[Dismas]

WhatsApp has opposed Apple's latest measures, which will include scanning your photos for possible child abuse. This means Apple will scan your phone for images matching their algorithm, which is prone to error/false positives. If you're still thinking about buying an iPhone, you might want to give Android a try.

An Apple effort to use iPhones to detect child sexual abuse imagery risks paving the way for widescale surveillance, according to rival WhatsApp.

“I think this is the wrong approach and a setback for people's privacy all over the world,” Will Cathcart, the head of the Facebook-owned WhatsApp, tweeted on Friday.

For years now, companies including Facebook have been using algorithms to scan, detect, and remove child porn from social media, video sites, and cloud storage platforms. However, Apple said this week that it would use “on-device” processing on the iPhone itself to detect and flag child sexual abuse material (CSAM) as the files are uploaded to an iCloud account.

The on-device processing prompted Cathcart to speak out against Apple’s upcoming system, which arrives in iOS 15.

Read More: https://www.pcmag.com/news/whatsapp-scan...ivacy-risk

[mothered]

This means Apple will scan your phone for images matching their algorithm

No thanks.

Who knows what other data they'll retrieve from your phone.

[Accident Man]

This is a clear privacy violation.

[Dismas]

Some more on this:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/if...our-iphone

[Boudica]

It's great they want to curb child abuse. Very noble... but that would be like asking cops to search your house every day. There's a limit. Scan social media - no problem. That's something that is voluntarily released to the internet.

One could argue "Oh I have no child abuse to hide, so why does that bother me?". Well, what happens when someone with not so good intentions gains access to that functionality? What if it was used for other purposes down the line? The tech would already exist, so it would be very easy to implement.

[Geofront]

well, that means they only need more and more data from us

[elwoodb]

hmm good on them, well not the false flags but still

[imgr8ness]

This is a clear privacy violation.

Most people who use iPhones actually have a cloud account and have their photos stored there. So, that being the case, Apple has already been scanning peoples photos this whole time, its nothing new.

What is new though, is they want to move the scanning to your phone. Why and what does this mean?

Well scanning photos is computationally expensive and every day, more and more photos are added to Apples servers which means they have to spend increasingly more money on hardware to cope.

This change is simply because they know it will save them money by offloading the computations to your phone instead of doing the scanning on their servers.

So, scanning your photos for child porn is not new, the method of scanning is changing.

Is it a privacy issue? You could say it is, but its not a new issue. Put it this way, if you have an iphone, then privacy isn't really a priority for you.

[imgr8ness]

If you're still thinking about buying an iPhone, you might want to give Android a try.

Have to strongly disagree with that suggestion. As bad as Apple is for privacy, Android is even worse.

Here is a good quote from an article written by Nord VPN internet security expert Daniel Markuson:

"The number of Android devices Google has to serve makes it virtually impossible to keep all of them updated to the same level of security and for the same amount of time and frequency. It also makes it harder to roll those updates out, as they have to be distributed across multiple manufacturers and devices"

In addition, there are more devices in the world with Android OS than iOS, this makes it an even more attractive target for malware.

So in short, I wouldn't recommend Android or iOS at all if privacy/security is a concern for you.

If you are particularly concerned with privacy/security and have an Android phone, then try installing GrapheneOS (Android based, open source and developed with privacy/security as priority) or if you are prepared to purchase a new handset then perhaps a LinuxOS based mobile if you're a bit more technically minded (such as Librem or Fairphone).

[Dismas]

If you're still thinking about buying an iPhone, you might want to give Android a try.

Have to strongly disagree with that suggestion. As bad as Apple is for privacy, Android is even worse.

Here is a good quote from an article written by Nord VPN internet security expert Daniel Markuson:

"The number of Android devices Google has to serve makes it virtually impossible to keep all of them updated to the same level of security and for the same amount of time and frequency. It also makes it harder to roll those updates out, as they have to be distributed across multiple manufacturers and devices"

In addition, there are more devices in the world with Android OS than iOS, this makes it an even more attractive target for malware.

So in short, I wouldn't recommend Android or iOS at all if privacy/security is a concern for you.

If you are particularly concerned with privacy/security and have an Android phone, then try installing GrapheneOS (Android based, open source and developed with privacy/security as priority) or if you are prepared to purchase a new handset then perhaps a LinuxOS based mobile if you're a bit more technically minded (such as Librem or Fairphone).

Privacy being separate from security... iOS is both closed source and it will likely scan your images. Android is open source and it will not scan your images. I'd also argue the open source approach is better for security, as flaws can be audited by the public. Security through obscurity has never worked. If you can't observe a system's workings, you can't exactly make the claim it's secure.

There are over 20,000 variations of Android devices, whereas iPhones are pretty much homogenous. The frequency of updates is not determined by just Google, but also manufacturers/carriers. In the case of flavors (like GrapheneOS/LineageOS), the frequency of updates is limited to their development team.