As somebody who would not want any corporation to be able to preload my data onto a phone it ships me, which implies it knows exactly what data I have to begin with, it sounds plenty sinister to me. Just swap “Apple” with “Samsung” or “Google” or “Microsoft” or literally any other company.
This is if you a) purchase the phone in some way that is associated with your Apple account, b) have cloud backups already in place, and c) opt in to the preload.
If any of those things aren’t in place, it wouldn’t have happened.
Now your likely assuming they can get into that backup, which fair enough would be a concern. But (if you believe them, which I admit is a huge if) according to Apple, they can’t actually get into that backup without your password. Meaning (again, if you believe them) this would be as safe and secure as shipping your own phone cross country after rebooting it.
I think the biggest concern for the average person would be feeling like the promises of Apple privacy would be severely compromised by this, regardless of whether that’s the case.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but apparently all iCloud backups are encrypted? So either Apple was thinking of grabbing an unlock key from somewhere to decrypt before sending you the phone, or they were just going to include an encrypted backup file (or something) that you’d have to enter your password to unlock upon receipt (and then presumably wait for the decrypting).
I think the idea is that the data is encrypted on the phone and password is needed to decrypt it. If Apple can load (decrypt) data without your password then they can decrypt it anytime they want, even you don’t want them to.
As somebody who would not want any corporation to be able to preload my data onto a phone it ships me, which implies it knows exactly what data I have to begin with, it sounds plenty sinister to me. Just swap “Apple” with “Samsung” or “Google” or “Microsoft” or literally any other company.
Eh?
This is if you a) purchase the phone in some way that is associated with your Apple account, b) have cloud backups already in place, and c) opt in to the preload.
If any of those things aren’t in place, it wouldn’t have happened.
Now your likely assuming they can get into that backup, which fair enough would be a concern. But (if you believe them, which I admit is a huge if) according to Apple, they can’t actually get into that backup without your password. Meaning (again, if you believe them) this would be as safe and secure as shipping your own phone cross country after rebooting it.
I think the biggest concern for the average person would be feeling like the promises of Apple privacy would be severely compromised by this, regardless of whether that’s the case.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but apparently all iCloud backups are encrypted? So either Apple was thinking of grabbing an unlock key from somewhere to decrypt before sending you the phone, or they were just going to include an encrypted backup file (or something) that you’d have to enter your password to unlock upon receipt (and then presumably wait for the decrypting).
But they do know. Because the user put it there.
I think the idea is that the data is encrypted on the phone and password is needed to decrypt it. If Apple can load (decrypt) data without your password then they can decrypt it anytime they want, even you don’t want them to.