts, point the account at these IMAP3 servers, and this SMTP server." Sure, setting that up for the first occasion that those particular MX hosts are used would require manual intervention on Apple's part, but once set up, it can be blatted out to any interested user, no further intervention required.

Note, I'm not saying that what Apple is doing here is necessarily good, or necessarily bad - only pointing out that there are possibilities that fall outside direct privacy violations.

Re:If you want results from the web

[sjames]

That would require an even bigger violation. They would have to have the client send the actual configuration to Apple as well so they can have the data. Not all businesses would appreciate that.

Re:If you want results from the web

[marka63]

And if sites actually added the SRV records specified in RFC 6186 Apple could avoid having to maintain a database of email to submission/pop3/imap/pop3s/imaps servers.

It's not like it is hard to add these records.

Re: If you want results from the web

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't misunderstand ....I have no objection to your sexuality, so you personally prefer cocks. Fine. On the other hand, your use of the common English word for the female genitalia as a term of abuse belongs in another century. Some of us quite enjoy cunts ...

Re:If you want results from the web

[Richard_at_work]

Why should you ever have to go to Apple in the first instance for that information? A database covering all the likely candidates shouldn't be more than a few MB in size, and could be kept up to date via Apple Update - and if the database doesn't hold the information, or the mail server doesn't respond to a test connection, then the user can be asked "check online for server details?" and then the app hits Apples servers.

We went through all of this with Microsoft Update, and the Slashdot consensus then was "do it locally, MS shouldn't get any user specific information" and yet here we are seemingly giving Apple a free reign...

Re:If you want results from the web

[j-beda]

That would require an even bigger violation. They would have to have the client send the actual configuration to Apple as well so they can have the data. Not all businesses would appreciate that.

I'm not so sure - most email providers provide all this information on their web pages anyway. Unless you are suggesting that Apple's mail client is waiting for people to manually set up some email and then sending that information to Apple for use by future users, I don't see any problem for Apple to notice that they are getting lots of requests for email accounts at "someplace.com" and then someone at Apple looking up setup info for someplace.com and pushing that data out to users as needed.

While this type of "auto-setup" is extermely useful (especially on iOS where typing stuff and cut/past and switching between the settings and the web-browser are less than ideal), I do wish it was a bit easier to get straight to the "manual" configuration dialogues. For times when I know that the auto-setup is going to do it in a way I do not want, I usually start by entering a bad domain which does not return a useful result and that lets me do the setup completely manually.

Re:If you want results from the web

[Anonymous Coward]

oh no not requests, to random domains!!!

Re:If you want results from the web

[sjames]

It's fine to do that for gmail or yahoo, Comcast, etc but deepdarksecert.com might not appreciate it if iPhones are sending that information back to apple even if it is never published.

Re:If you want results from the web

[j-beda]

It's fine to do that for gmail or yahoo, Comcast, etc but deepdarksecert.com might not appreciate it if iPhones are sending that information back to apple even if it is never published.

I don't think that anything beyond the "deepdarkseceret.com" is going to to Apple, but I suppose if you are worried about anyone knowing what your email address is, then yeah, it might be a concern. Someone posted a link to an RFC of some sort that detailed how mail server settings should be published that could make this type of system unneccessary - too bad that is not more widely implemented.

Re:If you want results from the web

[Anonymous Coward]

Still, do you think that they changed the search engine, left all those options for smart search on, then went to the OS setting for spotlight and turned that off, then sounded the alarm? Would seem a bit like manufactured outrage to me, but I suppose it's not impossible.

TFA sounds like a neckbeard with an axe to grind. It would not surprise me what such a person could "conveniently" neglect to make their "hurr durrrr I haet APple" point. It's clearly worked too, look at the nerdrage from the peanut gallery.

If there's any reason for 20xx to not be the year of Linux on the Desktop, it's because of sanctimonious, vindictive sods like TFA's author.

Re:If you want results from the web

[Anonymous Coward]

Then download the rule set and apply it locally when setting up a new e-mail account. Or, if that's not technically possible for some edge case you can't give up, clearly indicate that information about your use of e-mail will be sent to Apple (where it can be forcibly taken by the government using an NSL or other illegal non-subpoena).

You can help the user without shitting all over peoples' privacy. Of course, any and all of this time would be better spent reforming your government so that it doesn't spy on its own citizens without oversight.

Re:If you want results from the web

[strikethree]

Anything to help the user is best.

Won't someone think of the children, erm um, user?

It is downright invasive to do such things without the user knowing about and being able to control such things.

Granted, it is potentially a nice service to offer. Forcing such privacy violations on EVERYONE without recourse is just evil. No excuses.

Should they?

[Greyfox]

No, they shouldn't. Are they? Yup. About 90% of them won't even be aware it's going on.

Comparing Preview/Test to Release...

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 10 is in preview, and there's pretty straightforward language around Microsoft collecting telemetry for bug fixing purposes - that's the quid pro quo for early access.

Apple, on the otherhand...who knows what & why they're collecting data in a released OS...

Re:Comparing Preview/Test to Release...

[thunderclap]

Apple, on the otherhand...who knows what & why they're collecting data in a released OS...

Seriously? They are collecting the info for the Next fappening.
Yes that sounds snarky and evil but Hollywood is lazy. People want to see naked celebs especially those who are hypocrites (ie those who take private nudes but won't green light a movie where they are naked) Apparently, Apple is in on it. Why else do they need the info? Its good for spying, and marketing. If they say #2 they are lying or incompetent.

Re:Comparing Preview/Test to Release...

[Noah Haders]

is it a hypocrite to take private nudes of yourself but not want to be naked in front of america on the movie screen? it sounds like both are defensible.

Re:Comparing Preview/Test to Release...

[thunderclap]

It is when you are paid to entertain. See I don't care about your life or what you do. I suppose the same would be for you about me. However, when a gal or guy says 'Hey, I want 12 bucks of your money. I do have a right to as what I am getting. If they say, 'I'll pretend to be mystique and my buddies will pretend to be the other x-men and we will act out the comics." I can still say that well if you are going to be naked can I see it. If she says no and I still pay but she decides to be naked for others (even if they are 'boyfriend') its hypocrisy. The moment you decide to entertain the public everything changes. You sacrifice certain things that the rest of us keep. Don't want to give those up? They quit being in public. There are thousands of jobs that don't involve the public.

Re:Comparing Preview/Test to Release...

[LeadSongDog]

is it a hypocrite to take private nudes of yourself but not want to be naked in front of america on the movie screen? it sounds like both are defensible.

I don't know if it really matters any more: attention spans have fallen under the ten-second threshold. Why worry who sees what they're about to forget anyway?

Poisoning

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be possible to poison their data somehow? Something like SETI sending bullshit to Apple? The same goes for other companies collecting crap about everyone.

Re:Poisoning

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it is possible, but you would have to get a lot of people on board for it to be a meaningful attack. If you alone send some trash data to their systems, they would probably just ignore it.

Doesn't look like much

[Anonymous Coward]

So lets see, they have 3 cases of "tracking" here.
1) A tracking cookie gets set on apple.com, subsequent loads of apple.com send the cookie to the server [closed: behaves correctly] - this is exactly how cookies are meant to work. The only possible issue here is that there appears to be a bug that all applications using some API to load the URL (I'd bet on NSURLConnection) are sharing the same cookies
2) When you search for something in Apple's browser, it contact's Apple's server and asks it what types of search it should do for that input. That also seems like a [closed: behaves correctly]
3) When you input a mail server to talk to, it appears to send the mail server's address to Apple, and the server responds with the same mail server. I expect that it's possible that this can return different URLs to talk to, most likely this is to help catch commonly mistyped URLs (e.g. typing gmail.com incorrectly). Also [closed: behaves correctly].

Honestly, I don't see what the fuss is here.

Re:Doesn't look like much

[Anonymous Coward]

This is like arguing that every time you get naked in the bathroom a picture of your genitalia should be sent to a team of 6th form biology students to determine whether to might need STI testing. What's that - you already know why you're in the bathroom and it's not for that? WE ARE TRYING TO IMPROVE YOUR USER EXPERIENCE, you ungrateful little shit.

Re:Doesn't look like much

[anagama]

I think I understand -- you are saying the software operates as designed, so no problems here.

I think what you aren't getting is that the way the software is designed is what ticks off people who care about their privacy.

Seriously, why should mail.app inform apple that I set up an account randomMailHost.com? That the software does leads you to write [closed: behaves correctly]. This is not at all "correct" from many users' points of view -- you should use a phrase that is more factual and uses words with less judgment involved, for example: [closed: behaves as _designed_ (and if you don't like the design, suck it)].

Re:Doesn't look like much

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, why should mail.app inform apple that I set up an account randomMailHost.com?

Mail.app should do that because apple will then send back "oh, randomMailHost.com's smtp server is at smtp.randomMailHost.com, and it's imap server is at imap6.subdomain.randomMailHostcom, you should log into it with the full email address, not just the bit before the at sign". That's extremely useful. As long as Apple is not then storing that randomMailHost.com is associated with a particular user - then there's no issue at all.

Re: Doesn't look like much

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, sync the new account to all of my devices.

Re:Doesn't look like much

[blackest_k]

As long as Apple is not then storing that randomMailHost.com is associated with a particular user - then there's no issue at all.

As a NSA agent for example. it wouldnt be useful to check with apple all the internet searches person of interest has conducted and while it might be disapointing that apple does not have his email on file and contacts they do at least know his email account with another provider and may be able to give login credentials for that service even if its outside of us juristiction.

sounds paranoid until you consider what edward snowden has said already.

Re:Doesn't look like much

[Anonymous Coward]

Mail.app should do that because apple will then send back "oh, randomMailHost.com's smtp server is at smtp.randomMailHost.com, and it's imap server is at imap6.subdomain.randomMailHostcom, you should log into it with the full email address, not just the bit before the at sign". That's extremely useful. As long as Apple is not then storing that randomMailHost.com is associated with a particular user - then there's no issue at all.

UkrainianDude123: "Fuck, country in revolution, need new ID for everyone I met at the protests today!"
Apple: "IP 127.1.1.1 just created some ID at some anonyukrainianthing.org"
FSB: "Thank you very much, Appul!"
UkrainianDude123: "Fuck, who's that knocking at my door at this hour?"

What's wrong with your UX philosophy is that it just got someone killed. So what if Apple isn't keeping the data, Apple isn't the threat. Every government with a packet sniffer is the threat, and your well-intentioned UX just compromised every one of your customers.

Re:Doesn't look like much

[Anonymous Coward]

You realise that this was transmitted over SSL, right? It was intercepted with a MitM attack on the local machine, by installing a CA that auto-generated certs for all addresses that anyone at all attempted to access.

No amount of packet sniffing is going to intercept this.

Re:Doesn't look like much

[Anonymous Coward]

no it will just be datamined from what ever 'secure' server apple stores its mass data collection on by state funded hackers then released in a .torrent for everyone somewhere along the line

Irony...

[Anonymous Coward]

And hipster Mac fans keep trying to convince me that they don't... While they live in a world of denial under a legacy of lies of a marketing genius who never ever wrote a single line of a code in his life....I'll be enjoying my bloat free custom android ROM - Cyanogen.

no, its not good thou

[blackest_k]

Seems Apples picking up searches from safari, even when told not too.
microsoft decided to log all your key strokes. Both experiences are negative but the later situation seems worse although niether are acceptable why should safari be sending "where to bury the body" back to apple, perhaps they have been "asked" for this information.

Re:no, its not good thou

[Rosyna]

Even if you change search engines in safari, it doesn't disable Spotlight suggestions in Safari. That's a separate checkbox in the Search tab in the Safari preferences. (There are a bunch of options in the Search preferences in Safari)

Re:no, its not good thou

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, from the log, it doesn't even appear to be spotlight search - it appears to be a Maps search. Given that one of the new features of Safari is that it searches for locations in Maps when you search in the URL bar, that seems like completely expected behaviour.

Re:no, its not good thou

[Noah Haders]

if you ask siri where to bury the body, she needs to go back to the apple servers to get the info.

Re:no, its not good thou

[thegarbz]

microsoft decided to log all your key strokes.

Microsoft released a testing product to gauge user interaction. The normal ways companies do this is ask users to sit and use a product and stand behind them watching their every move. No. The latter situation is not worse. If you don't want to participate in a testing release, then don't participate. It is completely expected that they log keystrokes, and though no one has mentioned it I wouldn't be surprised if they log mouse travel too.

Re:no, its not good thou

[jones_supa]

microsoft decided to log all your key strokes.

I don't think it was never proven that they specifically log keystrokes. For the W10TP they only wrote an EULA that says "all your data belongs to us".

Well, that can mean anything, but in practice, I suspect they will probably just log things like hardware profiles, performance values, app usage statistics, crash logs, things like that.

Re:no, its not good thou

[j-beda]

if you ask siri where to bury the body, she needs to go back to the apple servers to get the info.

That's funny.

ET Phone home

[ls671]

Friends with wireless access and iphones coming to my place seem to be phoning home in some way.

I detected apple trying to connect to some UDP ports on my router only when those iphones were around.
   

Re:ET Phone home

[lucm]

Same here. I've been using that "feature" to check how long the maid stays when she comes by to do weekly housekeeping.

Now I know how she can afford an iPhone, she charges for 3h but stays 2h!

Re:ET Phone home

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does your maid have access to your wifi?

Re:ET Phone home

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, you have a maid?

Re:ET Phone home

[Anonymous Coward]

You could make an app for that!

Re:ET Phone home

[timeOday]

It could just be some random app on the phone.

If Apple itself wanted to upload data more stealthily, there is absolutely nothing to stop them - just wait until the next time you initiate a connection with apple.com, such as a software update. Devices are so connected now, with no real internal partitioning of data, it is all purely on the honor system (except the ToS generally say they can and will do whatever they want anyways!)

Re:ET Phone home

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called UPNP. Apple isn't the only one to use it. You can find support for it on Windows and Linux.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Plug_and_Play

Re:ET Phone home

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, how dare she be able to afford a phone, when you can only afford a Maid!

Re:ET Phone home

[ls671]

UPNP is disallowed on my router. It could very well be a UPNP attempt but it would just make my point about iphone devices phoning home and trying to tell apple servers that they are listening for mother ship commands on a specific port. UPNP is typically used so internal LAN devices can tell the router to listen on the router public port and redirect the packets to the device.

Not such a great idea, I just redirect ports manually if I need to run a game server or what not.

Note that I support UDP conntracking so if the iphone device was just trying to communicate with apples servers. I wouldn't see what I see and the devices could communicate freely.

In my case it looks like the device and apple servers assume it used PNP with success on the router but those packets just get dropped.

Re:ET Phone home

[ls671]

Well I could always block encrypted traffic and implement introspection rules or allow encrypted traffic and implement MITM. It is my LAN and there is absolutely nothing apple can do about it ;-)

Re:ET Phone home

[Reeses]

Apple's default WiFi network behavior is to find an open WiFi access point to jump on, then one the "trusted" default WiFi networks (one you've connected to already, or one the AT&T or Starbucks networks), and if it can't find that, it tried to connect to the one with the strongest signal and bring up the login page for username/pass challenges. Since most consumer routers have that standardized, it knows where to look. That's probably the traffic you're seeing.

Re:ET Phone home

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you heard about iMessage? ... It's a mechanism where Apple helps delivers messages over internet instead of using the standard SMS/MMS delivery mechanism in order to avoid fees from the Cellular provider. Everyone I know who uses Apple products have this enabled, and of course you need to know which network the device is on in order to send it messages.

Re:ET Phone home

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you need to make more of a mess in the house, so that she needs 4 hours to clean up...

Re:ET Phone home

[Anonymous Coward]

See also: push notifications. Used for all sorts of shit, not just iMessage... and incoming packets are not exactly a data collection privacy nightmare.

But I do love to see Slashdot's collective panties in a bunch while simultaneously being full of self-righteous bullshit. If you have a cellphone, you already threw privacy to the wind, no matter what you believe about your custom rom.

Re:ET Phone home

[j-beda]

Same here. I've been using that "feature" to check how long the maid stays when she comes by to do weekly housekeeping.

Now I know how she can afford an iPhone, she charges for 3h but stays 2h!

Untill you knew how long it took her, were you happy with the quality of the cleaning and the price you were paying? If so, try not be be bothered by her "profit margin". If not, renegotiate the fee, or find someone else to do the job.

With all that said, are you paying her a "living wage"? For Alameda County, California that comes out to something like $24/hour for a single adult supporting one child or at least $11.50/hour to support just the working adult.

http://livingwage.mit.edu/

Of course people working jobs like house cleaning or computer consulting cannot typically get billable hours for 40 hours per week due to scheduling difficulties and travel time, so the hourly rate needs to be higher to account for that, or as your cleaner may attest, the "billing time" might be longer than the "working time". Other ways of offsetting this it to impose time minimums (at least two hours per job) or charge for travel time or distance. Considering that the IRS has a standard car expense of $0.56/mile, if someone is driving 60 mph they are generating an expense of $33.60/hour. Granted, the IRS is very generous on this expense calculation, but the actual expense for most people is probably close to at least half of that.

http://www.irs.gov/2014-Standa...

There are very few people getting rich cleaning houses.

Re:ET Phone home

[j-beda]

Well I could always block encrypted traffic and implement introspection rules or allow encrypted traffic and implement MITM. It is my LAN and there is absolutely nothing apple can do about it ;-)

If my phone and Apple's server already have a pre-shared encryption key, how are you going to implement a MITH attack? (or should that be "an MITM attack"? I suppose it depends if you read it as "em-eye-tee-em" or "Man In The Middle".) You can certainly drop the connection, but I don't see how you could read or spoof it.

Re:ET Phone home

[lucm]

The password is on the sticker of the router provided by my ISP. I don't mind, internet is not expensive. What I don't like is when a maid brings her kids and they mess with my saved games on my Xbox.

Re:ET Phone home

[lucm]

Why would I spend 3h cleaning my place while I can spend those 3h working for my clients? I make more money per hour than the cleaning lady and she is immensely more skilled at housekeeping than I am, so it's a no-brainer.

Also there is a side effect I did not expect with weekly housekeeping: I just love housekeeping day. On that day while I'm at work I know that when I come home in the evening my place will be squeaky clean, my clean clothes will be neatly folded or hanged, and the place will smell very very good. It's like when you start living with your first girlfriend, you are looking forward to see her in the evening - except that with the girlfriend this feeling doesn't last... but housekeeping day has made me happy since 2008.

I LOVE YOU HOUSEKEEPING DAY

Diagnostics and Usage Data is opt-out

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the excellent John Siracusa review of Yosemite, diagnostic and usage data is sent to both Apple and third-party app developers by default.

WHAT. THE. FUCKING. FUCK.

This is why I'm still using Snow Leopard.

Same review:

Among the biggest curmudgeons, Mavericks may even become the new Snow Leopard: the last "good" release before Apple ruined everything.

Exactly.

Re:Diagnostics and Usage Data is opt-out

[Rosyna]

It is not on by default. It's an option shown in the setup assistant. Shown after you first install Yosemite. The option in the setup assistant then sets those options in the Security prefpane. I'm not sure why Siracusa said they are on by default. Maybe since he's been using the beta for so long (since June), he forgot the option was in the Setup Assistant (since the Setup assistant is only shown on first major upgrade)

Re:Diagnostics and Usage Data is opt-out

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not on by default. It's an option shown in the setup assistant. Shown after you first install Yosemite. The option in the setup assistant then sets those options in the Security prefpane. I'm not sure why Siracusa said they are on by default. Maybe since he's been using the beta for so long (since June), he forgot the option was in the Setup Assistant (since the Setup assistant is only shown on first major upgrade)

Honestly, I can't say for sure, but I believe my installations of Yosemite had that option checked by default as well. Possibly on iOS as well. I do agree, it should be opt-in (as in, not checked by default). But Apple does clearly state that it is "diagnostics" data and that is it sent "to Apple". Either way, I always tend to uncheck those boxes. Especially the new one, "share crash data with app developers."

System Preferences - Security & Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

So just out of ideal thought.... This wouldn't have anything to do with the settings clearly available for adjustment within the System Preferences -> Security & Privacy pane and then select the "Privacy" tab. Inside there you see a lot of clearly defined options for opting in or out of various settings:
Location Services: Enable/Disable as a whole; Disable by specific user allowed apps
Contacts: Allow/Disallow apps chosen by user to use your contacts
Calendars: Allow/Disallow apps chosen by user to use your calendars
Reminders: Allow/Disallow apps chosen by user
Accessibility: Allow/Disallow apps chosen by user to control the computer
Diagnostics & Usage: Allow/Disallow "Send diagnostic & usage data to Apple" as well as Allow/Disallow "Share crash data with app developers"

Seems pretty obvious to me and very easy to find and adjust settings as desired by each user. Apple even goes a step further and within the "Diagnostics & Usage" option they have a button titled "About Diagnostics & Privacy" that provides the following information:

About Diagnostics & Privacy

Apple would like your help improving the quality and performance of its products and services. OS X can automatically collect diagnostic and usage information from your Mac and send it to Apple for analysis. The information is sent only with your consent and is submitted anonymously to Apple.

If you opt-in to sharing diagnostic data with app developers, Apple may share your crash data with app developers so they can improve their products.

If you opt-into sending diagnostic andusageinformation to Apple, it may include the following information:
Details about app or system crashes, freezes, or kernel panics
Information about events on your Mac (for example, whether a certain function, such as waking your Mac, was successful or not)
Usage information (for example, data about how you use Apple and third-party software, hardware, and services)

Diagnostic and usage data contains your computer’s hardware and software specifications, including information about devices connected to your Mac and the versions of the operating system and apps you’re using on your Mac. If you want to add a description of your actions when the problem occurred, click the disclosure triangle and enter your comments. Please do not provide personal information.

Data can be sent automatically or manually if one of these events occurs:
An app quits unexpectedly
You choose to force an app to quit
A system error occurs that causes your Mac to restart, or requires you to restart your Mac

Report anonymously

All diagnostic and usage information is collected and sent to Apple anonymously. None of the information submitted identifies you personally.

Set reporting options

If automatic reporting is off and a diagnostic event occurs, you’re offered the opportunity to collect information about the problem and send it to Apple.

You can specify one of these options for information collection:

Automatic reporting: When prompted, make sure “Don’t ask me again” is selected, then click OK. After you click OK, automatic reporting of diagnostic and usage information begins, and information is periodically sent to Apple anonymously. You are not prompted again unless you deselect “Send diagnostic & usage data to Apple” in the Privacy pane of Security & Privacy preferences.

No reporting: When prompted, make sure “Don’t ask me again”

Re:System Preferences - Security & Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple even goes a step further and within the "Diagnostics & Usage" option they have a button titled "About Diagnostics & Privacy" that provides the following information:

According to the linked Readme in the article:

The following occur with all privacy options enabled -- including disabling analytics (i.e., Diagnostics and Usage Data).

These are checked (opt-out) by default.

Re:System Preferences - Security & Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you turn all that off, then run a packet sniffer on your LAN and see if it was honest?

Re:System Preferences - Security & Privacy

[zedaroca]

From the linked github:

The following occur with all privacy options enabled -- including disabling analytics (i.e., Diagnostics and Usage Data).

and then it lists the stuff they are reporting back. Why such a lengthy post without bothering to read the original link?

Re:System Preferences - Security & Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

A comment this long cannot describe anything "obvious" to the average user. It is opt-out: a number of different option buried in a system menu, which means many users might never find the option in the first place.

Re:System Preferences - Security & Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus the author says this is *after* disabling everything. Way to RTF.

Re: System Preferences - Security & Privacy

[just fiddling around]

Soooo...you read all that and not the article? They made a config with all privacy options used.

Re:System Preferences - Security & Privacy

[Kenja]

When I installed 10.10, a dialog popped up asking me to check these settings. It was 100% obvious.

Re:System Preferences - Security & Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless those settings are exclusively new in Yosemite, you have a very odd definition of clearly defined settings considering at least up until Mavericks, which covers my experience, the privacy settings in the syspref applet are practically non-existent and Spartan at best, nor are they well defined.

Facts about the Yose Mite:

[Anonymous Coward]

They burrow into the skin of a host and then over a period of months or years they slowly make their way to the brain where they attach themselves to lay eggs and feed on brain tissue. The eggs eventually hatch and the resultant flood of Yose Mites then kill the host organism. That's how the Yose Mite do.

Running their dev preview? That's the point

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason they (and Microsoft) want people to run the beta builds is to see how they are being used. This allows them to build software that people actually want. If you don't want them watching how you use their software then don't be a beta tester.

Benefits and safeguards

[iamacat]

For most users, complete privacy from all internet services is not an option. When you enter a query into a search engine, you are providing the server with knowledge of your often very private interests. Your IP address and cookies make it easy for anyone determined to discover your identity as a person.

So the first question is, do you directly benefit from your personal information being collected and retained? In case of a search query, collecting it for the purpose of showing search results is obviously necessary. Long term retention in the form that can be traced back to you is murky. Forwarding it to Apple seems unnecessary and I hope that the company provides an explanation.

As far as safeguards go, it's reasonable that available information is provided to authorities with a subpoena which is narrowed down to minimum required for investigation. Like a list of queries with specific, obviously incriminating keywords made in the last month.

But the notion of complete anonymity is about as practical for most people as living in the cabin in the woods. As a matter of principal, I don't think either should be made illegal. But most people will not be happy with the results, and most crooks will be too dumb to follow these lifestyles so strictly that they don't slip up and get caught.

Re:Benefits and safeguards

[lucm]

That's why I carry a Linux TAILS bootable SD card in my wallet. Portable peace of mind.

Re:Benefits and safeguards

[Anonymous Coward]

"When you enter a query into a search engine, you are providing the server with knowledge of your often very private interests. Your IP address and cookies make it easy for anyone determined to discover your identity as a person."

Maybe you're not connecting correctly. Here, try this one:

http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/

Re:Benefits and safeguards

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an additional element to this discussion that is not being addressed. The data is most likely anonymised because Apple has explicitly and repeatedly said it does not want any personal identifiable information of this kind. It will be collected for the purposes of improving the product.

Re:Benefits and safeguards

[Anonymous Coward]

"When you enter a query into a search engine, you are providing the server with knowledge of your often very private interests. Your IP address and cookies make it easy for anyone determined to discover your identity as a person."

Maybe you're not connecting correctly. Here, try this one:

http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/

Why should anyone trust you?

Stop bashing Ubuntu

[lucm]

Ubuntu is the only mainstream Linux distribution that I was able to get up & running quickly on my Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro. I know that with some tinkering anything can work on anything but I don't find that entertaining anymore.

I tried (in that order, based on past experience):
CentOS
Fedora
OpenSUSE
Mandriva
Slackware

Each of those proved difficult to install on that laptop. Some even required specific bios settings just to start the setup wizard (such as UEFI or AHCI options).

I'm not a big fan of Debian (or sudo) so the Ubuntus were at the very end of my list. I tried Linux Mint (Cinnamon). It worked immediately, but got all messed up as soon as the automatic update ran. Also I could not enable themes and many options did not work as documented.

So I ended up installing Ubuntu. It worked immediately with three exceptions (that were also present with all other distros):
-an incredibly lousy framebuffer performance (screen is Lenovo HiDPI, 3800x1200)
-a tweak to unblock the wifi
-a tweak to enable the trackpad, it gets disabled for some reason once in a while

Overall I am impressed. All components work, power management works, etc. The Software Center applet is fantastic; some stuff in the default repos is out of date (like Netbeans 7) but overall this is an incredibly smooth way to install applications. Now that LVM encryption is available in the setup wizard that's definitely my #1 distro for future desktop installations.

That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Brannon]

Apple has an excellent track record on privacy issues. Not because they are super nice people, but because that's not their business model.

They don't make money by selling user information to third parties or by selling ads, they make money by selling actual physical objects to end-consumers. I'm not sure what you mean by "it's to be expected from Apple", but I'm pretty sure you just made that up because you don't like Apple's customers (probably because you met somebody who likes Apple products who has a more expensive haircut than you).

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

People love to hate Apple. It's a thing. Also, is there any evidence this data is not anonymised by Apple?

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[LynnwoodRooster]

They don't make money by selling user information to third parties or by selling ads,

Funny, Apple has this thing called iAd where you pay Apple to place targeted ads, and it's currently being sued for selling user info to 3rd parties. Are these activities Apple's primary revenue model? No, but they are part of the revenue stream nevertheless.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[beakerMeep]

Agreed, they have a very good track record but...

They don't make money by selling user information to third parties or by selling ads

Huh? http://advertising.apple.com/

Sure, it's not their main cash cow, but they do sell ads, with targeting and analytics.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has an excellent track record on privacy issues.

I'm sorry, but TFA disagrees with you. They may not be making any money by selling the information, more in likely they are being required to collect it by an NSL. Just like Android, AT&T, Comcast, and every other form of electronic communication.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't make money by selling user information to third parties or by selling ads,

Powerful audience. Inspiring experience. Zero compromise.
With iAd, you can get your message out to the millions of people worldwide who use Apple products every day. Connect with users as they listen to music on iTunes Radio or while they use their favorite apps on our App Network. Find your audience using targeting tools built upon a foundation of registration and media consumption data that's exclusive to iAd. Bring your creative to life with exclusive features like Web GL with 3D motion graphics, Passbook and iTunes rewards. Invite your audience to watch your videos, explore your products, and even make purchases without taking them away from the app they were using.

Learn More...

http://advertising.apple.com/

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymised or not, they shouldn't be sending data without your permission.

People love to hate Apple.

Personally, I hate any company that utilizes DRM, and I despise proprietary software. Microsoft included.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Rosyna]

They don't make money by selling user information to third parties or by selling ads,

Funny, Apple has this thing called iAd where you pay Apple to place targeted ads, and it's currently being sued for selling user info to 3rd parties. Are these activities Apple's primary revenue model? No, but they are part of the revenue stream nevertheless.

iAd is only for iOS Devices (not Yosemite) and your second link is extremely misleading. They're being sued for asking customers that purchase high priced items for their zip code as an additional form of data to verify with the credit card processor to prevent fraudulent transactions. Maybe merchants that have a high amount of fraud do this type of verification.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Noah Haders]

then you must love the company that finally pushed record labels to abandon DRM.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[elfprince13]

Indeed, didn't their NSL warrant canary just die?

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[TubeSteak]

Apple has an excellent track record on privacy issues. Not because they are super nice people, but because that's not their business model.

Or because Apple hasn't (acknowledged that they have) been hacked yet.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

People love to hate Apple. It's a thing. Also, is there any evidence this data is not anonymised by Apple?

'Anonymised' is mostly a weasel word. It isn't always impossible; but the more interesting the dataset is, the more likely it is that there's a clever re-identification attack with good odds of success. If you are serious about preventing those, you tend to have to nuke the data so hard that they aren't of much interest anymore.

Unless robustly demonstrated to the contrary, it's an essentially worthless claim.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[LynnwoodRooster]

The GP didn't specify "Yosemite only" - but Apple as a whole. And asking for ZIP code is apparently illegal in MA - which is where they are being sued.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Rosyna]

TFA is about Yosemite's collection.

And the people that sued Apple tend to just sue companies over the Zip issue hoping for a payout. But previous courts have found that asking for the ZIP code before purchase does not constitute personally identifiable information not associated with the credit card transaction. (It's wrong if they ask for the ZIP after the transaction has been completed, but not before)

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[timeOday]

Huh!? There was just a major scandal involving privacy violations of Apple cloud data - the nude celebrity leaks. It was a big deal, reported everywhere,

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

While still using DRM, walled gardens, and proprietary software of their own. One good deed does not negate all of their bad deeds. Once they've fixed these other problems, however...

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[brantondaveperson]

Yes - and they didn't (acknowledge that) they had actually been *hacked*. But that the celebs in question had either had their account details phished, or their 'security questions' guessed.

This is most certainly *not* the same as icloud being hacked.

I mean, perhaps they were hacked, and are currently lying about it. Possibly - who knows? Does seem a bit unlikely though, given the difficulty of hacking large security systems vs. the relative ease of phishing and guessing the answers to public figure's security questions.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh!? There was just a major scandal involving privacy violations of Apple cloud data - the nude celebrity leaks. It was a big deal, reported everywhere,

If by major scandal you mean celebrities far too stupid to pick a secure password, then yes.

I'd hardly classify Taylor Swifts "eyeH8men!" password as a hack...

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

more in likely they are being required to collect it by an NSL. Just like Android, AT&T, Comcast, and every other form of electronic communication.

God, I wish people would do at least a cursory read about what an NSL is before spouting off things like this. An NSL allows the FBI to require a company to hand over user data they already have in their possession, but it can't require a company to modify their hardware or software in order to collect data they were not already collecting, other than perhaps to install a network tap to capture data flowing over their network.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[dunkindave]

Yes, though there is some debate about it since Apple is now using the newly allowed fast reporting of statistics that allow the number of requests to be given in ranges, but only for regular legal requests and for NSL combined. If they say both zero for NSL (the warrant canary) and the range 0-100 (or whatever it was but it was 0 to something) for the combined number, then they violated the legal provisions of the new rules, so perhaps they dropped the apparent canary to allow the other numbers to be legally reported. Or the canary died.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[BitZtream]

What Apple applications embed iAds?

Hint: none

When you pay for an Apple product they don't spy on you.

Nothing referenced in the github site shows otherwise as best as I can tell. Everything they've listed has logical reasons. For example, the email domain is sent to apple to see if Apple has the mail server info registered with them, in which case the server (at Apple) responds with all the setup info so you don't have to fill in host names, ports and server types, ect. It's a useful feature and part of the "it just works" magic.

Yes, they do offer a service to developers, but they don't use it themselves in any app I'm aware of.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

iAd is for helping app developers generate revenue for the work that they do on the app.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Mad Merlin]

Amazon? Yeah, that was a good move.

Re: That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh the naivety... I give you two apple products: iTunes & App Store. I believe you can figure the rest out.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't make money by selling user information to third parties or by selling ads,

Funny, Apple has this thing called iAd where you pay Apple to place targeted ads, and it's currently being sued for selling user info to 3rd parties. Are these activities Apple's primary revenue model? No, but they are part of the revenue stream nevertheless.

Will you please stop with posting actual facts about how Apple are just as bad as the next company. You are going to cause a lot of zealots to have a nervous breakdown and suffer with massive bouts of cognitive dissonance. You are a complete rotter!

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Fappening"...

Are you living under a rock, or just AstroTurfing?

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

But they are based in the US, which means that every byte of information transferred to them will be intercepted or "requested" at some point by an organisation that effectively tries to eliminate privacy.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[drinkypoo]

They don't make money by selling user information to third parties or by selling ads

Sure, it's not their main cash cow, but they do sell ads, with targeting and analytics.

Yes, they do offer a service to developers, but they don't use it themselves in any app I'm aware of.

Moving the goalposts is a logical fallacy commonly employed by fanboys (or in this case, iFanboys) who know full well that a claim which casts their favorite thing in a bad light is true. And the stated claim is true. You've only proven your iFanboy nature with your above comment. Thanks, though, for proving that Apple fans have to fall back on lies and deception in order to seem like they have a point. Even as stated, your words are false. When you pay for an Apple product (a piece of hardware running iOS) it does not prevent Apple from spying on you; to the contrary, it enables it. And since Apple is in charge of the App Store, and they created this API specifically for apps sold through their App Store, they are directly responsible for distributing apps which utilize it to you on multiple levels.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Amazon was only the company that the record labels used to try and squeeze Apple out of the market after they got EFI to drop DRM. Apple was the one who got them to move.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

OS X is free. You know what they say when a company gives you something for free...

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[edxwelch]

Of course, the data is not sold to thrid parties. It's used to monitor who is making negitive comments about Apple. Once Apple unleash their invincible robot army and takes over the world, these herectics will be sent to the labor camps.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[qw(name)]

Please don't link to RT.com as a source. They are nothing but a Russian propaganda machine. If there are other sources to cite, please use those.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/R...
http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosieg...

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

or it was the bruteforce techinique that icloud was susceptible to.....apple only knew about it for like8 months before it was used to break into the accounts.....some of the blame is on people for weak passwords, alot is on apple for allowing unlimited tries without alerting users of failed attempts....

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

>And since Apple is in charge of the App Store, and they created this API specifically for apps sold through their App Store, they are directly responsible for distributing apps which utilize it to you on multiple levels.

Just like the government, since it builds roads, is indirectly responsible for every accident that happens on the roads it built, right? Your logic is infallible.

Apple built an Ad platform because many of the existing ad platforms were worse. Apple built one that allows ads to be displayed, but gives the user the option of not being tracked. No first-party or Apple-released applications make use of iAds. It is there for "freemieum" developers.

Your semantic games aside, the poster you're replying to isn't factually wrong in any sense of the word.
You need to calm your tits.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[tlhIngan]

Funny, Apple has this thing called iAd where you pay Apple to place targeted ads

And given the limited reach of iAds over say, Google's AdMob, there is no justifiable business case to use it. AdMob is cheaper, Google is far more accommodating, and you can reach Android, iOS and every other device with AdMob.

iAds is a serious joke - they had to reduce the minimum buy from $1M to $100K. It's probably only there to satisfy "competition" guidelines so Google can have AdMob. (As in, Google is probably by far the largest revenue source for iAds purely meant to keep up the appearance of competition).

No sane person uses iAds. Which explains why the ads are all either for apps (developers get a special deal), or about iAds itself.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you even know what astroturfing means? It's "a fake grass-roots movement, sponsored by corporate interests". Not trolling, not shilling.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because he met 600 people who have a piece of shit iCrap product that are smuggier than the biggest smug cloud imaginable and they're pompous to boot - pomposity being arrogance without the proof. Apple is shit. All techies that don't work for Apple hate Apple and it really has little to do with the employees or their traditional OS than it does with the companies history and current occupation in general - and even less still than to do with their insufferable, horrible acolytes.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

An NSL allows the FBI to require a company to hand over user data they already have in their possession, but it can't require a company to modify their hardware or software in order to collect data they were not already collecting, other than perhaps to install a network tap to capture data flowing over their network.

Hmmm, seems you just invalidated your own argument.

Re:That's absurd, aim your hate cannon elsewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing in your post or linked article about how iAd sells user information.
Yes they do sell advertising on iOS apps that choose to use it, but not on OS X (which the original post is about).
They also claim, in the article you linked to that 'iAd allows users to control their own ad preferences so that their experience is on their own terms'.
On iOS 7 and 8 you can 'limit ad tracking' in preferences. This means 'apps are not permitted to use the Advertising identifier to serve you targeted ads'.
This basically means the ads you see won't be based on any information about you at all. Of course some people will never believe this. But if they were lying we'd expect someone would be able to sue them for privacy breaches by now.
I don't see similar options from the other big companies such as Google or Facebook (eg to not use any of your personal information when showing ads to you).

So I don't see how they're worse than any of the other big players, and in fact from where I'm sitting, I find this a lot less invasive.

Same with the spotlight search.
I find they are being transparent in explicitly describing, close to the actual feature itself (ie spotlight), not buried somewhere in some privacy policy in some obscure corner of their site, that terms you search can be passed on to them or Bing with some settings.
I don't see the fuss about this really, since when you do a Google search your search term is passed to Google in plain text for them to analyse. It's been that way for years. Log in and you have all your Google+ info that they can analyse as well. They're not really telling us explicitly and precisely what they are doing with that information and how they analyse it.

The linked Github project above that claims Apple still sends search terms even when you turn settings off, will have been using a pre-release version of Yosemite (since the actual release was just a couple of days ago). The whole point of pre-release is for people who agree to participate in using pre-release software for the purpose of the software provider receiving feedback about the use of it. I can't remember exactly but it may be that the beta or pre-release required this.

Anyway these discussions are never objective. I come across a lot more non-objective and misinformed criticism of Apple than I see support, where the opposite is the most often heard criticism (that pro Apple statements are blind). As much as I don't like rabid, blind supporters, I don't like rabid (and misinformed) criticisers. It is the latter I'm seeing a lot more of lately.

It is opt-out in OSX.

[Brannon]

So...we all done here?

Re:It is opt-out in OSX.

[chihowa]

From the article:

The following occur with all privacy options enabled -- including disabling analytics (i.e., Diagnostics and Usage Data).

So even though it is presented as opt-out, it apparently isn't actually opt out.

I've noticed the same thing. With all of the "privacy" related options enabled, there is still a great deal of chatting with Apple servers. I'm seeing this with Little Snitch.

Re:It is opt-out in OSX.

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article:

The following occur with all privacy options enabled -- including disabling analytics (i.e., Diagnostics and Usage Data).

So even though it is presented as opt-out, it apparently isn't actually opt out.

I've noticed the same thing. With all of the "privacy" related options enabled, there is still a great deal of chatting with Apple servers. I'm seeing this with Little Snitch.

Care to tell me what's stopping someone, or anyone, from simply blocking the destination to disable the phone home BS?

Most users of OSX should know what an upstream firewall is...and have one.

Re:It is opt-out in OSX.

[mysidia]

I've noticed the same thing. With all of the "privacy" related options enabled, there is still a great deal of chatting with Apple servers.

I would say it's naughty of Apple to provide opt-out options and communicate anyways. It would be better for them to just display a notification that you won't be able to opt-out, except by returning the computer or downgrading back to Mavericks.

If they offer a privacy opt-out that claims to stop communications with Apple, and you check it, and the software still communicates, then IMO: Apple should be fined by the government and given a mandatory order by the feds to turn over and destroy all copies of information gathered.

Re:It is opt-out in OSX.

[Anonymous Coward]

LOLWUT. Most OSX users will be either behind a simple home router that doesn't filter any outgoing traffic, or on mobile devices that have no upstream besides the service provider. The number of OSX users who expect to use third party hardware to secure their Apple devices is NONE.

Re:It is opt-out in OSX.

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article:

The following occur with all privacy options enabled -- including disabling analytics (i.e., Diagnostics and Usage Data).

So even though it is presented as opt-out, it apparently isn't actually opt out.

I've noticed the same thing. With all of the "privacy" related options enabled, there is still a great deal of chatting with Apple servers. I'm seeing this with Little Snitch.

Ok, you're saying there's communication, but what data is being sent? Everyone seems to be making assumptions based on "I saw a connection" and somehow that means they're being spied on. What if those connections are just the App Store seeing if there's updates for your installed software? What if it's just Spotlight doing what Spotlight is supposed to do? I just see a lot of pearl clutching because "there's a connection to Apple being made" with no evidence that this connection is in actuality sending some kind of private or sensitive data. You've opted out of everything that could send any private data, yet for some reason (or most likely lack of the use of reason) determined that because some service made a connection to an Apple server that you've been somehow violated? Ok, you're posting to /. and hang out here so you must be able to figure out what that data is, so show me the data being sent or please stop spreading FUD!

Re:It is opt-out in OSX.

[DocHoncho]

Considering that the Feds probably get a copy of everything they gather in the first place, I can hardly see them fining Apple for doing their work for them! The very idea of Apple turning all this data over to the Feds for "disposal" is utterly ludicrous. There may still yet be some areas of the US government that work for the people, but the DOJ and Intelligence agencies are clearly serving one interest: their own.

Re:It is opt-out in OSX.

[dgatwood]

Two words: Little Snitch.

Re:It is opt-out in OSX.

[TheRaven64]

You know that OS X comes with ipfw, right?

Re:It is opt-out in OSX.

[Gr8Apes]

No, the troll certainly doesn't and is also probably ignorant of the fact that OSX includes a full BSD system underneath that GUI. That would imply that he's actually looked at it for more than 10s.

Re:It is opt-out in OSX.

[MachineShedFred]

It's even better than that - ipfw is actually deprecated. pf is now the preferred firewall since Mac OS X 10.8. More info: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT...

Re:It is opt-out in OSX.

[BronsCon]

It came with ipfw, but that was deprecated and replaced with PF in Lion. In short, ipfw has been removed from Yosemite.

Re:It is opt-out in OSX.

[headbulb]

Older versions do. Apple has switched over to PF.

Re:It is opt-out in OSX.

[Aristos Mazer]

a) The TFA has several examples of plaintext data being sent.
b) The encrypted packets cannot be analyzed for content, but the time of sending correlates with user activity.

I think the author has presented enough data to show this isn't FUD.

Stuff it you apple blowhards !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe now you'll stop being a marketing tool.

The driving force to open source?

[Moppusan]

*nix on the desktop has been discussed for yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaars but if Joe and/or Jane and/or little Billy Average ever get serious about privacy, could that cause a dramatic shift to open source? And where the users go, the devs are sure to follow. Just need to shift away from 99% of command-line configuration/installation/navigation and Billy Joe Jane Smooth, IMHO, will finally get on board. I'm a 25+ year nerd with my beginnings on an IBM PS/2 (shudder). 36 now, on Windows 7, and I pretty much loathe the command-line. Text UI be damned! To the depths of Mount Doom!

Re:The driving force to open source?

[El_Oscuro]

I don't think the command line is an issue. I don't think instructing a user to open a terminal and issue commands is any harder than having them open regedit and add obscure keys.

The really sweet spot is a well designed GUI configuration utility which allows you to generate approriate command line scripts to allow the configuration to be duplicated. Unfortunately, this is rare in the Unix world and non-existent in Windows.

Compared to GUIs, command line interfaces are stable. I am still using commands for 20+ years ago to adminster modern systems, while the recent "upgrade" to Win7/2008 has made so many changes to the interface that it seems like I have to relearn it each time I use it.

Re:The driving force to open source?

[Anonymous Coward]

*nix on the desktop has been discussed for yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaars but if Joe and/or Jane and/or little Billy Average ever get serious about privacy, could that cause a dramatic shift to open source? And where the users go, the devs are sure to follow.

Just need to shift away from 99% of command-line configuration/installation/navigation and Billy Joe Jane Smooth, IMHO, will finally get on board. I'm a 25+ year nerd with my beginnings on an IBM PS/2 (shudder). 36 now, on Windows 7, and I pretty much loathe the command-line. Text UI be damned! To the depths of Mount Doom!

This comment sounds as if you haven't used Linux in more than a decade; BASH knowledge isn't required for anything but it is incredibly useful for everything for more advanced users. Try setting up and using a modern distribution to see what I mean, even more technical distros like Debian and Gentoo now use a GUI live DVD/USB installers and graphical package manager front-ends for installing and update all your software. The Gnome and KDE 'control panel'-like interfaces can be used to configure everything except the most advanced options in Gnome where you can use gnome-tweak, and dconf-editor, both of which are of course graphical.

Re:The driving force to open source?

[Blaskowicz]

Except for something hardware or driver related, where Windows has had the Device Manager for nearly 20 years. You can e.g. change the poll rate for the PS/2 mouse or limit a wifi connection to 5.5 megabits/s, which I had to do to make a wireless link usable once.
In contrast on linux only the high-level stuff is available (IP, SSID etc.) though I can look at the wireless speed, read only.

Where are teh sditors?

[anthony_greer]

Windows is a TEST VERSION...MS talked loudly and publicly about the data collection and said it was for troubleshooting and optimization and that it will be ripped out of the final bits...Apple is doing this sneakily and for no clear benefit to the end user or the community of users as a whole.

The last line of this summery is just flame bate...Editors, please edit these things!

Re:Where are teh sditors?

[whoever57]

The last line of this summery is just flame bate...Editors, please edit these things!

The Editor did edit the submission -- to add the flame-bait!

Re:Where are teh sditors?

[KClaisse]

Slashdot doesn't edit stories anymore. The actual editors are lazy people who just post up whatever is submitted to them. Countless times there have been submissions in the firehose with many comments about the inaccuracies of the submitted story yet nothing is ever done. Even when simple spelling and grammar mistakes are pointed out they are never fixed.

And no matter how many times this gets said, no matter how many people say it, Slashdot keeps going downhill fast.

Maybe someone should submit a story about how horrible slashdot's editors are at correcting inaccuracies, spelling/grammare mistakes, and generally how they prefer submissions that are overly dramatic and exaggerations of the facts just for more clicks. Slashdot is just a clickbait website now that only cares about its ad revenue. And that means it will continue to post inaccurate and misleading stories, written poorly, and nothing will be done about it. Because it brings in money and money is the only thing that matters to slashdot these days. They could prove me wrong by generally doing their fucking jobs as editors but thats never going to happen.

IP addresses

[pigsycyberbully]

It as been known about for ages Apple is called the spy system. Microsoft Windows is even worse plug a USB storage device into your computer and the outgoing IP address it connects to is Microsoft. Linux desktops do this also. Debian is the only system which by default is opt out you have to select allow programmers? to collect data for blah blah blah reasons. With individual programs you simply block the outgoing IP addresses. with the large corporations you know you are being spied on and you know the information is shared with the NSA. With individual programmers on Linux you know there are spyware programs. Internet providers by default in the U.S. Canada Australia New Zealand and the U.K. collect information about every website you visit. In the U.K. they collect everything from all forms of telecommunications they match it with CCTV images, the U.K. has CCTV on almost every street lighting lamp posts they track people and number plates, license plates. They say the British, system puts China to shame. When ever the U.S. wishes to justify something they say on U.S. television its ok with the Brits so it must be ok for us. The next time you sit on a toilet to have a shit have a quick look down their first there might be a NSA dildo with a camera to check your anus for terrorists.

Re: IP addresses

[anthony_greer]

MS only phones home if there is no driver (or a generic universal driver with only the most basic functionality) locally. It does that to get the driver that will allow best performance. You can turn it off it it makes a difference to you...

Better Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

than NSA

Re:Better Apple

[Teresita]

Oh noes, the NSA knows I "like" this or that picture of a puppy. It's the end of privacy was we know it.

Re:Better Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

^ -1 this.

How very selfish. Did ya notice the *mass* part of mass-surveillance?

And will they fix Yosemite as a result?

[skaag]

In other words, assuming the data is being collected in order to improve the OS, will they actually be able to analyze this huge amount of data and come up with actual fixes?

I'm asking because my past experience as an OSX user is that there is a massive amount of garbage warnings and errors in the OS's system logs, which never seem to get fixed (and that's kinda annoying). You would think that they would analyze the data and fix those issues, being the "thorough" and "detail oriented" people they purport to be.

It doesn't matter

[mark-t]

Should users just sit back and accept this as the new normal?

It doesn't matter if they sit back and accept it or not... it *IS* the new normal.

Of course, it is much easier to live in a reality where you believe what makes you happier about living in the first place... so the desire to want to resist this sort of thing is entirely normal.

Some are innocent, others are indeed bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Looked through the logs in the GitHub repo. Kinda fun that Apple completely neglected to require authentication on pretty much all of their background calls, so you can reverse engineer them easily with any REST client.

Some are indeed bad, like the streaming of Safari/Spotlight chars to Apple with suggestions turned off. Based on the data in the requests ("context=com.apple.Maps"), it may have something to do with a bug or overeaching feature in Apple Maps.

Meanwhile, there's stuff that is mostly harmless. The request sent by Apple Mail is for the automatic IMAP/POP/STMP configuration process. This feature has been around for years and saves normal users the annoyance of looking up mailserver settings for their ISP. Below is an example lookup for ye 'ol AOL.

Sending POST Request via HTTPS:
mac-services.apple.com/iconfig/dconf

POST (form urlencoded) Payload:
version=1&capabilities=MACOSX&domain=aol.com

Returns a little blob of XML with the config info:

<domain>
    <name>aol.com</name>
    <description>AOL</description>
    <service>
        <hostname>imap.aol.com</hostname>
        <port>993</port>
        <protocol>IMAP</protocol>
        <ssl/>
        <requires>MACOSX</requires>
        <authentication>PLAIN</authentication>
        <usernameIncludesDomain/>
    </service>
    <service>
        <hostname>smtp.aol.com</hostname>
        <port>465</port>
        <protocol>SMTP</protocol>
        <ssl/>
        <requires>MACOSX</requires>
        <authentication>PLAIN</authentication>
        <usernameIncludesDomain/>
    </service>
</domain>

Re:Some are innocent, others are indeed bad

[Rosyna]

Some are indeed bad, like the streaming of Safari/Spotlight chars to Apple with suggestions turned off.

It does not stream the chars to Apple if the option is off, Landon just forgot to disable the option in Safari and Spotlight.

Whose job is it to know that?

[djdanlib]

Why is Apple even responsible for tracking that kind of information?

Can I sue them if they get it wrong, rendering my mail client unable to connect to the correct server (or revealing my credentials to a third party) because it followed their instructions instead of mine? No, that wasn't a typo, but thank you for redirecting my login credentials to the wrong server, which then stole them and used them...

Re:Whose job is it to know that?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a fun MITM attack theory, with one glaring problem. First, the fun attack part: your address@mailserver.com gets routed to intercept.hostile.com (or .gov), which logs in to mailserver.com and passes along your mail, reading it en route. The problem: you'll either notice the intercept.hostile.com address in a text field somewhere or on your outbound firewall (if you're security conscious, you have one). The first person who notices will tell the world that Apple's mail resolver is assisting in MITM attacks, and the gig is up, because the ensuing media shitstorm will make heartbleed and every other recent serious vulnerability look like a quiet cup of tea.

On the other hand, knowing what mailserver computer X is talking to could reveal to an interested three-letter-using party where to start looking for those hidden accounts. Sure, they already have gmail and icloud and outlook and every other major cloud email provider in their pocket, but what about those tiny mail servers people run privately? You have to find them first, before you can send "special collections" or whatever the hacking team is called now to go break into them.

Should users just sit back and accept this...?

[fustakrakich]

It doesn't matter. Enough of them already have, so that the rest have no choice if they want to use Apple products.

And will they fix Yosemite as a result?

[ourlovecanlastforeve]

In a perfect world that would be exactly what the data would be used for.

I worked in tech support for many years and I can tell you that one of two things happens with this diagnostic data:

1. It's aggregated and used for analysis to identify priority problems based on keywords. This almost never happens even when companies say they are doing it. In fact, most of the bugs (even at Microsoft) are cherry picked by programmers who work on whatever bug they feel like in whatever order seems best to them unless it's a priority zero bug.

2. It goes into a database that nobody ever looks at. This one is much more common. You see, the "report a problem" feature doesn't exist for customers to actually get information about their problem to the company that makes the software. If that was how it worked, you'd need a staff of hundreds of support personnel working round the clock doing nothing but processing problem reports. The "report a problem" feature serves to give the user a feeling that someone will see their problem and that they'll be working on it, so the user won't call tech support. As a result the software company can save money on support rep hours.

Is this worse than Win10 Test?

[Chas]

Indubitably. Win10 Test is a product demo. So Microsoft is going to monitor it in a way that would be unfeasible for a shipping OS. They're trying to collect user data to make sure people are using Win10 the way they THINK people are going to use it. This is a byproduct of the Windows 8 metro/modern UI fiasco. If they don't disable/remove this level of monitoring when the OS ships, corporate customers will simply opt not to run with the OS...AGAIN.

Seriously, NO company that's in ANY way serious about security is going to put up with a built in keylogger that's reporting back to MommySoft.

Apple is doing the same thing with a live, shipping OS. Which is completely fucking heinous.

Now, will they get away with it?

Probably, because the rabid, turtleneck-and-jeans brigade of Mac fanatics will buy absolutely ANYTHING from Apple, so long as it has the Apple logo on it.

Re:Is this worse than Win10 Test?

[ToasterMonkey]

Indubitably. Win10 Test is a product demo. So Microsoft is going to monitor it in a way that would be unfeasible for a shipping OS. They're trying to collect user data to make sure people are using Win10 the way they THINK people are going to use it. This is a byproduct of the Windows 8 metro/modern UI fiasco. If they don't disable/remove this level of monitoring when the OS ships, corporate customers will simply opt not to run with the OS...AGAIN.

Seriously, NO company that's in ANY way serious about security is going to put up with a built in keylogger that's reporting back to MommySoft.

Apple is doing the same thing with a live, shipping OS. Which is completely fucking heinous.

Now, will they get away with it?

Probably, because the rabid, turtleneck-and-jeans brigade of Mac fanatics will buy absolutely ANYTHING from Apple, so long as it has the Apple logo on it.

LOL

It's because they care!

[markhahn]

What kind of antisocial fiend would blame Apple for wanting to play a role in customer's lives? After all, isn't that sort of why Apple people buy Apple in the first place, the need to belong, to be involved in something bigger than themselves? You know: every sparrow, etc, etc.

About Spotlight Suggestions & Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe need to disable Location + Spotlight Suggestions + Bing Search??

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 Macby 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.

Make end user data = $$$ in the law

[Haluk Yildirim]

lets empower (bazinga) the ISPs. They are collecting / managing my data for 3rd parties anyway (read 3 letter .gov s). so they can do that for real, service, for real customers who pays them in first place. So ISP send me $$$ for every MB uploaded to Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook.... Poor ISP s doing "all this labor of love" for free for .gov s anyway?, one more wouldn't hurt them!!

And will they fix Yosemite as a result?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah no kidding. thing is, bug fixes at apple aren't sexy and don't get attention. apple has EIGHTY THOUSAND EMPLOYEES, you'd think they could find a dozen engineers to squash bugs.

Not allowed to use Mac

[greggman]

When I installed Yosemite the EULA said

"Terms and Conditions: Important: Use of your Mac computer, ... is subject to these Terms and Conditions"

Note: It didn't say just say "use of this software", it said "Use of your Mac computer". It's effectively claiming if I don't follow the terms I'm not allowed to use the hardware period :(

Apple just made a big legal mistake.

[Animats]

Sending the content of every search request to Apple? Notifying Apple if the user sets up a non-Apple email account? That's a blatant violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act unless Apple properly discloses that up front and gets the user's consent.

Apple didn't do that.

The EULA for MacOS isn't on line on Apple's own site. This matters. It violates the FTC's "clear and conspicuous" rule on disclosures. It's just like bundling spyware, which the FTC and state attorneys general have routinely hammered vendors for trying.

This puts Apple in the uncomfortable position Sony was in when they put a root kit on an audio CD.

Re:Apple just made a big legal mistake.

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't look very hard nor use the search field on the Apple site nor the Site Map at the bottom of the page...

http://www.apple.com/legal/sla/

Bottom of the home page at www.apple.com is a link to Apple Info, then clcik on Legal (top right) and there's a big tile on the right that says "Software License Agreements". Sections 4 and 5 of the Operating System agreement(s) detail all the data sharing info you could possibly want or need. Unless you have proof of them violating these details, i.e., you have the data from the packets being sent to the Apple server that contains private info with all the privacy functions verified to be off, please stop the FUD!

Re:Apple just made a big legal mistake.

[Ryanrule]

you cant just write some legal shit and bypass laws.

Re:Apple just made a big legal mistake.

[Ravaldy]

Maybe not but companies get away with it because you need to spend money to get a lawyer and then you need to prove it caused harm/damage.

Re:Apple just made a big legal mistake.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to search the Internet, how else is that supposed to happen except for sending the search term to a server (be it Apple or Google or Bing or whatever)?
Unless the whole of the Internet is indexed on your local drive. I don't think that would be an advisable thing to distribute in an OS. Plus your drive will not be big enough. Plus you would need to update it all the time, at which time you'd have to contact some server. Oh no!

So all the server ports, addresses and so forth for a mail server should be remembered by my mum when she wants to setup her Gmail on the Mail app? Um for people who want the convenience, why not provide it? In any case only the information necessary to set this up is being used, not what colour undies you wear.
Why not distribute that info with the OS? Because it changes. Why not distribute with the OS and fall back to the network (ie Apple's servers)? Well in that case it doesn't mean that info will never be sent to Apple's servers, does it? It just makes it one step removed and makes the whole privacy statement more confusing too.

Unless Apple discloses this up front? Um isn't why we're having this discussion. Apple is disclosing it.

The mind boggles, it truly does. I've never seen so much misinformation about one company, from both sides. Almost exclusively now though, I come across it on the anti side.

Honestly...

[hooiberg]

Did anybody seriously even consider that they would not do that?

There is no escape

[Anonymous Coward]

At the moment there is virtually no escape. If you use a computer, you'll be spied upon. This also includes Free Software, Open Source Software. Even if you somehow manage to run your very own clean OS/code, at the very least since UEFI you cannot trust the Hardware you run it on.

So.... either use no Computer at all or if you do might as well use an Apple.

Redirect to a local sink

[pmontra]

I'm not familiar with OSX but won't it be possible to circumvent those calls home by routing them to a local app that takes those data and throws them away?

(Waiting for Apple to tell us why they knowing those information is good for us.)

Norm for years

[2ms]

Hasn't this been the norm for years? Google, Facebook, and all that? People even carry Google portable devices tracking them everywhere they walk. Where's the news in this? To me the news is that Apple apparently wasn't doing it already.

What a load of hypocrites

[Anonymous Coward]

I added to my mac app some google analytics which collected the country you are from and time of use, added documentation about it, the source code is on github (free, open source), and added a switch to the user and question to turn this on/off. Yet they rejected the app update because the default was set to "Yes, allow sending anonymous information".

Morons.

Laugh

[koan]

Cow goes mooooooooooooo

We have cookies

[Tenebrousedge]

...I pretty much loathe the command-line. Text UI be damned! To the depths of Mount Doom!

If you only knew the power of the dark side!

Bash is not the most fun programming language, but CLIs (as distinct from TUIs) are the easiest way to interact with a computer system programmatically. There is such thing as graphical programming, but...ew. On the one hand, you've been able to install and use Linux for about a decade now without ever seeing a command line. On the other, the Internet would not exist if it weren't for CLIs.

I think we're gonna need to confiscate your geek card.

Re:We have cookies

[Moppusan]

I think we're gonna need to confiscate your geek card.

That's okay, I fancy myself more as a nerd than a geek. And I do understand the command-line, but super average computer user that relies on someone else to fix their computer doesn't. And that's what I think is holding back open source on the desktop.

Now where was that closing tag...

[Tenebrousedge]

...

</quote>

Found it!

Show me the packets!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tired of the ludicrous, anecdotal and totally unsubstantiated claims of private data being sent back to Apple with privacy settings set to not share. Show me the packets that contain this data after settings are turned off to share data and I'll believe you. Until then, you're spouting nonsense.

If you know something is going on that's sending private data then SHOW ME THE PACKETS!

I think that horse is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop beating it. Everyone collects data. Live with it.

Can you prove that you're not a pedofile?

[Brannon]

It needs to be robustly demonstrated or else it is essentially a worthless claim.

That's the problem with insisting on a proof of a negative--it's really just a transparent way of spouting lies.

Here's my problem with that argument.

[Brannon]

It's so misleading that it is effectively dishonest. Apple makes approximately 0% of their revenue off of ads; they make hundreds of billions of dollars selling actual hardware to willing consumers. It would be absurd for them to threaten their main cash cow by building a perception that they are spying on their customers.

The truth is: they needed to enable advertising supported applications and so they created a platform which supported demographic targeting and analytics while properly anonymizing user info and keeping third party companies in-line.

Again, this has nothing to do with their 'ethics', it has everything to do with economics.

Apple becoming more like Google

[Anonymous Coward]

That's odd as I though Apple not to be interested in user data - just their money.

It needs to be said.

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone needs to make a proxy blocker that blocks all this collection garbage.

Sniffing Apples

[Anonymous Coward]

For real entertainment value, setup a sniffer to watch your wifi AP, make sure all other wifi devices are turned off and boot your Iphone.

Holy HELL does it talk to a lot of addresses. ( ~30 or so: even with very few apps installed. I have maybe 4 ? ) Much of which is across port 443 so no info for jhou ! It starts up conversations with more remote sites than my desktop does by a rather large amount.

Re: Sniffing Apples

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt they label it "off". It probably says "standby" or something similar. Although, I've seen stranger things.

Apple should change their name to Assle

[Anonymous Coward]

My 11 year old son decides to buy an MP3 player, he goes to store with mom, and decides the Nano 16GB is the best deal.

Of course, upon returning home can't figure out how to load music to it. Seems the store had already activated it for some odd reason. Can't do it with his PC which has iTunes installed for some reason.

Now the interesting thing is, after looking into it those jerks at Apple make it impossible to manage anything on that device except through the very crappy iTunes software, which only runs on OsadX and Winbloze. And after mounting the piece of garbage ipod nano in "disk mode" I can see they obfuscate the entire file system. Why are they so protective of the hardware? Because their only profits come from spyware.

Not exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what you're alleging is illegal, since the last time I put gas in the car here in MA, the machine asked for my billing zip code.

Re:System Preferences - Spotlight

[Anonymous Coward]

And for those pesky web searches you'll want to visit System Preferences -> Spotlight and deselect the following options:

Spotlight Suggestions
Bing Web Searches

And of course there's a nice "About Spotlight Suggestions & Privacy" button which provides the following information:

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.

duh

[Anonymous Coward]

A) No shit welcome to 1950, everyone's watching everything you do. This is the Surveillance States of America, after all.
B) Windoes 10 Tech Preview is gathering data. No shit. It's an open beta, that's what it's for. Did you honestly thing they didn't already track you on previous versions?

Is it worse than the data collection in Win10?

[jrbrewin]

> Is it worse than the data collection recently reported in a test version of Windows? yes, because the 'test' of windows, as you put it a) states that it collects data b) is a test, and you're there to test it - it's not a lot to expect that usage data is collected c) microsoft have said many times that you shouldn't use it as a production or main pc.

laziness

[um... Lucas]

The submitter can be bothered to capture some data and submit a link to such to slashdot for commentary, comparing apple's actions to Microsofts (but not Ubuntu's, but that's a different story), but can't be bothered to summarize the data at the very least, even better would be to actually write an article explaining what they found. I'm not going to spend hours clicking through git to find out what the submitter is complaining about, and i doubt that most anyone commenting on this article will have done so either.

oh YEAH?

[garote]

Personally, I hate anonymous gripes!

Amusingly enough ...

[garote]

... this anonymous comment is a counterexample to your argument.

Leeches

[lucm]

I'm paying $120 for the weekly cleanup (3h @ $40). The deal includes laundry, dishes, taking out the trash, etc. The lady is very good, she even cleans inside the cupboards. It's worth it even if she stays only 2h, except when I come home and I find that bedsheets or towels are still damp because she did not want to wait for the last batch in the dryer.

It's not easy to find a reliable local cleaner. Years ago it was easy to find one on Craigslist, but lately a lot of startups like Cleanify have appeared; they have nice websites and apps but basically it's just a bunch of part-time students booking local cleaners, and they offer less services to be able to crunch more appointments in a single day. So independent, local cleaners are now enslaved like employees of big cleaning companies and they rush from one half-done job to the other. They won't touch dishes, they won't do laundry, even changing bedsheets comes at a premium. They are like hotel maids who have 15 minutes to clean one room.

A good local cleaner is fantastic. A big chain that only does half the job is useless. And startups that just inject themselves as middlemen are the worst.

Download the ruleset

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no reason these rules can't be applied locally, without giving the information to Apple to retain indefinitely. What starts with developer overcentralization (read: cloud hosting) and laziness ends in a corrupt US government taking all the data under threat of force/imprisonment.

Unacceptable

[markdavis]

>"Is it worse than the data collection recently reported in a test version of Windows?"

Both are infinitely more than what is collected in any of my Linux distros. I find this trend of companies spying on users totally unacceptable (and yes, throw Google in there too).

System Preferences - Security & Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA

We need Linux for Macs

[timkofu]

There needs to be a Linux distro for Macs; like an Ubuntu remix (Macbuntu maybe?) that works perfectly on any Intel mac.

iPhone

[forrie]

This reminds me of an article, from years ago, about the iPhone -- sending data and 'pings' to URLs when you access services, etc. It seems to me it should all be opt-in. But if we can't opt-in (or opt-out), maybe there's a way to scramble the data sent to them, making it useless. Or use some clever filtering to block, etc. Probably more trouble than it's worth.

I don't think Apple is alone with this -- I'm guessing most connected products report metrics of one sort or another without (or regardless of) our consent. Big data = big money.

See

[Anonymous Coward]

I told you so when they release the 10.10, so fuck you now

Re:Of course it's worse Umn!

[eionmac]

Which is why no connection to any log-on sites with real password and with real data is made, so the test is not acual test but a contrived test. I use simulated stuff no actual connections to real stuff,

No one cares

[jbee02]

Its strange when the government sies this there is a massive out cry but when corperations do it the out cry is so small incomparison it seems no one cares

Ok, Um Yeah

[Wovel]

Terrible summary, kind of interesting article.