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iCloud for Windows Users Complain of Corrupted Videos, Photos From Strangers
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Google Photos has never let me down. Used to always have issues with iCloud Photo Library. The worst was when it used to reupload the entire library for no reason.
Holy cow this is a huge freaking problem.
I don't use iCloud for photos but the fact that you can get some random user's data on your account is absolutely insane - how does that even happen?
I don't use iCloud for photos but the fact that you can get some random user's data on your account is absolutely insane - how does that even happen?
I have corrupt data in reminders. Seeing old ones that have long been deleted
It’s all fun and games until iCloud imports CSAM from somewhere into your account and then it’s scanner catches it and reports you to the cops.
“Honey I have NO IDEA who that woman is, why she’s naked or why she’s in my photos! I swear!”
Introducing the All New Apple iDivorce
Introducing the All New Apple iDivorce
They don’t end-to-end for iCloud Photo Library.
This is why they wanted to do scanning for CSAM on-device prior to the photos being uploaded to iCloud anyway.
But people didn’t want that so now we’ve got strangers photos in your library…
So your logic is:
Because people did not want their privacy invaded by Apple locally on their Apple machines, Apple made a buggy iCloud version on Windows to invade their privacy. So basically those people are to blame. Mind boggling.
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My logic is because people didn’t want the on-device scanning of their photos - then it just means their photos aren’t encrypted as securely on server which may have caused this corruption issue.
Not saying that apple directly did this, just that it’s a potential side effect of weaker encryption.
CSAM scanning will take place on device or on server so might as well just do it on device. It’s only scanning photos that would have been uploaded to apple no matter what.
There is no causal relationship between Apple's CSAM scanning and Apple's buggy iCloud software on Windows. The most likely reason is that Apple implemented buggy Windows software. Ever heard of Occam's razor?
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Here the good people have mentioned end-to-end encryption multiple times. But I think "zero-knowledge" encryption is what is actually needed for the sake of our privacy and security. It is when only the user has the password to unlock the encryption keys, and all that the cloud does is storing the encrypted data having no chance to peek its nose there. There are such services, and they even have sharing (Apple was saying it is an obstacle, which is pure BS), Mega being a good example, and far from the only one. Just search for zero-knowledge cloud providers.
I mentioned this problem here on MacRumors but hey, was totally ignored and I reported this while in Beta to Microsoft.
What is even unnerving is that Microsoft's Photos App is able to go directly to the iPhotos folder directly on your Mac without asking for permission (which is a dmg file I believe) and extract all your "hidden" photos and blatantly display them on your Windows 11 Photos App.
Microsoft has not taken the time to yield to privacy nor respected Apple's way of organizing and structuring photo content. The idea was that the Microsoft App was to be able to utilize iCloud photos and bring in thumbnails to your specific account.
I am wondering if these "not from my account" are actually "hidden" pictures from their spouses or family members.
In any case, if Microsoft engineers did find a way to short-cut their way into the user's iCloud account and used an algorhythm to extract other accounts, then there will be hackers that will be giddy enough to reverse engineer the new Microsoft photos app so they can do the same, as well.
Microsoft needs to answer to this. Apple should have been more aware and more involved.
What is even unnerving is that Microsoft's Photos App is able to go directly to the iPhotos folder directly on your Mac without asking for permission (which is a dmg file I believe) and extract all your "hidden" photos and blatantly display them on your Windows 11 Photos App.
Microsoft has not taken the time to yield to privacy nor respected Apple's way of organizing and structuring photo content. The idea was that the Microsoft App was to be able to utilize iCloud photos and bring in thumbnails to your specific account.
I am wondering if these "not from my account" are actually "hidden" pictures from their spouses or family members.
In any case, if Microsoft engineers did find a way to short-cut their way into the user's iCloud account and used an algorhythm to extract other accounts, then there will be hackers that will be giddy enough to reverse engineer the new Microsoft photos app so they can do the same, as well.
Microsoft needs to answer to this. Apple should have been more aware and more involved.
The issue here is on a much deeper level though. If Apple actually cared about privacy as much as they like to talk about, the architecture in the background would be designed in a way that no matter how badly written a client side software is, it should never be able to receive unauthorized data – like photos from other users.
This is really terrible as in a major security, safety and privacy breach (and may qualify for data breach notification ruling under GDPR!).
Ideally each user's data should be in a locked up (encrypted) vault with no-one besides the user having the credentials to unlock them. So without another user knowing your password, even the worst-written Windows client software could simply not decrypt your photos to show them. It's not rocket science, other cloud services do this in a safe way; it's just Apple intentionally opting into such insecure architecture with doors wide open to such breaches.
YES! My thoughts exactly - but here is the kicker - and I have TOLD MICROSOFT THIS - that Microsoft's Photo apps will also bring in pictures that are hidden. No joke! It happened to me. I have parallels for Mac and run Windows 11 in a VM and was more than thrilled to try out the Microsoft Photos app because I have an actual need for this feature - well, lo and behold, when I launched the app (because I have my VM setup to share folders such as desktop, pictures, videos, downloads) that the photo app immediately kicked in and actually scanned the iPhoto dmg file and brought in everything including hidden pictures!!!! I was more than livid and let Microsoft know. First, I didn't give you permission to scan the iPhoto dmg file (yet) - I was aware of the new connection but had assumed that it would not scan actual iPhotos file - that I would need to tell the app my iCloud account and go through permissions, etc. This was while in Beta - I expected Microsoft to resolve theese issues.
Oh I fully agree. There's a reason I don't touch iCloud at all. But it seems people didn't learn jack after all those celebrities had their nudes on iCloud stolen.
Love the hypothetical…”if apple actually cared” as if they didn’t care.
I agree with you. I have just started using iCloud for all my pictures and videos as I am pulling pictures from various drives to one area on a HD and adding to the iPhoto's app to sync with the cloud, but I do not.... I repeat... I do not have the option turned on in which an original stays on the Mac - for one, I don't have enough storage space to make that happen and two, I am still in the process. But, based on what is happening, I will hurry up to get to that point and not only that, but will do a complete "Export" of the iPhotos app because any changes in the cloud, will also make changes in the iPhotos app.
In my case it was not from any family member hence why I clearly stated was some elderly man as in a stranger and his family. Definitely not something from our Shared Libraries. This has absolutely nothing to do with MS photos app, that app just gets photos stored in the photos folder so if iCloud Photos stored photos there then it will add those as well, nothing out of the ordinary…If you shared folders then yeah it will assume photos are ok to be added to the app. As for hidden stuff , if you gave parallels disk access to folders containing hidden stuff, then it could be issues going across platforms… kinda like how windows hidden files will be visible in macOS/Linux as the way of hiding files or whatever you wanna call it is not cross platform/varies.
For me this iCloud issue happened to me before the new app update…. I really don’t get people’s inability at times to accept that Apple (or any company people obsess over) can make serious mistakes, and just try to deflect it on a different entity. That level of fanboyism regardless of brand in question only makes things worse for one’s self.
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It can't be just buggy windows software, this is a security breach on the icloud servers.
Where is Windows getting the photos from? They have to be coming from iCloud right?
You gave parallels permission to scan the dmg, that's all that's needed. This really isn't a Windows problem, but another mac security problem. (or parallels -- it shouldn't have to have full disk access to run.)
True that. It's got to be buggy software on both sides allowing the breach.Even worse