back to article FYI Apple fans – iCloud slurps your call histories

Apple's effort to avoid becoming an on-demand data dispensary for authorities faces unlikely saboteurs: The company's commitment to convenience and its customers' preference for the same. Russian digital forensics company Elcomsoft on Thursday published a blog post claiming that Apple's iCloud Drive service stores phone call …

  1. whoseyourdaddy

    So, the choice is my communications are synced for safe storage to iCloud...

    Or, sent to god knows who in China with the latest Droid malware.

    Tough call...

    1. MrDamage Silver badge

      Or

      You could take full responsibility of your own data, doing a nightly manual backup to systems and storage you own and control, and be prepared to lose a days worth of "data" should the phone go titsup.

      1. Halfmad

        Re: Or

        Simply never have anything on the phone you're THAT bothered about losing.

      2. paulf
        Unhappy

        Re: Or

        @ MrDamage "You could take full responsibility of your own data, doing a nightly manual backup to systems and storage you own and control, and be prepared to lose a days worth of "data" should the phone go titsup."

        I already do regular backups of the jesus mobe to my computer. There's a bit more to it than that, though. You need to sign in to iCloud for stuff like find my iPhone and the remote wipe option - that's the only reason I've signed into it. I have all the remote backup options turned off (I only do and trust local backups) thinking that would stop* the remote slurps to Apple's bit barns. They might not have outright hidden this (as noted in the article) but absent an option to explicitly turn this on/off they haven't exactly drawn attention to it either. As with these privacy cases the convenience claim is always bollocks.

        * As far as a mere mortal resident in the walled garden can ascertain

  2. Dwarf

    Is that why iPhone's are built with the large exclamation mark (!) on the left hand side of the unit ?

    (See the main article picture.)

    Its a warning each time you use the device.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Is that why iPhone's

      Downvoted for feral apostrophe usage. C'mon people - it's not *that* difficult..

  3. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    "In a statement emailed to The Register, a Apple spokesperson said ..."

    That's actually the bigger surprise here. I'm on the verge of shock... is this the real life, or is it just fantasy?

    1. Halfmad

      caught in a landslide..

      1. Kane

        no escape from reality...

        1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

          Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see...

  4. Captain DaFt

    Personally, I never got syncing

    My desktop, mp3 player, netbook, phone, and game systems are all different devices with different ecosystems, filling different needs.

    Info that's relevant to one is useless on another, since I only do work on one, play different games, and web surf different sites due to what I do on each.

    When there's a need to crossover, a simple USB cord, SD card or USB stick supplies all the interconnect I need, no cloud needed.

    Of course each user's needs are different, YMMV, etc., etc.

    1. JeffyPoooh
      Pint

      Re: Personally, I never got syncing

      "...different ecosystems..."

      I've gone out of my way to get at least one of each ecosystem. It's more interesting.

      "...syncing..."

      Yep.

      Apple syncing is the Stupidest Algorithm on Earth. Press 'Sync' on iTunes, and the stupid thing will gleefully load your phone with all your music starting with letter 'A', 'B', 'C' and then crash out with an error since 500+GB of music surprisingly doesn't fit into a "32GB" phone. It's just stupid software.

      It'll also take five hours to do anything. Anything at all.

      I hate 'syncing'. Apple made me hate it.

      1. Truckle The Uncivil

        Re: Personally, I never got syncing

        Stupid thing or stupid operator? I even wonder about your honesty. I have a four terabyte iTunes library. Bigger than most. I don't have these problems you describe. If you try and overload any of my devices it reports an attempted overload before it tries to sync. Have you really ever used it?

      2. Truckle The Uncivil

        Re: Personally, I never got syncing

        Actually it does not do that at all. No iDevice I or my children have possessed ever has. If the sync would not fit it will not do it and tells you so. If you actually managed to do what you claim I am sure Apple will pay you a bug bounty.

        You are a bit "post factual" for me.

    2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      Re: Personally, I never got syncing

      I sync various bit and pieces (firefox bookmarks and the like) and use a couple of cloud backups (iCloud, Crashplan as well as my own Nextcloud server.

      But then, I don't *ever* leave them on the default settings.

  5. BebopWeBop

    I think to be fair to Apple they are actually balancing convenience (I do use a Mac for a lot of things, including document preparation, most communications, photos and music and like the sync between my tablet and phone, with a Linux cluster for code development and most of my prototyping and Mathematica/R* use) with security. And while Apple will by no means be a perfect repository, as a previous poster noted, even without Chinese hacking, I certainly would not trust the Google infrastructure, slick though it is.

  6. Leedos

    Where's my access?

    I'm OK with this as long as I have access to it. You would think that a new iPhone would have the ability to store more than 100 calls in it's call log, but no. This hasn't changed since the orignal iPhone. I can burn through 100 calls in less than a week when I'm busy. Apple referring me to my carrier to access that information is not very helpful as the data there is numeric only (no Caller ID). Apple - How about putting some work into improving the Phone app on the iPhone? I will concede that CallKit in iOS 10 is a step forward by allowing the integration of VoIP apps like Bria into the native phone app. Sure, your app library is impressive but there are some people (not millenials) that actually use this device as a phone!

  7. JeffyPoooh
    Pint

    They store records of my voice calls ??

    Voice calls? What's a voice call?

    I don't understand.

    1. Captain DaFt

      Re: They store records of my voice calls ??

      "Voice calls? What's a voice call?

      I don't understand."

      It's an undocumented iPhone feature.

      In case of emergency, an iPhone can actually be used as a makeshift phone!

      Is there nothing Apple can't do!?

    2. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: They store records of my voice calls ??

      One word: Farspeaking.

    3. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: They store records of my voice calls ??

      iPhone explanation

      1: i for Internet

      2: Phone for .... well actually talking in real time to other humans who aren't as fortunate as you (viz, don't have an iDevice).

      Ok?

      YMMV (and I use mine for 2: more than 1: but that's because I'm not on any social media site at least I don't think I am.)

    4. James R Grinter

      Re: They store records of my voice calls ??

      And I hear there's a thing called a "phone company", that is involved. Apparently they sneakily make a record of these voice call things, too. Scoundrels, the lot of 'em.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's an internet connected device, 12 months is now mandatory.

  9. Youngdog

    Not all bad

    I only use iCloud for contacts and an .icloud.com mail address but found it quite useful that my recent call history was restored to a replacement after the last one was stolen

  10. AndrewDu

    Sounds like another good reason to install Signal.

  11. Lee D Silver badge

    Much as I might like to jump on the anti-Apple bandwagon occasionally, this isn't unique to Apple.

    Google smartphones often sync your contacts, Chrome bookmarks and all kinds of other things to the cloud.

    It can be useful (e.g. when upgrading from one Android handset to another) and I'm sure there are options to control it, but I don't remember seeing a massive YOU CAN OPT OUT kind of dialog for that. At best it was a "what would you like to sync?" and a list of things that halfway down might have included Contacts.

    So long as people are voluntarily enabling it, it's tough. And I know the iPads and iPhones I've seen (never owned one in my life) have a similar slider for syncing contacts, calendars etc.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is why I don't use iCloud

    Call histories are the least of your concerns - your carrier already has that information and given how chummy they are with the Feds there's no way they don't share that info on request (and perhaps illegally in bulk)

    The article mentions Apple "keeping logs of your iMessage conversations" but that's wrong. They do have records of who you contact though, because you have to go through Apple's servers when you initially make contact (the actual messages are encrypted with a key Apple doesn't control/know so they can't get at the content itself)

    Then there is all the other stuff iCloud can back up, like contacts, photos, calendars and so forth. My issue with iCloud is that while it is encrypted during transit to Apple, and at rest on their servers, it isn't encrypted with a key only I control. When they fix that, which I'm led to understand they are working on, I'll start using iCloud. Until then I'll use the more cumbersome method of backing up via iTunes, since that is encrypted with a key only I control.

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