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[Alex Atkin UK]

Preface: I don’t use iCloud. I don’t use an Apple ID. I don’t use the Mac App Store. I don’t store photos in the macOS “Photos” application, even locally. I never opted in to Apple network services of any kind - I use macOS software on Apple hardware.

Today, I was browsing some local images in a subfolder of my Documents folder, some HEIC files taken with an iPhone and copied to the Mac using the Image Capture program (used for dumping photos from an iOS device attached with an USB cable).

I use a program called Little Snitch which alerts me to network traffic attempted by the programs I use. I have all network access denied for a lot of Apple OS-level apps because I’m not interested in transmitting any of my data whatsoever to Apple over the network - mostly because Apple turns over customer data on over 30,000 customers per year to US federal police without any search warrant per Apple’s own self-published transparency report. I’m good without any of that nonsense, thank you.

Imagine my surprise when browsing these images in the Finder, Little Snitch told me that macOS is now connecting to Apple APIs via a program named mediaanalysisd (Media Analysis Daemon - a background process for analyzing media files).....

https://sneak.berlin/20230115/macos-scans-your-local-files-now/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LfCJGSUcfk

[Ixel]

I wonder if Google (Android) does something similar without the user's consent or knowledge. Wouldn't surprise me if they do though. Big tech companies...

[Alex Atkin UK]

I did read further on other comments and it seems likely this is for local image recognition for search, it identifies people, animals and text.  Still shouldn't be doing it when that feature has been turned off though and it does beg the question, how will they use it next?

As one of the comments I saw mentioned, CSAM scanning sounds good on paper, but it has huge risks given its only a form of hashing, especially as its meant to be quite broad to pick up on modified images too.  They pointed out it will become the new form of swatting where someone is tricked into downloading a file manipulated to match iffy content and get their account flagged.

It doesn't matter if you're found innocent, the process of being accused to begin with can ruin your life.

[Chrysalis]

Android does scan media files by default and used to tell you when it does it, now it doesnt tell you, I am not sure if can be disabled and/or if the operator is informed at any point.  The scanning is supposed to be a means to index the media for media apps.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Doesn't surprise me, I always assume my phone isn't secure from that perspective.  Smartphones are designed to do everything for you and would rather you didn't meddle with the filesystem at all.  Whereas I'm old fashioned and would rather group my files into folders and not use indexing at all.  I'm investigating installing NextCloud also.  I currently use PhotoSync to backup my phones camera to a SAMBA share when I put it on charge.

Its Apple moving this to MacOS that bothers me.  Not a surprise given dabbling in MacOS for the first time in a decade or so it quickly became apparent its designed to force you into doing things their way, filing things their way, rather than gracefully handling how a user wants to store their files.  Accessing a network drive from MacOS is downright painful as its designed around the concept that the server will index everything and pass on that meta data.  I have no desire to do that (its a waste of CPU power and storage when I don't need it), nor does SAMBA seem to properly support it, so dealing with files on a network drive is like trying to access a modern NAS using 80s technology.  It chokes if you have hundreds of files in a folder, never mind thousands.

I was using MacOS with Topaz Gigapixel, but it got the point where I realised I would be spending minutes trying to find the file I wanted to upscale, vs Windows where it would take seconds.  I'd much rather use Linux but Gigapixel is broken in WINE.

I'm thinking I will keep using my Macbook for now for basic web browsing and content consumption, with the aim to move to AsahiLinux once they get all the GPU and internal speakers working.  My Mac Mini M1 is already permanently running Asahi.

[Chunkers]

I noticed that if I search my photos on either my iPhone or my Android phone and type "dog" or "tree" etc then it finds all the relevant pictures, likewise if I type a word and it is present in any documents I have photographed or scanned then they come up - I doubt this is being done on my phone so guess they are processing and scanning all my pictures somewhere

Scary really

C

[Alex Atkin UK]

It supposed IS done on the phone with iPhone, but still extracting text from potentially sensitive documents is not something to take lightly.  If any of the results do get sent to Google/Apple, then they potentially have data you wouldn't normally share with them.

Glad I have a scanner, I only use the phone when scanning boxes where you can't lug them onto the scanner.