Oh, shit...I can't imagine that US users won't soon be facing the same fate. I'm sorry. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Apple user, going back to the days when Mac was the preferred platform for photo/graphics work and desktop publishing.
Worst part is, you can't even go to android because they might have just made the backdoor the government asked for, without informing their users. (Most Likely, honestly)
Atleast apple are vocal about this to warn users, they are not safe.
When it comes to real security, I only trust what I have physical access to and control over. I'm a big fan of Samsung's Knox - and their Secure Folder app - an encrypted virtual phone within a phone protected by hardware.
I wonder if there's a legal avenue here for customers to challenge as Apple has long crowed about how they protect data. It's part of a selling point so to take it away means they were selling a lie.
Privacy died long ago. The last bastions of security are slowly but surely following suit. We must adapt, because we cannot rely on big tech to be good stewards of our data. I just wish I knew how.
Tech nerd here. They did not. There was an fbi training document on how to get people's data, android you were fucked, but iphone you could access people's data with a court order UNLESS they had that advanced security feature. A feature that said even apple could not access your data.
And of course if one government can get data with a court order,
it's stored in a form where the next Salt Typhoon or some other spying or crime activity can get it without a court order.
Absolutely! Court orders are a promise from a government saying "we have good reason to do this" many governments, including the u.s. the last month, don't work that way. If any company bows to a court order, they'll bow to a regime. So it sadly falls to us to retake our privacy wherever possible
Some elaboration, the fbi can't get anything on your phone, with a court order they could get access to whatever was backed up to your icloud. Without this advanced data protection feature enabled, that's how it still works.
In order to have a secure restore point you had to have one person with a phone number you trusted, because if your phone got lost or damaged, you needed that friend/family member to recover your account because apple literally could not.
You could, but apple sadly doesn't seem to allow that option (that I could find) it required me to choose a contact I trusted when I enabled it. I suppose if you had two phone numbers and two accounts, you could do it that way.
If you are messaging on social media apps, your data is as good as public, because end to end encryption can also mean the other end is a server. So messages on facebook messenger are insecure, comments/ messages here on blusky are insecure, but signal was secure
I mean not exactly. WhatsApp uses signal protocol which is very strong ratcheting. You can store or capture the traffic but you can't decrypt it, and if you did, you'd practically have to do it a word at a time.
Except whatsapp is owned by facebook, they own the encryption key and store the data on their servers, they are a privacy invasive company who is known for using private messaging for their privacy invasion. Also, they have given data when unencrypted data under duress from governments.
And you know signal is secure because the fbi told people not to use it- because according to a leaked training document, even with a court order the fbi couldn't get your messages from signal- because signal doesn't store your messages on a server.
As for what is on your phone, iphones are secure, even now. The court orders previously allowed them access to your icloud backups. So anything you had backuped to icloud were not secure, unless you turned on advanced data protection, which is what apple is getting rid of in the uk
I am using pCloud as my main cloud file storage it’s Swiss and outside of the US influence. One drive is still Microsoft. A US company and can be ordered to provide access when asked by the government. iCloud is the only option for iOS users so advanced security it is. https://e.pcloud.com/#page=register&invite=ts37ZhyErKV
Apples hand seems forced. The UK gov. asked in privacy to have apple build in a back door or risk being banner from the UK market.
Apple has atleast told the UK people, they were forced to disable the encryption so they know the UK government can now spy on them...for once apple is not the bad one
If they were serious they'd leave the UK market under loud protest. No Apple isn't really bad for such a huge corporation - but they certainly are no good guys either.
I am amazed the UK can’t understand the simple message that you either make things easy for the government and criminals, or hard. There is no easy for government hard for criminals option.
This is why the commercial they keep running about their data encryption never sat right with me- in that Tim sat right next to the other billionaires who bought the govt on inauguration day. Our data is safe with no one.
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Atleast apple are vocal about this to warn users, they are not safe.
Regardless, this is really bad :(
Apple instead turned the encryption off and were vocal about it, to warning users that their data was now vulnerable to government snooping.
it's stored in a form where the next Salt Typhoon or some other spying or crime activity can get it without a court order.
so in theory you could probably keep it on paper somewhere secure.
https://e.pcloud.com/#page=register&invite=ts37ZhyErKV
Apple has atleast told the UK people, they were forced to disable the encryption so they know the UK government can now spy on them...for once apple is not the bad one
This way they can stay and the people can make an informed choice whether or not to depend in these functions.
To be honest, i would not be surprised if google / android did not get the same letter, but just chose to comply without telling anyone