This claim that Apple are tracking your location because they use TCP/IP to receive connections, has been made many times now.
Nobody has so far presented evidence that Apple does in fact geolocate people or even that they persistently store IP address information related to user accounts.
I don’t know for sure that they do not, but I do know that they are aware that keeping IP addresses is a potential privacy leak, and so at least some of their services are definitely designed to scrub ip addresses from records at the point of ingestion and replace them with anonymized keys before they are passed on to services within the company.
So they know that keeping IP address logs is a potential privacy issue and are working to alleviate that.
I would be surprised if they do this for everything yet, but as far as I can see Sneak is making only a theoretical accusation, and not one which he has more than speculation about.
As far as I can see, statements like these...
“Apple knows when you leave home, or arrive at the office, or travel to a different city, all with no Apple ID, no iCloud, and no location services.
This has always been the case on all devices using iOS, too.”..
...are complete bullshit as written, even though we can’t rule out the possibility.
“ Apple doesn’t retain a history of what you’ve searched for or where you’ve been.” is on Apple’s privacy page here: https://www.apple.com/privacy/features/
So if someone can find evidence for such accusations, perhaps there is some legal liability for Apple.
There are ways to communicate over the internet that don't disclose the source IP of the client doing the connecting. Tor also uses TCP/IP, so your oversimplification of my post is... not accurate.
> Nobody has so far presented evidence that Apple does in fact geolocate people or even that they persistently store IP address information related to user accounts.
We're talking about IP address logs related to hardware serials, which cannot be changed. User accounts can.
Perhaps Apple doesn't log your hardware UUID + IP. You'll have to take their word for it.
But there's even less guarantee that the government doesn't log that information.
After all, Apple dropped plans of implementing E2E encryption of iCloud backups after the FBI asked them [1]. So "Apple doesn't retain that info" might boil down to semantics since it might be allowing someone else to do it.
Apple had at least a partial implementation of e2e backup that was resilient to users losing their passwords, via something like friends-and-family secret sharing to perform data recovery.
The implementation was scrapped.
There are ways of solving these problems, throwing up hands and saying "it can't be done anyway" is silly. Apple has done a lot of things that couldn't be done: a computer without a floppy or serial ports, a phone without a keyboard, a headset without cables between your ears.
Building the iPhone was difficult. Building APNS and iCloud was difficult. Building the App Store was difficult. Building the Apple Watch was fucking difficult. Building the Ax line of mobile chips was difficult. Building the M1 was difficult. Don't forget about airpods, homepods, and all the other mindbendingly hard shit Apple does all the time now.
Apple does insane technical achievements on a regular basis. Secret sharing for e2e backups is well within their capabilities. Google even managed to e2e encrypt Android backups.
The problem is that Apple serves at the pleasure of the US military intelligence apparatus, and they know it.
It doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
This claim that Apple are tracking your location because they use TCP/IP to receive connections, has been made many times now.
Nobody has so far presented evidence that Apple does in fact geolocate people or even that they persistently store IP address information related to user accounts.
I don’t know for sure that they do not, but I do know that they are aware that keeping IP addresses is a potential privacy leak, and so at least some of their services are definitely designed to scrub ip addresses from records at the point of ingestion and replace them with anonymized keys before they are passed on to services within the company.
So they know that keeping IP address logs is a potential privacy issue and are working to alleviate that.
I would be surprised if they do this for everything yet, but as far as I can see Sneak is making only a theoretical accusation, and not one which he has more than speculation about.
As far as I can see, statements like these...
“Apple knows when you leave home, or arrive at the office, or travel to a different city, all with no Apple ID, no iCloud, and no location services. This has always been the case on all devices using iOS, too.”..
...are complete bullshit as written, even though we can’t rule out the possibility.
“ Apple doesn’t retain a history of what you’ve searched for or where you’ve been.” is on Apple’s privacy page here: https://www.apple.com/privacy/features/
So if someone can find evidence for such accusations, perhaps there is some legal liability for Apple.