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Apple Tracks Who You Contact on Messages, Stores Logs for 30 Days

People who think apple does not keep their data or track them in some way or form are delusional. They feed all that into apple music, and itunes and maps, iAds and all their services. "They do not share", why would they? - they data mine for themselves. And it is all AWS, all of it is on a 3rd party server farm - they have no idea who works there.

Digital privacy is a figment of the imagination.
 
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maxsix said:
There it is boys and girls, the expert apologists have spoken... Nothing to be concerned about, Apple's here to keep you safe.
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There it is boys and girls, someone who doesn't know anything about technology and law has started calling people names. Nothing to be concerned about.
 
jonnyb098 said:
The privacy issue laws are very very different than slavery, nazi germany and everything else you quoted. So stop with the Apples to oranges comparison.....nice try. Last time I checked companies having contacts (the article in question) is not leading to mass death. I choose to accept what it is for many reasons. You can call it being a sheep....then I'm a sheep. We all are to a certain extent. Thats part of living in a civilized society. You have to FOLLOW CERTAIN RULES.

If you have a license plate the government knows what you drive. Your grocery store knows what you eat (if you use a rewards card), the bank knows what you buy..........DO YOU GET THE POINT YET? So why doesn't everyone just live in a hole and call it a day? Sorry I gotta eat...and save a few bucks while I do it. Guess I'm a hungry sheep.

If you supposedly refuse to accept the status quo why are you not living in said hole? Do you use a computer?, an iPhone? iCloud? Google anything? How about GPS? Sounds like some self righteous hypocrisy to me.

Regarding the side point....I wasn't just referring to presidential candidates. I was referring to congress and senate. The people who actually make the laws....who are constantly voted back into office.
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Nice try...? LOL... It is clear that you simply want the last word, as you are not reading what I am saying and either repeating a point that has been defeated, or contradicting yourself. Do you not see the irony, given your stance on not challenging authority?

jonnyb098 said:
You have to FOLLOW CERTAIN RULES......DO YOU GET THE POINT YET?
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Wow, just stop and listen to yourself...(capital letters as well..) and no I don't have to when I do not agree. You have 'no point' in that regards and my earlier posts are relevant. Just look what happened when everybody did as you say in 1939 Germany. Do you really think that they all knew what was going to happen, until it was too late? It is no coincidence that Germany now has some of the best Privacy and citizen protection laws in the world and only a couple of days ago, banned the new T&C's from Whats App giving your data away to Facebook.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...rom-gathering-whatsapp-users-data-in-germany/

As with everything else in your posts, you are getting yourself lost in the detail and missing the big picture, but as you say..., you don't care about that.

However, you do need to accept that others do care, as I accept that you do not. I wish you the best with that way of thinking.
 
AppleMark said:
Nice try...? LOL... It is clear that you simply want the last word, as you are not reading what I am saying and either repeating a point that has been defeated, or contradicting yourself. Do you not see the irony, given your stance on not challenging authority?

Wow, just stop and listen to yourself...(capital letters as well..) and no I don't have to when I do not agree. You have 'no point' in that regards and my earlier posts are relevant. Just look what happened when everybody did as you say in 1939 Germany. Do you really think that they all knew what was going to happen, until it was too late? It is no coincidence that Germany now has some of the best Privacy and citizen protection laws in the world and only a couple of days ago, banned the new T&C's from Whats App giving your data away to Facebook.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...rom-gathering-whatsapp-users-data-in-germany/

As with everything else in your posts, you are getting yourself lost in the detail and missing the big picture, but as you say..., you don't care about that.

However, you do need to accept that others do care, as I accept that you do not. I wish you the best with that way of thinking.
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Man, you can keep comparing Apple knowing what numbers you text to Nazi Germany.........I'll enjoy life.

We can agree to disagree. Have fun.
 
What? But Timmy promised us, cross his whittle heart and hope to die!

In a recent thread about a large health insurer offering free/discounted :apple:watches to employees and customers, posters who dared question the final disposition of any user data it collected were labeled paranoid and tin-hat. This was Apple after all, and they would never allow user data to be misused or transferred. Now we see the smoke screen clearing, yes Apple still holds its tattered fig leaf proudly.:rolleyes:
 
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thermodynamic said:
Yet Apple (like some other companies, no doubt?) would spend much time and money in telling us otherwise? Seems to be a bit of a waste and a big profit killing one, so why do it?
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Apple spends the time telling otherwise because unlike google, Facebook and others....Apple is not using your info to serve up ads (Giant revenue sources for FB and Google). Sure they may use my music choices to serve me better suggestions for Apple Music. But I chose to do that.
 
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Is anybody naïve enough to believe your telecommunications are totally secret? Anybody wanting truly secure messaging probably isn't using iMessage as-is out of the box anyway. There are tons of ways to find a more secure channel online.

Personally, I'm more creeped out by Facebook, Google and the like tracking my behavior online (and offline) than I am about law enforcement being able to piece together my communications with a court order.
 
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There it is boys and girls, someone who doesn't know anything about technology and law has started calling people names. Nothing to be concerned about.
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There it is boys and girls. the Apple PR department trying to get ahead of the curve ... they're a common site when Apple gets called out ... nothing more than trying to protect the brand. They usually throw in a snide Samsung remark as icing.
 
bradl said:
That isn't the point.

with SMS, that same data would go over the Telco's network. The Government would simply subpoena the Telcos for that data.

For iMessage, that data would go over Apple's network. The Government would simply subpoena Apple for that data.

The point is that it doesn't matter if it is the Telcos or Apple. Both are 3rd party, and only needs to be subpoenaed to provide the data instead of having a warrant.

BL.
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That's why I said data and not metadata. Apple cannot supply data because it's encrypted from Apple too. The telcos have had arrangements with feds for decades and regularly hand over both data and metadata to them.
 
wigby said:
That's why I said data and not metadata. Apple cannot supply data because it's encrypted from Apple too. The telcos have had arrangements with feds for decades and regularly hand over both data and metadata to them.
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That's a fair and valid point. I was referring to the metadata, which is what the entire thread is regarding, not the data itself.

BL.
 
a.gomez said:
People who think apple does not keep their data or track them in some way or form are delusional. They feed all that into apple music, and itunes and maps, iAds and all their services. "They do not share", why would they? - they data mine for themselves. And it is all AWS, all of it is on a 3rd party server farm - they have no idea who works there.

Digital privacy is a figment of the imagination.
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You know my feeling on this..

I don't find doing doing what Apple does as long as they keep up their end of the bargain, which it stays within the company only, even if its across services, its still within their control..

But unlike others, even when it comes to the law, that is still not an exception... There are no exceptions when it comes to privacy and security to me.

This is why i don't use iMessage... with SMS,u also have no idea either what carriers do, BUT at least with iMessage and Apple you have the option not to use it.

If you have a mobile connection u have no choice but to use a mobile carrier..

I can see why Apple would keep logs for this much time frame...

Apple is not a VPN service, so shouldn't be treated as one.
 
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thermodynamic said:
Yet Apple (like some other companies, no doubt?) would spend much time and money in telling us otherwise? Seems to be a bit of a waste and a big profit killing one, so why do it?
Click to expand...

The same reason browser companies spend time and money telling us about "features" like "incognito". They do it because people will believe it, and hopefully that is important to them and buy/use their product.
 
a.gomez said:
People who think apple does not keep their data or track them in some way or form are delusional. They feed all that into apple music, and itunes and maps, iAds and all their services. "They do not share", why would they? - they data mine for themselves. And it is all AWS, all of it is on a 3rd party server farm - they have no idea who works there.

Digital privacy is a figment of the imagination.
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It's nowhere near widespread yet, but people (including professors here) have been working on making application servers able to work with partially or completely encrypted data. That is, they can perform calculations on the encrypted data and send to/from the client without ever decrypting it. This is easy to do with simple things like messaging, but of course, it's very tough to do in most other cases without leaking information about the data... They're starting to resort to hardware-level security on Intel CPUs similar to the iPhone's Secure Enclave component for fingerprints.

Here's something that's already out there: EncryptDB and things derived from it. You can have an AWS server running a DBMS that you do not trust at all, and a trusted application server can run queries on it. This has a few limitations like leaking information about order-sensitive data.
 
Kaibelf said:
No issue here. Sometimes people send a text and the message has to sit there until the recipient's phone is on as well. Either way, the content is secure and that's what we all care about. The rest is the equivalent of the list of who you called that's on any phone bill.
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"We kill people based on metadata" - former head of the National Security Agency Gen. Michael Hayden.
 
VulchR said:
Why does Apple need logs of our call contacts? Honestly why does it need any logs?
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Because the next time a San Bernardino happens, and Apple does not the data needed to see if the suspects were talking to any other terrorists, everyone gets pissy at Apple for NOT having the logs.

Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

BL.
 
bradl said:
That's a fair and valid point. I was referring to the metadata, which is what the entire thread is regarding, not the data itself.

BL.
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I don't entirely agree. Both this story and commenters seem to assert that metadata, when strung together chronologically, can be as useful as full data content. This story is about metadata but the bigger story seems to be the confusion around or the usefulness of metadata to law enforcement and ultimately its erosion of our privacy rights.
 
bradl said:
Because the next time a San Bernardino happens, and Apple does not the data needed to see if the suspects were talking to any other terrorists, everyone gets pissy at Apple for NOT having the logs.

Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

BL.
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Understood. Still, I am not a gun-toting terrorist. Thus, unless there is a law requiring logs stored locally on the phone (as if it is not stored centrally by phone, ISP providers, and NSA ....), then I, as an Apple customer, would just assume that Apple stop wasting storage space, memory re-write cycles (which are finite), and and battery by keeping logs that I will never use. The same thing applies for Mac OS.
 
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