¶ Apple's Sneaky Privacy Invasion Tactics
Go turn off all those damn privacy invasive settings in your device . Man , you've got seven days to do it . Make it happen , do it now .
Three , two , one . Now Do it All right . Ladies and gentlemen , welcome back to another episode of Privacy Plans . Cameron Ivey here alongside Mr Gabe Gumbs . Gabe , how we doing , man , how we doing , we are doing , well , how are you doing ? I be doing good , my friend , I'm doing good . Right on right on right on .
I don't know about these Apple users , though , man . In case you missed it , gabe , why don't you give us a little background on what we just discovered , or what everybody just discovered ?
I don't know if everyone's discovered it yet , but certainly a lot of people have . I discovered it from Heidi Sass earlier today and I was like wait what ? So we've been told that Apple Intelligence Suite was coming to iOS products soon .
It's a suite of local AI tools , and I suspect that local AI tools is why Apple is going to say that what I'm about to say next isn't really a problem , but what they did they being Apple is in the latest iOS update .
Those intelligence tools were installed , but they also enabled automatically the ability for those AI tools to capture and analyze how you're using applications . It turned this on by default for all of your applications . It automatically opted you in by default have AI analyze your app behavior .
Now again , presumably these are supposed to be local apps , local models that are running right , which is to say , the models are running on your device . They're not running like on Apple's hardware and their services .
I'm just going to tell you I do not know enough about , sure , the models may run locally , but I do not know enough about where the data goes after . I know some data is on the phone . Is it all still in the phone ? I don't want it at all , though is the problem ?
Why did I not get the choice to have any application start monitoring all of my behavior across all of my applications , of my behavior across all of my applications ? This might be the single largest privacy of the last few years . In my opinion , it's kind of shitty . Honestly , it's really shitty . Maybe I'm being a little hyperbolic .
There certainly were massive privacy problems in the last few years , but this is problematic . Yeah , especially- . What the hell , apple ? What in the world are you smoking ?
I don't know , maybe we need to know . Whatever it is man , I have that confidence , whatever it is .
If you start selling that instead of my data , maybe you get rich that way , because they're on something , they're on something and it's wrong .
Well , first of all , thanks for the fart noise , because now I don't have to insert it , hey-o , I appreciate that . That saves me on editing . Yeah , I agree , this is very , very sneaky , very , very sneaky , sir , very sneaky , but I mean , honestly , I'm not surprised . I don't think you are either , but maybe you are . Maybe you are a little bit about it .
It's AI too . It's not like I've always had an inkling that our cameras and our microphones on all devices have always been somewhere that allow for that kind of behavior to happen .
We know that there's software that is sold to less than trustworthy governments that use these tools to spy on individuals all over the place . We know that that is a truth . We know that cameras can be turned on and the green light can be disabled so that you don't even know it's on . We know microphones can be turned on .
We know all of these things are true . We know that those things are true in the context of bad guys doing bad guy things . Got it Good Right . But you know , presumably Apple's been touting itself as the privacy good boy . In fact , they've spent millions and millions of dollars on ad campaigns and the like to tell us that .
So they were just like silently doing all this good stuff altruistically , like , hey , look at us , we are very respectful of your privacy . They wanted to let you know about their altruism . They wanted you to see their name on the check .
But then , as was always suspected , that is indeed a competitive advantage for them and little more than such to make those claims . How they carry those claims is a whole different story , and the way they're carrying this claim right now fumble straight fumble Is the everyday user that's not really in the know of this kind of stuff .
Oh my God , the everyday user's screwed , the everyday user's screwed . You think my mother's even going to know about this , hear about this , and even if she does , you think she's going to go through her phone every single app and disable this like every single . Well , so now I know how I got to spend my weekend .
Thanks , Apple , not that I don't love spending time with my mother , but thanks Apple .
And now to your mom's point . Let's use her as an example . Thanks , mom . What is it like if she were to find out ? What is she like ? Is she even going to understand the severity of ?
I think she might but she'd probably also struggle with the . So what part of it ? It's like yeah , but how does that impact me ? Right ? Because it's hard to put the dots together when it's kind of abstracted away from how it impacts you directly . She'll understand it once explained to you .
Know , like , I think , any other reasonable person of intelligence , right , or you know , forget one's intelligence . Reasonable person of intelligence , right , forget one's intelligence . I think everyone understands the analogies of someone just walked into your house , opened all of your blinds and put a camera up to the window without your asking .
Wait , that hasn't happened to you yet , mate . I welcome it . All I ask is for a positive Yelp review . Is it too much to ask ? Just leave five stars . If you like what you see , just go ahead and leave me a review . If you don't like what you see , as Cam would say , 10 , you weren't in , that's it . Just keep it moving .
You don't have to say anything .
Yeah , but then you didn't hear it , then you didn't see it . You don't like what ? Otherwise , five stars .
Well , okay , so this is , yeah , this is annoying because , like you said , this takes , you've already done yours , from what I've understood .
I've done it on one of my iOS devices . I happen to own multiple iOS devices . The whole family has iOS devices . They're up there all over the place and , for what it's worth , I wasn't always an iOS man .
I used to be a hardcore Android fan and I switched for various reasons that were all in the category of the ecosystem of other people around me and other technology I was using and some of it , ease of use , et cetera , even some of the security functions , or , I'd argue there were some areas where Apple was better than Android .
Only because , if anything , android is so very open to end user . It's very flexible for an end user to customize . That customization also means you can cut your hand on the sharp edges that it has . But I can tell you the following After today , I am 100% starting the process to switch as many of my devices out of the iOS ecosystem .
I'm not even being hyperbolic . I've been meaning to do it for some time . All this has done is accelerated for me . That being said , I'm already hyper-privacy focused . You're already hyper-privacy focused . We're not the ones that are really going to get affected by this .
It's mom and dad right , those are the ones that are going to get affected by this stuff and it's nonsense .
Yeah , I agree that's a big switch , because I know you've been using Apple for a while now , at least , I think , the whole time that I've known you .
Yeah , that might be about right . I'm pulling up on at least 10 years . Prior to that , I was an Android man through and through , but even my laptop , I think I'm going to switch over to Pop OS as my daily driver . I'll have some secondary machines if I have to because of different applications , but I'm out . That's it , I'm out .
Thanks , no , thanks , I won't off this ride .
Yeah , it's weird . It's weird coming from . I have so many thoughts going on in my head and I want to get your opinion on them .
First of all , I just want to make the statement of you know , I've always thought that Apple has done such a good job with their privacy commercials and showing consumers that they care about their privacy , and then they do something like this . Do you think that the companies , the apps themselves , do you think that those companies knew about this ?
And is there an advantage for this feature being automatically turned on to those apps for those companies ?
Looks like advantage is all Apple at the moment 's all coming up .
It's all coming up , apple at the moment so I wonder if there's something to where , like calling all companies that have an app . If you're listening to this , I mean that'd be pretty cool . If you are probably not they're powerless .
The wall garden belongs to apple right like what I'm saying , though , is could those companies do a call out like go into your app settings if you don't want this turned on and turn it off , like that could be a good thing for them to kind of promote as the company to show their privacy , it's true , you know that's true , at least spreading some awareness to
their end users .
Yeah , no , we'll allow it . We'll allow it . The challenge is , those organizations don't have any real power beyond that voice . Right , the iOS ecosystem is Apple's holy to control . They decide they don't want you on the platform . Legally , right Like . Right , that's it . Right Like go back to the Fortnite debacle where they changed the rules .
The Fortnite debacle where they changed the rules . They enabled the ability to buy whatever the in-game money is directly in-game , which violates Apple's terms of service . They want any application that has the ability to make in-app purchases . They want you to make those in-app purchases through Apple because they get a cut Automatic 30% . The folks
¶ Controlling Ecosystems
that make Fortnite I can't remember their name now . Someone else will have to fill in that blank for me they took this all the way to court and they were like no , and while it was all being hashed out in court , in that meantime Apple removed Fortnite from the app store altogether If you were playing the game on- .
Tim Sweeney .
Tim Sweeney yeah , actually , that's the founder of the company . Yeah , yeah , yeah , tim Sweeney Games developer . Yep , yes , yes , epic Games , epic Games , that's it , epic Games . And so they pulled the game from being able to be played on any iOS device . There weren't a lot of people playing it on iOS best I know For what it's worth .
I had tried it on iOS once many years ago and when it got pulled I was like , whatever , I don't really game anyways , it didn't really affect me , but it kind of sucked . It's like oh no , you can't play anymore . You can play it again now on iOS devices through a different mechanism .
Right , there's a number of different ways you can still get about it , but the point is Apple's control over their ecosystem is a dictatorship . I might argue rightfully so . It's their platform , but they are now so large and so ubiquitous in everyone so many I shouldn't say everyone , but so many people's lives certainly not around the globe .
Around the globe , android phones are still very much competing well on market share . The problem there is you have lots of other privacy issues . Anyone who's bought I'm just going to pick on some folks here too , so try not to get too offended . Tech companies . But Samsung , samsung phone . It comes loaded with all kinds of adware , spyware .
I'd go as far as call it malware . Quite frankly , I think it's malicious and it's intense , even if not its behavior , but it's malicious and it's a behavior for sure . So there isn't a lot the app developers can do , to my knowledge , but yeah you know it's on apple I agree .
I think , um , we're coming to a point , and you know , in 2025 . Besides insurance and car mechanic fraud , there's this Apple thing the way that Apple is nowadays . The products they're putting out , they're not really that . The phones aren't selling as much because it's not as exciting . It's the same thing every single year .
There's no real change or excitement or innovation , and it's um , I don't know , could you ever see the fall of apple ? Um , from some of these kind of things ?
no , I mean it would take a lot to knock apple they have their their revenue stream is also expertly diversified , like kudos to them , rightudos to them . We could sit here and list all of the different lines of businesses they have , but they have Apple TV , they have MacBooks , they have phones , they have tablets . They've got tons of services .
They've got cloud services and storage . They're very , very well diversified . There's no two ways about it . Apple's not going to fall off tomorrow and , as grumpy as many of us may get about this , this may not even touch their bottom line . It might not . The best way to vote is get the hell off the platform . But again , where are you going to go to ?
Is the problem right ? A lot of your other choices are just as fraught with privacy problems . Unless you understand and know how to navigate those problems yourself , that's a problem .
So we need somebody with privacy in mind to create their own cell phone .
There's a beautiful , amazing , maybe two or three episodes on Darknet Diaries on the topic of privacy-hooked cell phones . It's a wild , wild ride . I highly advise anyone to go listen to those episodes and the show in general . Shout out to Darknet Diaries . I love the show .
Yeah , it's a good show , but one of the things that and I'm just going to spoil it , so if you don't want this to be spoiled , you should mute for the next 30 odd seconds . Make it 60 just to be safe . I might say more than that .
But one of the things that he talks about in the show is that there really are no privacy-focused phones that they could actually find .
Many of the privacy-focused phones were designed for criminal use , like explicitly for the purpose of criminal use , and it turns out that one of the last existing ones , the guy who built it , got caught no one really knows when , and then he disappeared for a while .
Then he came back and he released a whole new phone and they were being sold to criminals all over Europe and Eastern Europe . And it turns out that these phones had a backdoor that allowed the US government and a couple of other entities to just automatically get copies of all of the messages being sent back and forth to people .
So when you send a message to someone else , it would automatically also send the copy of that message side channel elsewhere . Right , right , right , right , right . Now again , the argument here was that , look , they created a device that they knew was going to be sold to criminals for criminal activity , and so they leveraged it to that aim .
The problem , of course , is exactly that Even if you create a legitimate , completely privacy-preserving mobile device , it will find its way into the hands of criminals , of course . So what ? We don't not sell cars because people use them to run people over , right ? Like we don't not sell cutlery because people use them this to stab people like . So what ?
Like we damn sure don't not sell guns because people shoot schools up . So you know , like we ? This is the weird place to draw the line . Oh , but my privacy's and my the kids ? Like shouldn't we think about the kids ? Yes , we should think about the kids . They're dying every day in schools . Let's think about the kids .
I understand that there are legitimate privacy reasons and security reasons why we don't want criminals to be able to have pedophile rings easily administered through privacy-preserving technology , but I also don't want them dying up gunshots either in the fourth grade . One of those things seems really easy to solve for the other one , also easy to solve for .
It's so what there's a to that point .
There is I do you know about that one phone that's like it kind of takes away social media and it makes it your phone simple . I forget the name of it .
It's like a black phone or yeah , I think I've seen it , there might be a couple like that , like they . It has just the bare essentials inside of it .
It removes those , like you know , other wi-fi antennas and I think it doesn't even have a camera and it's like a hardware , a microphone , so that you can like physically disable it with like a dip switch kind of thing yeah those are pretty cool .
Those are cool . I would say those are probably the closest to probably a healthy relationship with with your phone nowadays in terms of controlling and not having to kind of escape from social media and all that stuff . But I don't know .
I'll have to explore myself how far down that hole I even want to go , because , I'm not going to lie to you , I've gotten very , very used to having the luxuries , like everyone else has , of having a smartphone . It's awesome , it's excellent . I have not gotten comfortable with the overreach that technology companies have .
Well , so back to the whole latest on the iOS update . If you haven't updated it yet and you do , or you have updated it and you want to take a look at this , you go into your settings , you go into your apps and for each app , you have to go into each app and go into Siri and turn that feature off for each one .
It found a way to disable it system-wide ? If it exists , someone certainly should comment and weigh in .
I didn't see it and I didn't hear anyone else mention it , but otherwise it's a righteous pain in the butt , especially since you have to do it also across all devices , which this is how you know it's shenanigans right Like iOS , can track everything you do across devices . You can take a phone call across devices .
You can move seamlessly from a FaceTime video from your phone to your laptop , to your tablet , without skipping a heartbeat . You can do everything seamlessly across it , except for preserve your privacy .
That's wild . I wonder if something's going to happen with something about this .
And I can't wait for the EU to smack them around . Come on , eu . Of course , what will happen is I'll just get further jelly of all my European brethren when they have more privacy protections than I do , because just because the EU slaps their head doesn't mean they'll do it to fix our states .
Well , this is a way to keep informed . So if you weren't aware of this , hopefully this helps and you can go do something about it . If you care about your privacy I imagine anyone listening to the show actually does , or you know if not , you're just doing it for the entertainment , then I'm glad that we entertain you . We are here for both .
Yeah , hopefully this was informative and this is fascinating . I mean , this is why this world that we live in , this tech world that we live in , is so fascinating because things like this continue to happen , and maybe that's a good thing . Maybe that keeps us on our toes .
Hopefully the smarter people out there like yourself , gabe , or you know others that can invent things or create technologies to to make things better Hopefully we'll have some people working on that kind of stuff right now . Yeah , anything else you want to talk about ? We got coming on next week . We promised .
Dave Dave .
Yeah .
Yeah .
Yeah , we got Dave coming on . We had to reschedule with him , but we have him coming on , so that'll release . Tell the listeners give them a little tease about Dave . So Dave works for he's co-founder and regulatory expert over at a company called Runway Strategies . Real smart guy knows a lot about legislative things like that . We're going to learn his backstory .
Learn a little bit more about what is going to actually be happening . Monday is the 20th inauguration , so new office , new administration is coming in for the US MLK Day Monday is MLK Day MLK Day as well ?
Yeah , then it's Inauguration Day .
See , in order , it goes MLK Day , you know what's funny , you know , what's funny Is that we're talking about all these like privacy things . Was that story true about how his phone was tapped in his hotel room , martin Luther King ? Story true about how his phone was tapped in his hotel room um martin luther king ? Yeah , yeah , hell yeah .
See , that's what I'm saying it's like it's all lining up right now all the privacy issues . They spied on everything that man did . He couldn't use the bathroom without somebody taking two pictures from two different angles I can't even imagine having that .
I wonder if he even knew about it .
Yes , okay , yes , he was aware that he was being watched , followed by our own government , by private citizens , trying to enact that kind of change at a time when the world was vehemently against change of that nature , in particular social justice , change of any sort . Yeah , no , he was intimately aware .
He was intimately aware , crazy man that was happening around that time . I don't know . That's just fascinating .
Scary , yeah , very scary , fascinating , scary , yeah , very scary , scary , because his activities clearly angered some very violent people . So in the end he met his demise at the business end of the rifle From a distance .
How dare somebody try to help give equal rights to all humans . Right .
And that's noteworthy too right . His fight wasn't just for people of color by any stretch of the imagination . This was very much always about class . This was always wealth warfare .
Yeah , well , yeah . So Monday MLK , which is always celebratory , and then , funny enough , it's the 20th inauguration . All right , well , I think that's all we have for this week .
But tune in next week . We've got some guests on and , as we promised , this year will continue to get more exciting . So welcome , come along for the ride and go turn off all those damn privacy invasive settings in your device . Man , do it Before you join us next week . You've got seven days to do it . Make it happen , do it now .
Three two , one . Now Do it , see you guys .