Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Apple to Fanbois: All your data are belong to us

If you use OS X Yosemite, your laptop sends data to Apple even if you disable this in System Preferences:
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.
It would be interesting to see what breaks if you put network Access Control Lists to block access to *.apple.com.  I'd think that it might effectively brick your laptop.

No mention at the article as to what (if anything) Apple does to fight National Security Letter snooping.  My guess is little or nothing.

Remember, Linux is free.

6 comments:

Coyote said...

I wonder what app I could use on my Mac to try that block *.apple.com. Be interesting to see the results.

Unknown said...

"Remember, Linux is free."

Didn't Ubuntu (at least through 14.04) have a similar problem?

drjim said...

It might have, but Linux is FAR more fixable than the Apple OS.

Dave H said...

The height of "not getting it" is switching to Linux, then installing Safari on it.

Mrs. S. said...

One of the articles I read said that you also have to disable spotlight in the Safari system preferences in order to completely turn off the sending of data to Apple. Does turning it off in both places actually get privacy back, or does data still go back to Apple?

R.K. Brumbelow said...

Anyone concerned about security has long used Little Snitch. It will selectively block any outgoing connections.

Also the article is a lot of FUD. Changing the default browser from Safari causes much of the traffic to cease.