And that doesn’t cover the data that gets processed and stored by servers rather than on device. Just like Google and most others, Apple holds all the encryption keys for the data at rest for “convenience”. And this includes app backup data which would include encryption keys for any true end-tp-end encrypted services if you choose to backup that data to your account. Not going to speculate on whether or not they regularly use or sell that data, but they definitely give it to any government agencies or copyright enforcement agencies that properly request it.
There’s a lot in that article but thankfully they put a breakdown at the top saying disabling telemetry only disables what has usually been called telemetry, which is to say crash reports and analytics.
Not evidence of a backdoor.
The way to enable e2ee with no chance of unlocking on server side is to enable advanced data protection. It’s not on by default because people get locked out and need access to their stuff. The resolution that makes a cloud customer happy (they get access to the data again) isn’t possible with adp on.
Apple also famously fought the government in court to avoid giving up user data and the paradigm after that incident is the cat and mouse of intelligence agencies and cutouts like greykey and cellebrite. Ios almost always fares better than everything but graphene in those conditions.
Regardless things like periodic restarts and knowing the panic combination for rebooting into bfu are important.
I guess when you say backdoor you’re implying something nefarious to capture data in motion on the internet. There’s no need to backdoor the encryption of data in motion if you have access to all data at rest on both device and server side for a majority of users. Plus the fact that their services can directly interact with other apps, even commercial apps have some limits. Then combine that with the data they do capture mentioned in this and many other research articles and there’s a lot they can access and compile about you that GrapheneOS users (with default settings) no one can.
I generally think about a backdoor in an os as a way to bypass a device’s lock, not as a backdoor to an encryption process. It’s the same mark of age that caused me to see no problem with the articles statement that turning off telemetry only turned off crash reports and whatnot. That made sense because those are the thing the user turned off and iOS has other controls for the other stuff.
Which is why I brought up the physical security and bfu points.
I also don’t know of any examples of Apple giving up customers data that isn’t along the lines of the proton example where the user set their proton recovery email to their firstname.lastname@icloud account and the cops used that to tie datasets together with the phone the user unlocked for them (if memory serves, that was a little bit ago).
I think people have a severe misconception about the (lack of ) security of Apple devices and tend to look at how a default iphone works as some egregious violation of trust when the vast overwhelming majority of users wouldn’t accept the limitations that being secure on a phone put upon them.
Ios lockdown mode is a great example. 99% of the time it’s fine but when people try to share contacts you’re shit out of luck and they gotta copy and paste it into a message to you.
As I said before, I don’t think the majority of people would accept the knowledge that their data is unsoupoenable (sp I’m sure) in exchange for account lockouts or forgotten passwords meaning loss of all cloud data. It’s why adp isn’t the default.
Was it netbsd who used to brag about no exploits in the default install? And then you actually do a default install and there’s no services and you think “yep, it’s pretty hard to get into a server that’s not running anything”.
It’s not quite that egregious but graphene is a good relatively secure by default setup while ios is pretty wide open so you can airdrop naked pictures to everyone on the bus and link your location data to your Facebook account, which is honestly what most phone users want. But those gates are closeable and strong in ios.
I uh also want to point out that the metadata cops use against you is your push notifications and I don’t even know any other in person fellow graphene users who disable those.
Broadly, having a phone is dangerous and if everyone understood that radio, television and the internet are propaganda and military c&c networks they’d be much less likely to buy the products to use them.
OK I see why you call yourself TrollAccount, guess I should have take a hint and not engaged. All of this is so off topic from why using a VPN is not going to be secure on an insecure device or one that the manufacturer can get the keys from the device directly or from a backup of those keys loaded on the Apple or google servers.
Do you have any examples of apple turning keys over to the cops? I’m interested if there’s more than simple correlation attacks like what happened when that persons proton account was subpoenaed and the cops matched their recovery email with the account they already had.
I know there’s precedent for that kind of thing where basic account information is given up but no actual “data” is shared.
We are way offtopic though I think even if a person is using a wide open default samsung a vpn is protecting them from surveillance via the lawful intercept backdoor in the cell system.
E: and I want to be clear, the post I replied to said backdoor to the os and so that’s what piqued my interest. Cloud services are their own fucked up thing.
As a daily user of both graphene and ios I’m interested to see evidence of a backdoor in ios.
From the top result of searching online: https://pwn-all.com/blog/2026/07/28/iphone-telemetry-in-2026-what-apple-knows-about-you.html
And that doesn’t cover the data that gets processed and stored by servers rather than on device. Just like Google and most others, Apple holds all the encryption keys for the data at rest for “convenience”. And this includes app backup data which would include encryption keys for any true end-tp-end encrypted services if you choose to backup that data to your account. Not going to speculate on whether or not they regularly use or sell that data, but they definitely give it to any government agencies or copyright enforcement agencies that properly request it.
There’s a lot in that article but thankfully they put a breakdown at the top saying disabling telemetry only disables what has usually been called telemetry, which is to say crash reports and analytics.
Not evidence of a backdoor.
The way to enable e2ee with no chance of unlocking on server side is to enable advanced data protection. It’s not on by default because people get locked out and need access to their stuff. The resolution that makes a cloud customer happy (they get access to the data again) isn’t possible with adp on.
Apple also famously fought the government in court to avoid giving up user data and the paradigm after that incident is the cat and mouse of intelligence agencies and cutouts like greykey and cellebrite. Ios almost always fares better than everything but graphene in those conditions.
Regardless things like periodic restarts and knowing the panic combination for rebooting into bfu are important.
I guess when you say backdoor you’re implying something nefarious to capture data in motion on the internet. There’s no need to backdoor the encryption of data in motion if you have access to all data at rest on both device and server side for a majority of users. Plus the fact that their services can directly interact with other apps, even commercial apps have some limits. Then combine that with the data they do capture mentioned in this and many other research articles and there’s a lot they can access and compile about you that GrapheneOS users (with default settings) no one can.
I generally think about a backdoor in an os as a way to bypass a device’s lock, not as a backdoor to an encryption process. It’s the same mark of age that caused me to see no problem with the articles statement that turning off telemetry only turned off crash reports and whatnot. That made sense because those are the thing the user turned off and iOS has other controls for the other stuff.
Which is why I brought up the physical security and bfu points.
I also don’t know of any examples of Apple giving up customers data that isn’t along the lines of the proton example where the user set their proton recovery email to their firstname.lastname@icloud account and the cops used that to tie datasets together with the phone the user unlocked for them (if memory serves, that was a little bit ago).
I think people have a severe misconception about the (lack of ) security of Apple devices and tend to look at how a default iphone works as some egregious violation of trust when the vast overwhelming majority of users wouldn’t accept the limitations that being secure on a phone put upon them.
Ios lockdown mode is a great example. 99% of the time it’s fine but when people try to share contacts you’re shit out of luck and they gotta copy and paste it into a message to you.
As I said before, I don’t think the majority of people would accept the knowledge that their data is unsoupoenable (sp I’m sure) in exchange for account lockouts or forgotten passwords meaning loss of all cloud data. It’s why adp isn’t the default.
Was it netbsd who used to brag about no exploits in the default install? And then you actually do a default install and there’s no services and you think “yep, it’s pretty hard to get into a server that’s not running anything”.
It’s not quite that egregious but graphene is a good relatively secure by default setup while ios is pretty wide open so you can airdrop naked pictures to everyone on the bus and link your location data to your Facebook account, which is honestly what most phone users want. But those gates are closeable and strong in ios.
I uh also want to point out that the metadata cops use against you is your push notifications and I don’t even know any other in person fellow graphene users who disable those.
Broadly, having a phone is dangerous and if everyone understood that radio, television and the internet are propaganda and military c&c networks they’d be much less likely to buy the products to use them.
OK I see why you call yourself TrollAccount, guess I should have take a hint and not engaged. All of this is so off topic from why using a VPN is not going to be secure on an insecure device or one that the manufacturer can get the keys from the device directly or from a backup of those keys loaded on the Apple or google servers.
I’m not trying to troll.
Do you have any examples of apple turning keys over to the cops? I’m interested if there’s more than simple correlation attacks like what happened when that persons proton account was subpoenaed and the cops matched their recovery email with the account they already had.
I know there’s precedent for that kind of thing where basic account information is given up but no actual “data” is shared.
We are way offtopic though I think even if a person is using a wide open default samsung a vpn is protecting them from surveillance via the lawful intercept backdoor in the cell system.
E: and I want to be clear, the post I replied to said backdoor to the os and so that’s what piqued my interest. Cloud services are their own fucked up thing.