MacOS Big Sur is spying on everything you do and sending the data to Apple

[_MT_]

I have to correct myself. I was under the impression that Big Sur was ARM-only. I wasn't expecting it to roll out to x86 as well.

If you have a service that's checking whether a certificate wasn't revoked for some reason, signalling that an application might not be secure, that traffic can reveal what you've been running. That service has been around for a long time, I think since Sierra. They certainly shouldn't keep logs on who asked about what. There is no need for it (to render the service) and therefore they shouldn't (definitely not for long). But you're sending the information over and you can only trust them not to keep it. I guess the only way around it would be to flip the information flow - publish a list of all revoked certificates so that your computer can check internally. From legal perspective, a problem here is that something like information identifying a certificate used to sign an application or application itself won't be considered personal. It can only become personal in combination with other data. Consider that IP address is not necessarily personal. E-mail address is not necessarily personal either. In the position Apple is in, they probably can link IP address with a person or a household, for a significant portion of the user base. Therefore, they should treat it as personal information. And that might be why they'll be deleting it.

Privacy and public's take on it are interesting topics. Consider how people like to treat pictures including faces of strangers or registration plates of cars. Where I come from, it's generally illegal to publish such a picture without removing offending parts or getting consent. But it seems like people couldn't care less. I guess it would be too much work for them to edit their photos before publishing them.

[vertigo]

IMO, IP address should absolutely be considering personal, since it gives your approximate location and can be used in combination with other data to determine your identity and to build a profile on you. I have no doubt a company like Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, etc, can make use of that to further invade on people's privacy.

I also definitely agree that certificate databases should be maintained on individual computers, rather than performing cloud lookups. I hate the trend of security software to rely on the cloud. Not only is it a massive privacy violation (which I wouldn't be surprised is the real reason for doing it that way), but it's a real problem when on a slow or metered connection. I had to disable Microsoft's SmartScreen "protection" because it never worked, and when trying to open apps it would just sit there for a minute or two, seemingly doing nothing, because it couldn't connect and look it up. There's no reason whatsoever to not just have a local database that's kept up to date and can be checked, and many other security apps do just that.

As an interesting side note, which would be humorous if it weren't so sad, is that when I search Big Sur to see if it is for x86 (didn't look too deep, but it does appear it is), the first result was from Apple, which says "macOS Big Sur elevates Mac to a new level of power and beauty with a refined new design, major app updates, and more transparency around your privacy" (emphasis added). /smh

[_MT_]

IMO, IP address should absolutely be considering personal, since it gives your approximate location and can be used in combination with other data to determine your identity and to build a profile on you.
...
As an interesting side note, which would be humorous if it weren't so sad, is that when I search Big Sur to see if it is for x86 (didn't look too deep, but it does appear it is), the first result was from Apple, which says "macOS Big Sur elevates Mac to a new level of power and beauty with a refined new design, major app updates, and more transparency around your privacy" (emphasis added). /smh

This has been going on for years. The problem, the change with Big Sur, if I understand it correctly, is that user level firewall can no longer block system level processes (which includes trustd). And the same is true for VPN. User level VPN software cannot shove traffic from system level processes into the tunnel. Those processes have to cooperate on their own. And yes, this is potentially very concerning (it could make you, for example, more vulnerable on public wireless networks). It depends on how much you trust Apple to do a good job.

I don't think approximate location is good enough. I'm not sure even street level location would be enough, much less a quarter. A German court argued that a website operator could persuade ISP to disclose your personal information and therefore IP is personal (they presented two lines of thinking and this was one of them). To me, that sounds like bollocks. ISP shouldn't disclose personal information outside of court orders and such. Doing so should be illegal and harshly punished. The real argument for me is that while a particular operator might not be able to match IP with identifying information, someone else might. Why do we even care? It's partly because we treat non-personal data poorly. It's going to be more likely for the data to be given to someone else or stolen and otherwise mishandled. It should definitely be properly protected.

The reality is that I don't need to keep your IP address outside of compliance with law (where I should treat it as personal) and prevention of network attacks or diagnosis of network issues (where I should store it separately and only for short term). I care about performance. I care about errors. I might care about what you requested and where you came from when an error occurred. Consider a broken link. Knowing where you came from is a big help. But I don't care who you are. As a human. I care about you as a user. I can identify you in a way that doesn't disclose your IP address and is not persistent beyond a browsing session. And use that in logs. Making it useless to third parties if my logs get stolen. But I will still be able to track you throughout my website for the purposes of usage analysis. Of course, if you're a shop, for example, it might be possible to link this ID with personal information via orders and invoices (time stamps, order numbers in URLs, etc.). That part of your system should be built accordingly. Once a problem is fixed, there is no need to keep an expanded log entry. If there were no problems, there is no need to keep the logs for long. I might want to keep performance data, but I care about the numbers for future reference, not individuals. If you're analyzing effectiveness of a marketing campaign, you should delete the data afterwards or periodically if it's long running. There is always a way. The reasons to desire such information are not technical.

The problem in this space is called Google Analytics and share and like buttons from social networks. And of course, advertising networks. GA is a nice tool. I get why people use it. But frankly, some of that information is simply none of your business. I understand that an operator of one shop might want to know where else are his customers shopping. But they have no right to snoop like that. Imagine hiring people to follow your customers around and log where they go, what they do. Creepy as hell. Too expensive in real life (that's why they use different methods - like loyalty programs), easy to do on the Internet. Tracking should be strictly opt-in with a strict ban on tricking, manipulating, pushing and bullying. Of course they don't like the idea as almost nobody would cooperate. They would probably have to pay the people money to entice them into giving up privacy (like it's done with loyalty programs).

[Hawkin]

Want some anonymous  and cyber security?
Join Utopia Ecosystem and sleep well)

[vertigo]

IMO, IP address should absolutely be considering personal, since it gives your approximate location and can be used in combination with other data to determine your identity and to build a profile on you.
...
As an interesting side note, which would be humorous if it weren't so sad, is that when I search Big Sur to see if it is for x86 (didn't look too deep, but it does appear it is), the first result was from Apple, which says "macOS Big Sur elevates Mac to a new level of power and beauty with a refined new design, major app updates, and more transparency around your privacy" (emphasis added). /smh

This has been going on for years. The problem, the change with Big Sur, if I understand it correctly, is that user level firewall can no longer block system level processes (which includes trustd). And the same is true for VPN. User level VPN software cannot shove traffic from system level processes into the tunnel. Those processes have to cooperate on their own. And yes, this is potentially very concerning (it could make you, for example, more vulnerable on public wireless networks). It depends on how much you trust Apple to do a good job.

I don't think approximate location is good enough. I'm not sure even street level location would be enough, much less a quarter. A German court argued that a website operator could persuade ISP to disclose your personal information and therefore IP is personal (they presented two lines of thinking and this was one of them). To me, that sounds like bollocks. ISP shouldn't disclose personal information outside of court orders and such. Doing so should be illegal and harshly punished. The real argument for me is that while a particular operator might not be able to match IP with identifying information, someone else might. Why do we even care? It's partly because we treat non-personal data poorly. It's going to be more likely for the data to be given to someone else or stolen and otherwise mishandled. It should definitely be properly protected.

The reality is that I don't need to keep your IP address outside of compliance with law (where I should treat it as personal) and prevention of network attacks or diagnosis of network issues (where I should store it separately and only for short term). I care about performance. I care about errors. I might care about what you requested and where you came from when an error occurred. Consider a broken link. Knowing where you came from is a big help. But I don't care who you are. As a human. I care about you as a user. I can identify you in a way that doesn't disclose your IP address and is not persistent beyond a browsing session. And use that in logs. Making it useless to third parties if my logs get stolen. But I will still be able to track you throughout my website for the purposes of usage analysis. Of course, if you're a shop, for example, it might be possible to link this ID with personal information via orders and invoices (time stamps, order numbers in URLs, etc.). That part of your system should be built accordingly. Once a problem is fixed, there is no need to keep an expanded log entry. If there were no problems, there is no need to keep the logs for long. I might want to keep performance data, but I care about the numbers for future reference, not individuals. If you're analyzing effectiveness of a marketing campaign, you should delete the data afterwards or periodically if it's long running. There is always a way. The reasons to desire such information are not technical.

The problem in this space is called Google Analytics and share and like buttons from social networks. And of course, advertising networks. GA is a nice tool. I get why people use it. But frankly, some of that information is simply none of your business. I understand that an operator of one shop might want to know where else are his customers shopping. But they have no right to snoop like that. Imagine hiring people to follow your customers around and log where they go, what they do. Creepy as hell. Too expensive in real life (that's why they use different methods - like loyalty programs), easy to do on the Internet. Tracking should be strictly opt-in with a strict ban on tricking, manipulating, pushing and bullying. Of course they don't like the idea as almost nobody would cooperate. They would probably have to pay the people money to entice them into giving up privacy (like it's done with loyalty programs).

Approximate location can be used in combination with other details to identify you or, at the very least, narrow it down quite a bit. Depending on who's trying to identify you, they could use a combination of any number of things, such as sites visited, what browser you're using, screen resolution, installed fonts, OS, how you type, mouse movements, etc. IP can help by providing more info on you (where you live, whether down to the city or, in more rural areas, down to one of very few houses) and by vastly reducing your anonymity pool (instead of having to separate you from millions of people using the other available factors, now you only need to be separated from anywhere from a couple dozen to several thousand).

And I agree ISP shouldn't be able to disclose it; unfortunately, they're allowed to do much more than that in the US, with a recent law allowing them to collect info on you, e.g. sites you visit and probably things like your schedule and how much time you spend online, and sell it. So even though you're (over)paying them for a service, that's still not enough for them, and they want to make even more money off of you on the back end. It's reprehensible, and I wish I could say it's unbelievable the law passed, but that's just the state of the corrupted government these days.

I also agree about the issues with tracking, which, combined with the ISP issue, is why I use a VPN combined with uBO, Privacy Badger, and other precautions. It's just ridiculous that it requires so much extra work and money to protect oneself because not only does the government do nothing to help, but they're often complicit. And even then, doing all that, I'm well aware that my identity is still likely known to at least some players (government and Google at least), even when it appears that I'm anonymous. It's crazy. And most people simply don't know how bad it is, or how to protect against it. And as you're probably aware, it's so much worse than social media buttons and analytics and ads. Things like fingerprinting, tracking pixels, cookies, referers, AMP, etc. And that's just the web. Then there's OS snooping, Amazon and Google listening to and recording you through your phones/tablets/Echo/etc, Google (and probably Apple) tracking you through your phone, even after you "disable" it, and so on. And then there's companies using people to do free work for them, training their systems, by providing tons and tons of photos for facial recognition and solving captchas to train image recognition. It's all just a big mess.

With the loyalty programs, I understand how they're used to track purchasing patterns with the company, but I don't see how it could be used to track you outside the company, i.e. to see where else you shop or what else you buy. So while you're losing a little bit of privacy, it's not much. Instead of the company just knowing they sold products A and B, they know they sold them to you specifically, though unless you pay cash they can know that anyway, or at least that credit card # 1234.... bought those items. And if they really wanted to, they could probably tie that card to you even without your knowledge or consent. So I don't see loyalty programs as being much of a privacy issue personally, though I'd be interested to know if I'm missing something regarding them.

[vertigo]

Want some anonymous  and cyber security?
Join Utopia Ecosystem and sleep well)

This appears to be an attempt to replicate Tor, as well as building in more functionality. Considering such a system is only effective with a lot of users, I wouldn't really rely on it for a while, until it's able to build up a decent user base. I also wouldn't rely on it for a while just because it's new, and you should never trust beta products, which this essentially is, for security and privacy. Yet another reason I wouldn't trust it is that it's not open-source, and therefore can't be audited. They explain their reasoning in the FAQ*, but regardless of that, if the code can't be checked, there's no telling if a) it's doing what it says it's doing, b) there's no backdoors, and c) it's done properly, i.e. that it doesn't contain bad, insecure code.

*I've copy-pasted the relevant part of the FAQ below, which covers why it's not open-source, since they seem to care more about making it look all hackerish with a fancy green font on black background that simultaneously makes it difficult to read and makes it look unprofessional and like they're trying too hard to make it come across a certain way. Call me crazy, but I have trouble placing faith in people that can't even ensure their website is legible to write and self-audit code that's responsible for ensuring privacy.

"We may disclose certain parts of code, specifically related to communication and encryption. However, the decentralized protocol will not be released. Utopia is very knowledge-intensive software. A lot of time, effort and resources went into this product, and we do not want to share all of our know-how as it will result in forks which in turn may result in instability of our main network. Fork will lead to the division of the community, while our intention is the unification of the community of like-minded individuals. The bottom line here is that a lot of software is closed source, and this does not hurt them a bit. In addition, we will audit our code.

[_MT_]

With the loyalty programs, I understand how they're used to track purchasing patterns with the company, but I don't see how it could be used to track you outside the company, i.e. to see where else you shop or what else you buy.

Have your read the T&Cs? It's data. They can sell it, exchange it, share it. For example, they can create an association that pools the data and has it analyzed on behalf of the members so they can gain similar insights as e-shops do. The most problematic part here is exchanging identifying information so they can link you across loyalty programs. Unless they fancy braking law, they need consent. And they can get it through your membership. I do wonder if perhaps hashing identifying information could be of use here. It can be done so the original identifying information is not retrievable (they can't retrieve your name or address), but it would still be unique to you (or at least very close to) and therefore allow linking as long as they all use the same method. Of course, it's not bulletproof. It's feasible to create reverse lookup table. You've got one calculation per person. You just need the information. It doesn't give you the information. But if you have it, it doesn't prevent linking it. Facilitating linking is, after all, the goal.

As for the Utopia, their argument is flawed. Open source doesn't necessarily mean free to use however you want. It's possible to publish sources without giving permission to create derivatives. Even commercial software can be open source. Peer review is really important. It's so easy to screw up.

[vertigo]

Have your read the T&Cs? It's data. They can sell it, exchange it, share it. For example, they can create an association that pools the data and has it analyzed on behalf of the members so they can gain similar insights as e-shops do. The most problematic part here is exchanging identifying information so they can link you across loyalty programs. Unless they fancy braking law, they need consent. And they can get it through your membership. I do wonder if perhaps hashing identifying information could be of use here. It can be done so the original identifying information is not retrievable (they can't retrieve your name or address), but it would still be unique to you (or at least very close to) and therefore allow linking as long as they all use the same method. Of course, it's not bulletproof. It's feasible to create reverse lookup table. You've got one calculation per person. You just need the information. It doesn't give you the information. But if you have it, it doesn't prevent linking it. Facilitating linking is, after all, the goal.

As for the Utopia, their argument is flawed. Open source doesn't necessarily mean free to use however you want. It's possible to publish sources without giving permission to create derivatives. Even commercial software can be open source. Peer review is really important. It's so easy to screw up.

Unfortunately, I'm guilty of not reading those just like most people. I don't have the time or legal expertise. And that's why laws need to be passed to reign them in, but that's unlikely to happen, because government officials don't work for the people, they work for companies that buy them off. And what you're describing is essentially what your advertising ID with Google is. And just like I'm sure Google still knows exactly who you are, and the only things the ID provide are possibly anonymity from third parties and some (probably false) peace of mind, using such a system with loyalty programs would probably be the same, but better than nothing I guess.

Yeah, Utopia doesn't really inspire much confidence IMO, certainly not enough to trust them with what they're asking.