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Is Apple really going to spy on your iPhone photos?

Of course we all want to fight against this scourge and for each crime to be paid with due month, but the lack of security has been used on so many occasions to restrict our freedom that Orwell’s book 1984 already seems out of date. Are we at the beginning of a new era in the monitoring Apple accounts for security reasons? Can the brand see all the photos you take with the iPhone?

Apple won’t see your photos, unless …

The firm has put in place a system to check if photos uploaded to iCloud from iPhones, Macs or iPads contain illegal images of child abuse, but this will not affect the photos you take with the brand’s mobile. Your privacy will only be exposed if you choose to upload the photos to iCloud. Just as before, hackers were the ones who could access your content (let’s remember the famous “Fappening”), now it will be the American company itself that has this possibility.

What Apple is going to do is search, using different algorithms, for exact matches with already discovered images of child abuse that are already registered as such by the US authorities. No new case will be sought that is not classified by the US National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

Here comes into play what is known as «hash«. Images uploaded to the Apple cloud are analyzed on the device and assigned a unique number, the “has.” The technology is smart enough that if you edit a photo through cropping or filters, it is assigned the same number. It is the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children that has provided Apple with a list of “hashes” that are known photos of CSAM. If your photo doesn’t match that “hash”, the system goes ahead and the actual photo is not visible to anyone.

Brand explanations

As it has been commissioned to clarify the brand itself, they are not going to spy on iPhone or iCloud photos as such, neither these features will break end-to-end encryption or user privacy. Logically, even with this clarification, there are those who think that someone could abuse new technologies to spy on the content stored on the iPhone or in the cloud, before which Apple has published a question and answer document.

icloud logo on an iphone screen

Apple insists that if you work “local” you will not spy on anything. The change does not affect photos stored locally on iPhone or iPad. Instead, the algorithm does not even “record” the images stored in the iCloud Photos app, but rather the identification number of the photo that the user decides to upload there. The firm also explains that it will not give to governments that request it images that are not representative of possible crimes.

Now it is up to you to decide whether to upload your photos to the cloud or not.

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