Apple Confirms “Back Doors”; Downplays Their Severity
Now lets talk about file relay. Apple is being completely misleading by claiming that file relay is only for copying diagnostic data. If, by diagnostic data, you mean the user’s complete photo album, their SMS, Notes, Address Book, GeoLocation data, screenshots of the last thing they were looking at, and a ton of other personal data – then sure… but this data is far too personal in nature to ever be needed for diagnostics. In fact, diagnostics is almost the complete opposite of this kind of data. And once again, the user is never prompted to give their permission to dump all of this data, or notified in any way on-screen. Apple insists AppleCare gets your consent, but this must be a verbal consent, as it is certainly not a technological consent. What’s more, if this service really were just for diagnostic use, you’d think that it would respect backup encryption, so that everything coming off the phone is encrypted with the user’s backup password. When I take my laptop to Apple for repairs, I have to provide the password. But Apple apparently has admitted to the mechanics behind file relay, which skip around backup encryption, to get to much the same data. In addition to this, it can be dumped wirelessly, without the user’s knowledge. So why does this need to be the case? It doesn’t. File relay is far too sloppy with personal data, and serves up a lot more than “diagnostics” data.
Previously here:
The Apple Rat In Your Pocket