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Apple: We love you and track everything
  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    On modern versions of macOS, you simply can’t power on your computer, launch a text editor or eBook reader, and write or read, without a log of your activity being transmitted and stored.

    It turns out that in the current version of the macOS, the OS sends to Apple a hash (unique identifier) of each and every program you run, when you run it. Lots of people didn’t realize this, because it’s silent and invisible and it fails instantly and gracefully when you’re offline, but today the server got really slow and it didn’t hit the fail-fast code path, and everyone’s apps failed to open if they were connected to the internet.

    Because it does this using the internet, the server sees your IP, of course, and knows what time the request came in. An IP address allows for coarse, city-level and ISP-level geolocation.

    It’s been possible up until today to block this sort of stuff on your Mac using a program called Little Snitch (really, the only thing keeping me using macOS at this point). In the default configuration, it blanket allows all of this computer-to-Apple communication, but you can disable those default rules and go on to approve or deny each of these connections, and your computer will continue to work fine without snitching on you to Apple.

    The version of macOS that was released today, 11.0, also known as Big Sur, has new APIs that prevent Little Snitch from working the same way. The new APIs don’t permit Little Snitch to inspect or block any OS level processes. Additionally, the new rules in macOS 11 even hobble VPNs so that Apple apps will simply bypass them.

    https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/

  • 2 Replies sorted by
  • MikeLinnMikeLinn

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Looks, we are innocent, Apple decided to join Microsoft and Goolge in their explanation

    Apple has been forced to clarify how its Gatekeeper anti-malware platform works after security researchers suggested the system was violating privacy. The company, as spotted by 9to5Mac, has updated its support documentation to explain that the system does not track what its users are doing. At the same time, Apple has said that it will change how Gatekeeper functions in future to further minimize future risks.

    Google Chrome is collecting and sending info about your files to Google upon each update.

    Microsoft defender will also send as much info as possible about any suspicion or unusual files.

    It seems like Apple friendly guy also wrote this - https://blog.jacopo.io/en/post/apple-ocsp/

    If you think your privacy is put at risk by this feature more than having potential undetected malware running on your system, go ahead.

    If you use macOS Big Sur, blocking OCSP might not be as trivial. Before crying conspiracy, however, keep in mind that common users are generally not able to fully understand and evaluate the impact of disabling such a complex and delicate security feature on their computer.

    Sounds scary? But it is mostly bullshit, as all good malware knows how to go around this things.

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