A new feature in iOS 18 shares users' photos and photo data with Apple by default, a setting that has raised privacy concerns.
The feature, called “Enhanced Visual Search,” will “allow your device to match locations in photos against a global index maintained by Apple” to search for photos based on landmarks and other information within the photo. enable.
This setting is intended to make the Photos app more efficient and searchable, but developer Jeff Johnson said that despite the so-called “rich” iPhone experience, such data cannot be shared with Apple. Raised the issue of sharing privacy.
“From my own perspective, computing privacy is simple: If something happens entirely on my computer, it's private. On the other hand, if my computer sends data to the computer's manufacturer, then it's private. , it's not private, at least not completely private,'' he says. I wrote latest entry on his blog.
“Therefore, the only way to guarantee computing privacy is to not send any data from your device.”
In other words, the choice to turn on Enhanced Visual Search “was quietly made by Apple without my consent,” he said.
“Individual users must decide their tolerance for the risk of privacy violations,” he argued.
He pointed to a number of security and privacy flaws that Apple has needed to patch in recent years, and these flaws are usually accompanied by urgent update warnings.
“Bugs in software are enough to make users vulnerable, and Apple cannot guarantee that software is bug-free,” Johnson wrote, adding that data from the “Enhanced Visual Search” feature is malicious. He claimed that it could be exploited by attackers.
According to Apple's “Photos and Privacy” documentthe tech giant said that the data used for “Enhanced Visual Search” is encrypted and users' IP addresses are protected, so Apple can't learn from the information in their photos.
To turn off Enhanced Visual Search on your iPhone, open the Settings app, go to Apps, then Photos, and scroll to the bottom of the page. On your Mac, open the Photos app and[設定],[一般]and toggle it off.
Experts recently urged Apple device users to update to the latest version of iOS 18, despite concerns over AI and more. Bugs in software that aren't updated can leave customers vulnerable to malicious attackers.
This bug could be exploited by hackers to access sensitive user data without a trace, and the longer you wait for an update, the higher the risk.
