Apple spying on you?

[Circaflex]

18 minutes ago, Depicus said:

Well I'm sceptical of anybody who claims you can determine a persons location by their IP address alone. If I VPN into my office I'd appear to be 76 miles away from home and even with a fixed ip at home it comes up as being located in Newcastle some 300 miles away.

 

Now I haven't extensively tested but I cannot get my copy of Big Sur to connect to that address while launching apps so either I have something turned off or Wireshark doesn't pick it up. Although I didn't have issues at the time either so maybe I am special or not worth spying on.

 

Out of the 80 apps in my apps folder I'd guess 75% phone home one way or another including Apple apps, indeed Chrome dials home with your IP address in the data before you even go to a page so these mystery military spooks have more than enough data already. I'd concede that if it does happen it should be encrypted but spying is a stretch especially when you don't encrypt things.

I do hope you realize that even when using a VPN your location isnt necessarily hidden and you CAN indeed locate someone who is using a VPN. I stopped reading what you had to say once I read that part.

[Depicus]

22 minutes ago, Circaflex said:

I do hope you realize that even when using a VPN your location isnt necessarily hidden and you CAN indeed locate someone who is using a VPN. I stopped reading what you had to say once I read that part.

Grown up debating I see 🤣 

[Circaflex]

28 minutes ago, Depicus said:

Grown up debating I see 🤣 

Right. There wasn't much to debate, you criticized the source on a subject I don't think you have as much knowledge in as you think you do. I mean off the top of my head, DNS leak from your VPN can help give away your location, not to mention logs kept on the VPN server most likely contain that information, etc.

[neufuse Veteran]

5 hours ago, Superuser said:

Who is logging every keystroke? LOL

 

Almost all the comments have been about the potential telemetry collection and little about people's Macs being crippled because of an unresponsive server which seems to be the real story here.

I said potentially... we dont know what all they are doing yet... there have been a couple security researchers claim they found some typed strings sent in the unencrypted transmissions but until they are proven I said potentially 

4 hours ago, Circaflex said:

I do hope you realize that even when using a VPN your location isnt necessarily hidden and you CAN indeed locate someone who is using a VPN. I stopped reading what you had to say once I read that part.

yeah especially if you use tracking cookies and log onto a vpn they still know who you are and how you got where you are now following the crumbs left... heck if they didn't every time you went onto a vpn your youtube suggestions when you aren't logged in should be different. I haven't seen that in a very very long time

[neufuse Veteran]

9 hours ago, Depicus said:

There's a lot of reaching for conclusions in the article some parts are just plain wrong. All of this is quite visible to anybody with a computer capable of running Wireshark and if you really wanted to block this information then run your own DNS and block it.

 

However I'm guessing this is simply apps with certification being checked because apps from the internet seemed to be fine. 

 

If you want a bit of conspiracy theory install BurpSuite and launch the browser and watch the data being sent

DNS blocking is fun, its a game of cat and mouse if they want it to be.. probably not in a large OEM's case but they could have fun with it if they wanted to by constantly changing where it's going to a generic TLD like akamai with random letter host names... etc... not saying thats what they are doing just that they could do it and really make DNS blocking fun

[Depicus]

17 hours ago, Circaflex said:

Right. There wasn't much to debate, you criticized the source on a subject I don't think you have as much knowledge in as you think you do. I mean off the top of my head, DNS leak from your VPN can help give away your location, not to mention logs kept on the VPN server most likely contain that information, etc.

Maybe not but you seem to be stretching here unless your superior knowledge can explain otherwise. So it appears to me that you are saying Apple is now in league with my ISP to track my location but, and I bow to your knowledge, but wouldn't it just be easier for my ISP to check the traffic coming from my house to see if I'm home, it can even see if VPN traffic is sent. It seems like your suggesting a very convoluted way  to do something which isn't guaranteed to work when other methods are 100 times easier. 

 

Yes our office VPN server would have logs but again those logs aren't available to Apple or anybody else without a court order. So please explain how anybody is likely to be able to use them in any meaningful way.

 

There are lots of possibilities but very little probabilities.

[Depicus]

Here is another differing view - https://blog.jacopo.io/en/post/apple-ocsp/ which I think is more thorough review.

[spy beef]

Apple responded: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/15/apple-privacy-macos-app-authenticaion/

 

I was right, nothing to worry about, Apple is the best. 

[adrynalyne]

14 minutes ago, spy beef said:

Apple responded: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/15/apple-privacy-macos-app-authenticaion/

 

I was right, nothing to worry about, Apple is the best. 

And yet, nothing was addressed on them purposely bypassing firewalls and VPNs. I suspect that will continue. 
 

While you say nothing to worry about, those changes are only coming about because someone made the problem visible to the masses. Nothing noble here, just damage control on Apple’s part. 

Edited November 16, 2020 by adrynalyne

[neufuse Veteran]

5 hours ago, adrynalyne said:

And yet, nothing was addressed on them purposely bypassing firewalls and VPNs. I suspect that will continue. 
 

While you say nothing to worry about, those changes are only coming about because someone made the problem visible to the masses. Nothing noble here, just damage control on Apple’s part. 

I mean there is a valid reason to do that, if a malware program ran and controlled the firewall and set up it's own VPN to reroute traffic you would want to get behind that to do your check, but if you are doing that be freaking clear you are doing that to the public

[devHead]

5 hours ago, spy beef said:

Apple responded: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/15/apple-privacy-macos-app-authenticaion/

 

I was right, nothing to worry about, Apple is the best. 

You're being sarcastic, right, spy beef?

[devHead]

Apple has the most gullible, non-technical, under-informed users on the planet.  If you think they're not going to use that rampant ignorance on the part of their base to enrich themselves, you're pretty deluded.  Here's a company that sells monitor STANDS  for $1,000 with a straight face.  

[Astra.Xtreme]

5 minutes ago, devHead said:

Apple has the most gullible, non-technical, under-informed users on the planet.  If you think they're not going to use that rampant ignorance on the part of their base to enrich themselves, you're pretty deluded.  Here's a company that sells monitor STANDS  for $1,000 with a straight face.  

Don't forget the $700 Mac Pro "rims" that don't even have brakes.

[allannyholm]

On 16/11/2020 at 19:29, devHead said:

Apple has the most gullible, non-technical, under-informed users on the planet.  If you think they're not going to use that rampant ignorance on the part of their base to enrich themselves, you're pretty deluded.  Here's a company that sells monitor STANDS  for $1,000 with a straight face.  

Count me in for perhaps being gullible, but not non-technical as such. Un(der)-informed when I feel like it. Actually. The hell with it. I suck from the tit of Apple very hard.

However, I am often tired of their "clever" designs on their(Apple's) peripherals such as keyboards, trackpads and mice and even their computers.

Both my iMac and my Apple Keyboard with numeric pad has edges so sharp that I've more than once cut open the tip of my index-finger or near sliced open my wrist when reaching for a USB port on the back on my iMac.

macOS as such is really what I'm after here as a user. My claim to fame is that I often say that if macOS could run on a piece of used tissue, I would take it. I have more where those came from.

Reading about all this for the first time - yes - you've read that right. I of course have second thoughts about using macOS and iOS too. The alternative is no less than awful.

What Apple does, I can agree with to a point, I haven't read the Terms of Service on any of the OS X or macOS installations I've done lately. It's not as transparent a text that they would have us all believe.
I don't know about Windows 10 and the TOS for that(since I also haven't read that, but have used Windows 10 on occasion), but I would imagine that Windows-users accept a whole lot of things that you or I wouldn't accept going grocery shopping for instance. Same with macOS' TOS.

The software that floods the Windows 10 software-market with instructions on how to turn off Windows' telemetry and this and that is evidence on that there's probably something in the Windows 10 operating system that isn't all that good for the end-user. 

I'm already on the train - so why get off? The next station that can have passengers leaving the train all consists of broken Windows (glass), but of course I'm talking about the operating system by Microsoft.

I'll continue to suck off the tit of Apple for a little while longer.

I felt triggered by your comment and I perhaps replied in a tone confirming your idea of Apple users as a whole. But if you can, please read my comment as a fun/non-interesting one.
I'm only here replying when I feel butt-hurt and I acknowledge that my butt-hole has been expanded so much that it's impossible for me to keep my poop within the comfort of my colon.
That's how butt-hurt I am. A sense of humor doesn't hurt. But, being butt-stomped is.. If you know what I mean?!

In fact all this friendly banter is all just fun and games.

Accept my apology, if you can, for being one of the few resident Mac-users on this forum that is both gullible, un(der)-informed, ill-informed and non-technical and on top of that self-destructive by nature 🤩

I'd love to be a part of this community since I've only been here since 2006 - pleeeeeaaaaseeeeeeeee

[devHead]

2 hours ago, allan.nyholm said:

I'd love to be a part of this community since I've only been here since 2006 - pleeeeeaaaaseeeeeeeee

Allan, I have many friends that are in the Apple ecosystem.  I don't think all Apple users are in that category (I employ hyperbole in many of my posts, sometimes just to get a reaction from a few on this board).  You seem to have a good sense of humor. Welcome to the community!