Your Computer isn't Yours

[Statik]

Summary

 

macOS has apparently always has always sent data, unencrypted through to apple (and in turn the US Government), and their latest update circumvents all programs that try to stop it, as well as any VPNs.

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Quotes

Quote

It turns out that in the current version of the macOS, the OS sends to Apple a hash (unique identifier) of each and every program you run, when you run it.

This means that Apple knows when you’re at home. When you’re at work. What apps you open there, and how often. They know when you open Premiere over at a friend’s house on their Wi-Fi, and they know when you open Tor Browser in a hotel on a trip to another city.

 

My thoughts

Your lack of "online" privacy has apparently carried over to activity you do offline. I think it's safe to say there isn't anything you do ever, that isn't tracked, collected, monitored, shared, etc. It's spiraling out of control and it's very hard to manage. I really hope Linux becomes more viable in the coming years so I can completely make the switch from Windows.

 

Sources

https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/

[kelvinhall05]

Did anyone really trust that Apple did what they claimed and respected the privacy of customers? Cause I sure as hell didn't, and I'm not surprised by this.

[Statik]

2 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Did anyone really trust that Apple did what they claimed and respected the privacy of customers? Cause I sure as hell didn't, and I'm not surprised by this.

I'm far from surprised either, it's really just disappointing.

[TetraSky]

And nobody except maybe the die hard Apple fanboys is surprised....

Of course they are gathering data, THEY ALL DO. We just have evidences of it now.

[Letgomyleghoe]

haha linux op.

[Senzelian]

9 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Did anyone really trust that Apple did what they claimed and respected the privacy of customers? Cause I sure as hell didn't, and I'm not surprised by this.

But are you surprised that people trust Apple (or any other company for that matter)? I hope not.

 

Edit:

It doesn't matter who f*cks you; we're all being f*cked, but we should be aware of how hard we're being f*cked and from time to time decide to be f*cked by someone else.

[Fasterthannothing]

Haha who's excited about Apple security now. This was known ever since Apple tried to claim moral superiority after completely botching the massive security hole they left when they refused to allow the FBI access to 1 iphone. Instead of handing over the data for an iphone for 1 user they let an outside security company punch a hole in their encryption that has allowed people to pickup USB devices for next to nothing that can bypass lock screen passwords. Apple has been trying to act like the good guys for years now but really they are no better than windows when it comes to privacy or security.

[IAmAndre]

The big takeout is that people either don't care about their privacy as much as they claim, or are just Apple fanboys. Because over the past few years privacy has been Apple's biggest marketing rhetoric. To see all these claims fall apart while nobody bats an eye means a lot.

[dilpickle]

OK but is there a better source for this news than someone's personal blog?

[Blademaster91]

I'm not surprised at all, the only ones that would be surprised by this are fanboys falling for the Apple marketing.

I hope Linux can gain some marketshare, because if apple are blocking the use of VPN's that is really awful.

[PCGuy_5960]

11 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

The big takeout is that people either don't care about their privacy as much as they pretend, or are just Apple fanboys. Because over the past few years privacy has been Apple's biggest marketing rhetoric. To see all these claims fall apart while nobody bats an eye means a lot.

To be entirely fair, the only reason why people say that Apple respects your privacy is because Microsoft and Google are even worse (and by a lot).

[RejZoR]

21 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

And nobody except maybe the die hard Apple fanboys is surprised....

Of course they are gathering data, THEY ALL DO. We just have evidences of it now.

It's no secret everyone uses telemetry these days. Question is, does it stop when you turn off said telemetry or feedback data collection. It's known that you can't do that with Windows 10 as even basic profile shares data. MacOS, as far as I know had controls to disable it. So does iPhone. It just comes with it pre-enabled. Any info on that?

[Blademaster91]

Just now, RejZoR said:

It's no secret everyone uses telemetry these days. Question is, does it stop when you turn off said telemetry or feedback data collection. It's known that you can't do that with Windows 10 as even basic profile shares data. MacOS, as far as I know had controls to disable it. So does iPhone. It just comes with it pre-enabled. Any info on that?

Well if Apple didn't want your data the data collection wouldn't be on by default.

[PCGuy_5960]

Just now, Blademaster91 said:

Well if Apple didn't want your data the data collection wouldn't be on by default.

I mean, even being able to turn it off is a HUGE step up from what Microsoft does. In Windows you can't disable it and even if you could, you'll lose some features because they actively rely on it. 

 

Not defending Apple btw, I don't like them. I just think that user privacy should be protected a lot more across the board.

[yian88]

37 minutes ago, Statik said:

I really hope Linux becomes more viable in the coming years so I can completely make the switch from Windows.

 

I dont see it happen, i have a Lenovo Ideapad Ryzen 2200u laptop for 3 years and it never worked well in any linux distro or kernel until recently with kernel 5.9 they added wifi driver that already existed but it never worked when i tried to build it manually and shit. Graphics is still meh with issues but i can use it daily now, windows 10 is so unusable and performance killer, unless you have 1000$ laptop 16GBram 6-8 cores and dedicated GPU you better not buy a laptop with windows 10, its unusable.

[Guest]

I know I'm an Apple Fanboy, I'm going to need convincing more than someone's blog. Hardly a noteworthy source. They probably do track you, but they don't shove ads in your face with it.

[WkdPaul]

20 minutes ago, dilpickle said:

OK but is there a better source for this news than someone's personal blog?

It's observations he and other have made, so for now, no, there are no other sources, here are some of the stuff he sourced in his post ;

 

https://appleterm.com/2020/10/20/macos-big-sur-firewalls-and-vpns/

 

https://twitter.com/patrickwardle/status/1327034191523975168

 

https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/revocation.html

 

[Blademaster91]

11 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

I mean, even being able to turn it off is a HUGE step up from what Microsoft does. In Windows you can't disable it and even if you could, you'll lose some features because they actively rely on it. 

 

Not defending Apple btw, I don't like them. I just think that user privacy should be protected a lot more across the board.

I agree being able to turn off data collection in windows 10 would be great, but at least MS admits they're collecting data. Apple collects data and hides it in the settings which most people won't access.

[RejZoR]

35 minutes ago, yian88 said:

I dont see it happen, i have a Lenovo Ideapad Ryzen 2200u laptop for 3 years and it never worked well in any linux distro or kernel until recently with kernel 5.9 they added wifi driver that already existed but it never worked when i tried to build it manually and shit. Graphics is still meh with issues but i can use it daily now, windows 10 is so unusable and performance killer, unless you have 1000$ laptop 16GBram 6-8 cores and dedicated GPU you better not buy a laptop with windows 10, its unusable.

You're a bit exaggerating. I'm still using old ASUS Transformer with Atom processor, 2GB RAM and 64GB eMMC SSD. It's shit by every metric, but it's still fine for browsing, Youtube, streaming TV channels from my ISP, viewing photos.

 

I'm also running laptop with Ryzen 2500U, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD (NVMe DRAM-less, but I'm suspecting it's using system memory for buffer) and it's pretty damn snappy. It's like 2 years old now iirc.

[IAmAndre]

54 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

To be entirely fair, the only reason why people say that Apple respects your privacy is because Microsoft and Google are even worse (and by a lot).

We can't tell for sure, but at least they don't center their marketing around privacy or charge you more money by claiming to be different. When you make such claims then you have to be sure to be irreproachable.

[poochyena]

I mean.. discord does all that too, shows everyone when you are online, on desktop or mobile, which programs you are using, etc. Sure you can turn that off, but considering majority of people don't, it kinda shows most people don't care.

[Letgomyleghoe]

2 hours ago, IAmAndre said:

The big takeout is that people either don't care about their privacy as much as they pretend

people really dont, unless they do illegal things online, and in that case they usually run linux anyway.

[Nowak]

4 minutes ago, poochyena said:

I mean.. discord does all that too, shows everyone when you are online, on desktop or mobile, which programs you are using, etc. Sure you can turn that off, but considering majority of people don't, it kinda shows most people don't care.

The thing is this is an entire operating system rather than a single app, from a company that pretends to be better about this than Google and Microsoft.

[Spindel]

Is it even worth mentioning that this is a thing you have to either opt-in or opt-out to when installing macOS?

 

If you chose ”share analytics data” this is what it will do. If you chose ”no” it won’t. 

[DrMacintosh]

A personal blog is not a source btw.