Why would you self-host your photos even though services like iCloud Photos offer encryption? reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Secure_Pomegranate10 · 2023-12-11 09:17 I just don’t know which way to go, on one hand iCloud offers less hassle, less maintenance, and much more reliability. On the other hand I know there has to be a reason people go for self- hosting their photos even though services like iCloud offer e2e encryption. I’m overthinking this too much… ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Grand-Pudding6040 · 2023-12-11 09:30 "encryption", not your keys; not your data. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- krisoijn · 2023-12-11 09:30 Cuz iCloud free tier is only 5GB? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ImprovedJesus · 2023-12-11 09:35 Main reason right here. Though to be fair, you can get 50GB for like 1€ per month? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Secure_Pomegranate10 · 2023-12-11 09:39 Could you elaborate on this? Like what exactly could go wrong? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2023-12-11 09:41 [removed] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Secure_Pomegranate10 · 2023-12-11 09:42 This is exactly what I was thinking of, like the costs are much lower in comparison to the cost of getting a reliable server for self- hosting. (Both mentally and financially) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Vogete · 2023-12-11 09:44 If you only have encryption on the server side, then the cloud provider can always just use the key THEY store to decrypt the data THEY store. It is only true privacy if YOU store the key, they give you the encrypted data (that they know nothing about), and YOU decrypt it. This is why all password managers advertising "zero knowledge" and "end to end encryption", to show that even if they want to, they can't see your data. Google photos and similar don't do this. They only encrypt the data from data breaches, not from themselves. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2023-12-11 09:44 [removed] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- pandaeye0 · 2023-12-11 09:46 I am not sure about other clouds, but it appears iCloud's encryption is not open, so you have no way to know whether there is any backdoor behind. And everything boils down to whether you trust the company. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ImprovedJesus · 2023-12-11 09:47 That's the right mental model to look at it, imo. My main use for self hosted is learning and my media center, apart from that, I don't want to allocate the needed mental bandwidth to handle really important stuff. Folks around here are really into having full control of their own data, which is reasonable, but not doable for everyone. So you do you and readjust if needed. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Secure_Pomegranate10 · 2023-12-11 09:51 Just trying to get this right… why would a multi trillion dollar company sacrifice its reputation in order to get access to my photos? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Vogete · 2023-12-11 09:57 User experience. End to end encryption usually has downsides. I don't know exactly what Apple does (never had apple devices), but most companies don't do e2ee for either data mining or user experience, especially for larger files where it takes time to decrypt each photo of yours. You can scale up server side decryption, but your phone only has so much processing power. Not to mention you need to make sure keys are distributed amongst your devices, and what if you lose all your devices? Then did you lose all your icloud data? Or do you back up the encryption key on their servers (defeating e2ee)? It's not necessarily about getting access to your data. Sometimes it's just an infrastructure, cost, or UX decision. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ElevenNotes · 2023-12-11 09:57 Privacy. There is no such thing as E2E encryption in the cloud. Apple has access to the keys, and they have shown in the past that they used those keys to decrypt either the online backup or any other data. They also use your pictures you upload to train neural networks, and worst of all, if the AI does not recognize the picture, it is show to an actual human to classify it. This has led in the past to leaks where employees have sent embarrassing or funny pictures of cloud users to their friends for a quick laugh. Only to find these conversations leaked to the public as a big scandal for a few days till everybody forgot again. Pictures contain very often very private information (nude selfies, pictures of ID’s, PIN’s or other classified information, and above all: Pictures of your or other children in any kind of setting). If you care about the privacy of the people you take pictures of, you don’t use the cloud, if you don’t care about their and your own privacy, you use the cloud. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Grand-Pudding6040 · 2023-12-11 09:59 as you are trusting a platform, you are also trusting them with your key to secure any and all communication. at any point, they could decide to use the key that they possess and view your contents. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Secure_Pomegranate10 · 2023-12-11 09:59 But storing your keys somewhere is much easier than maintaining a server 24/7, isn’t it? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Grand-Pudding6040 · 2023-12-11 10:00 Why does any online service hold personal details and data? To sell it of course. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tehinterwebs56 · 2023-12-11 10:01 I have 4tb of photos and videos taken from phone, actual cameras, go pros etc. i increase my data on average by 500gb a year. I’m an apple user and iCloud 6tb is what I would have to get and it’s $44 a month in Australia and even then the experience will be shit as I can only host 100gb of my phone so I have to download anything older than what my phone is hosting already. I run immich as my self hosted image and video storage application on a $100 Lenovo tiny pc with my NAS as the storage location. All up my nas and the tiny pc cost me $800 ish and it’s a hobby where I host lots of other things that I could be paying for but don’t have too. When you self host, it makes no sense to just host one service, as it won’t save you much and comes with administration overhead. But if you host many things that are subscription based, it’s very cost effective these days. Just gotta buy equipment that isn’t power hungry and make it a hobby so it isn’t a burden. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Max-_-Power · 2023-12-11 10:04 All big platforms must cooperate with law enforcement. You can safely assume that every big platform that law enforcement does not complain about is cooperating with law enforcement in one way or the other. This includes automatic scanning of your data for child pornography and other stuff that's illegal in your jurisdiction. "Encryption" alone does not exclude this. How would it? If the cloud provider has the keys (it must have, otherwise it could not scan your data) for your encrypted data (at rest) it scans your files. End-to-End encryption only qualifies the security of your data during transport. If you want your data to be safe from prying eyes you need to self- host and keep the encryption keys exclusively in your hands. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- elizabeth-dev · 2023-12-11 10:05 for two combined reasons: - marketing or data science purposes (so basically, for money) - they wouldn't lose anything in regards to their reputation. most people have shown that they don't really care when tech companies do something wrong, apart from the initial outrage ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Simon-RedditAccount · 2023-12-11 10:05 * First, they are tied to your Apple/Google ID. If your account gets locked, all your photos are gone. For example, if a thief snatches your iPhone [after peeking your passcode](https://www.reddit.com/r/ios /comments/13vtehk/psa_tips_for_hardening_your_idevice_against_theft/), he may lock you out from your Apple ID. Google is even better, it sometimes blocks people's accounts with all their data *just because* ~~some algorithms detected something they don't like~~. **Self-hosting = you own the data. This is the main reason.** * Second, in many cases your data is not really E2E. Only if you turn Advanced Data Protection for iCloud, it becomes really E2E. With Google Photos, your photos are always available to Google. *To say nothing of a stories like 'oh sh\*t, we f\*\*\*d up, and your data is exposed due to a glitch'. Errors happen. Data gets stolen. Quantum may arrive sooner or later, rendering previously E2E-considered data prone to cracking due to vulnerable algorithms. ETC.* * Third, space. I can easily plug in a 2TB drive, and it will pay itself in a year (vs iCloud subscription). And many of us already have the drives. * Fourth, availability. In many regions, internet is not as readily available or the bandwidth is limited. Having your photos on-premises is way more convenient. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Vogete · 2023-12-11 10:09 Okay but where do you store it? I only have one iphone. Now I soak that iphone in the toilet and it broke. Now what? Do I lose all my icloud data? Or did apple store my key safely on their servers so I can get a new iphone and get my data back. Of course this key can be encrypted using my password or something, so it's more secure than what it sounds, but now we're back to needing a server anyway. So lots of companies just don't bother with this stuff, and handle encryption solely on their end, and not engineer a viable solution for e2ee. Again, I don't know exactly what Apple does, but I know it's not as easy to do e2ee for photos as it sounds. They might do it correctly. But since it's a black box, most people just prefer to not trust it. Also, I don't own iphones so it's not an option for me, and google photos definitely do data mining on my photos. Also, I have my server for lots of things anyway, so I can have photos on that because it's already running. So it's just better if I do it myself, rather than trust that a company is doing what I want. Of course nothing is without downsides, hence why icloud and google photos are so popular. They provide conscience for most people. But as we saw with the fappening and google related breaches, iCloud and Google photos are not completely safe either. Some people just want to take control of their photos, and self hosting is basically as good as it gets in terms of privacy (if done right of course) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AttinderDhillon · 2023-12-11 10:13 It is going to be a nightmare if you ever decide to move from apple to Android. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rorykoehler · 2023-12-11 10:15 iCloud lets you use your own keys ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rorykoehler · 2023-12-11 10:17 They started letting you manage your own keys https://support.apple.com/en-md/guide/iphone/iph584ea27f5/ios ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Secure_Pomegranate10 · 2023-12-11 10:17 > I only have one iphone. Now I soak that iphone in the toilet and it broke. Now what? This describes the exact reason why I (and so many others) are afraid of self-hosting, like what if the house goes on fire/someone breaks into your house/… You only have one server, if it crashes, you loose everything… Also no need to store the key on the phone, a piece of paper would do the trick. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PrestigiousDay9535 · 2023-12-11 10:21 Not sure for others but Google uses your photos (not mine anymore) to train their AI models. And they monitor your pictures as well, if you put something they detect as inappropriate they will share it with the authorities as well ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Vogete · 2023-12-11 10:24 That is a completely valid point, which is why the self hosting community is so little (next to reasons like the technical expertise required). And this is why cloud services have become popular, because "just get a new thing, and we got your data, don't worry about it". In self hosting you manage your own backups of everything. Which is risky, but you get to decide exactly what happens to it. You have full control over where and how your data resides. In the cloud, you just willingly accept that apple/google/microsoft/notsketchyphotos.com handles all that for you. It's not about which one's better, but whether you have control or not. I know my photos only leaves my home as an AES256 encrpyted data blob, using a key that's bigger than my student debt. There is almost zero chance that data will end up anywhere in a readable format, as long as I don't misplace my encryption keys. But if my server crashes, I know how to recover it. But you're right, it is a lot of risk to think about, and there is a reason why most people just go with icloud/google photos. Some of us are just not comfortable with that, or are willing to sacrifice convenience for full control. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Faith-in-Strangers · 2023-12-11 10:25 I do both. iCloud for convenience, my own backup for ownership and being able to change providers if needed ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Simon-RedditAccount · 2023-12-11 10:39 No. You still cannot **manage** the keys. ADP just wraps the keys with keys derived from passcodes of trusted devices (a factor that Apple does not possess). It's a big step in the right direction, yes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- crayiii · 2023-12-11 10:39 If you can search your online photos with a word like "dog" and it shows you your photos with a dog in it, that online service can scan and view all your images and their meta data. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- hannsr · 2023-12-11 10:44 >Noble cause (I have children myself) but a shitty way to do it. Reminds me of google swatting a family for sending Pictures of their kid to the doctor for remote diagnosis. Because it got tagged as child porn by some algorithm and nobody ever double-checked it. Iirc the account never got cleared and the family got nothing but an "oopsie" from google. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- feedpuff · 2023-12-11 10:48 Cheaper to self-host, local self-host or in cloud using hosting providers like Hetzner VPS + extra storage. All big tech co will use your data to build next-shit AI products (See Imagine with Meta). Their encryption is useless for you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ElevenNotes · 2023-12-11 10:48 If a cloud provider fucks up, you never get a compensation or an apology, just a simple “we are sorry”, and that’s it. From black people being tagged as Gorillas, do your incident, the list is long where the cloud providers have not thought through the brilliant product idea. Same as the child porn scanner on your local device. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Simon-RedditAccount · 2023-12-11 10:49 >Now what? Do I lose all my icloud data? Or did apple store my key safely on their servers so I can get a new iphone and get my data back. For ADP, the key is wrapped with a key derived from your passcode, if you have other devices on your account. Plus you can set up a Recovery key, that probably is used to wrap a disaster recovery key. [https://help.apple.com/pdf/security/en\_US/apple-platform-security- guide.pdf](https://help.apple.com/pdf/security/en_US/apple-platform- security-guide.pdf) \> Services Security > iCloud [https://appleinsider.com/inside/ios-16/tips/how-to-recover-apple-id- accounts-with-advanced-data-protection- on](https://appleinsider.com/inside/ios-16/tips/how-to-recover-apple- id-accounts-with-advanced-data-protection-on) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- hannsr · 2023-12-11 10:51 And if something goes wrong, good luck actually talking to someone for support. It's just an endless circle of "AI"/, Chatbots and FAQ. Apple is better in this regard, but still.. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Simon-RedditAccount · 2023-12-11 10:56 No. You still cannot **manage** the keys, or use **your own** (as, say, with PGP). ADP just wraps the keys with keys derived from passcodes of trusted devices (a factor that Apple does not possess). Just obtaining access to your Apple ID is not enough to beat ADP; you'll need a passcode/trusted device; or a Recovery key/Recovery contact. [https://help.apple.com/pdf/security/en\_US/apple-platform-security- guide.pdf](https://help.apple.com/pdf/security/en_US/apple-platform- security-guide.pdf) ADP is a big step in the right direction, yes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Vogete · 2023-12-11 10:58 Good point. There are definitely ways to do this, and this is one of them. I was just trying to come up with a scenario that companies need to think of. And that sometimes they just don't bother to engineer this solution. I never used apple icloud (never had apple devices), so I didn't know how they handle it. Thanks for sharing, I learned something today! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ElevenNotes · 2023-12-11 11:01 One of the many, many reasons I always tell everyone to stay away from the public cloud as far as they can, and if they have to use it, only use it in the most secure way possible. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rorykoehler · 2023-12-11 11:12 Thanks for the doco. It’s exactly what I need right now! From a privacy perspective it mitigates pretty well. From a data recovery perspective less so but for everything important I run redundant backups. For photos for example I zip them, pgp encrypt them and upload them to long term object storage. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AnApexBread · 2023-12-11 11:36 I self host photos as backup. If Google were to ever ban my account (which is something they can do at any moment and I have no recourse) then I'd lose everything. Almost 250,000 photos spanning back over 20 years, every photo of my kids since birth, and more precious memories then I can count. That's why I self host a copy of Immich. If Google bans me I still have all those photos backup in my NAS and then backed up in backblaze. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- l8s9 · 2023-12-11 11:43 Bottom line is I want to own every byte of my own data. That’s why I self host. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Sir_Squish · 2023-12-11 11:55 chadyes.jpg ---------------------------------------------------------------------- the-berik · 2023-12-11 11:57 https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/03/16/icloud-hacking- jennifer-lawrence-fappening-apple-nude-photo-leaks/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mrkesu · 2023-12-11 12:07 If they lose all your data they can just shrug and say "sucks for you, read the disclaimer" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 7WuCF77S95mfQFvfwk7F · 2023-12-11 12:10 > like what if the house goes on fire/someone breaks into your house/ Restore from offside backup. >You only have one server, if it crashes, you loose everything… Restore from onside backup. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Cybasura · 2023-12-11 12:11 Google drive recently lost afew months of user data btw ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Cybasura · 2023-12-11 12:12 I believe you have been receiving scam calls targeting you yes? Who do you think are getting your phone number and email addresses? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 7WuCF77S95mfQFvfwk7F · 2023-12-11 12:17 > This is exactly what I was thinking of, like the costs are much lower in comparison to the cost of getting a reliable server for self- hosting. (Both mentally and financially) Mentally yes. But for me it's my hobby and that is a stress relief. I like tinkering around and sometimes fuck up my stuff. Financially no. I have around 9 TB of data that i want to keep for the next few years. A hetzner storage server with 10 TB of storage is 25€ per month. Thats 250€ per year. For that money I can get two 10 TB disks per year and use the 50€ for energy. And this is just taking storage into account. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Drumdevil86 · 2023-12-11 12:27 I remember a story of someone saving their family photos in the cloud, which included pics of their kids. Some sort of safety mechanism inside said cloud activated, because it wrongfully marked a couple of pics with their kids as CP. Their account got locked, and photos were gone forever. Cloud provider claimed they couldn't get them back. Unfortunately, the family didn't have any local backups. I was already self-hosting, but this confirmed yet again that the data you upload to the cloud, stops being your data. It's contents get scanned, thus it can be opened and viewed by anyone that has access to the backend systems. And something like an overzealous algoritm can make it disappear in an instant. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Plane_Resolution7133 · 2023-12-11 12:33 I do both. I have an external SSD with my Photo library which is synced to iCloud. That drive is also backed up to a TrueNAS, which is synced to another cloud provider. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gramoun-kal · 2023-12-11 12:36 You are from Saudi Arabia. The king is offended by something you did one day. Maybe you scratched the paint of his favourite Lamborghini. The King trumps up some reason to put you on a most wanted list, and kindly asks the US government to kindly ask Apple to hand over your photo trove, so that the Saudi police can find embarrassing photos to use as an excuse to cut your head off. Apple has its "hands tied" and is "forced" to comply. You get chopped. There are other examples. Your argument that because Apple is rich, we should trust it isn't going to take you far here. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jonteponte71 · 2023-12-11 12:49 I would never put any photos or videos I consider private on a cloud service without me encrypting them with my own key. Othervise I (and the cloud provider) consider them availabe for feeding their always hungry data consuming beast for profit. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- WildestPotato · 2023-12-11 12:50 Read the whitepapers, understand encryption. You hold the keys now. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -__-_--__--_ · 2023-12-11 13:02 If you are completely ignorant about something and you want to learn more, it helps if you don't ask a pointedly sarcastic question. Helps people take you seriously, and not see you as someone utterly clueless and proud about it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- furballsupreme · 2023-12-11 13:10 Those services exist for a short period of your life and then your photos are gone. They don't give a fuck about quality and integrity of your photos either. Will compressing your photos save them storage space? Ok let's do it. They don't care. You lose your files due to a mistake? They don't care. Invest in your own solution. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jepal357 · 2023-12-11 13:24 Recently Google drive lost some people’s data and a copy of the terms and service (might be slightly older) said that they’re not obligated to keep your data or something like that. Basically taking away all liability of something goes wrong and you loose data. If Google can’t do it, I’ll do it myself ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Hybridtheory28 · 2023-12-11 13:32 You're still not in control of your own data. You're at the mercy of Apple. Cloud is just a fancy way of saying "someone else's computer". ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mintfresh22 · 2023-12-11 13:36 You are just a troll. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mintfresh22 · 2023-12-11 13:39 It isn't that fancy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- El_profesor_ · 2023-12-11 13:40 This is my reason. I don’t want to be locked into any company’s ecosystem ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Steev182 · 2023-12-11 13:56 How's Immich going? I really want to migrate to it too. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- KervyN · 2023-12-11 13:59 I am missing "because I can" in the answers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- atredd · 2023-12-11 14:00 Encryption is only useful if the key is under your control. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HTTP_404_NotFound · 2023-12-11 14:23 #1. If tomorrow, iCloud decides they want to charge you a fee to access your photos, there is nothing you can do about it. #2. At anytime, they could just shutdown the service, holding all of your photos hostage. #3. You don't own the key, they do. This means, they can look at your photos whenever they want. And- cloud providers have gotten caught doing exactly this. Lastly, why don't you go read through this post- https://static.xtremeownage.com/blog/2022/reasons-to-avoid-cloud- based-automation-products/ You might learn why some of us prefer to self host everything. There is no "safe" service. You have ZERO control over anything you put into the cloud, and it is all at the mercy of the provider to allow you continued access to it. Even that video you purchased on Sony/Voodoo/Google/etc.... isn't "yours". Sony is currently removing access to videos people have purchased. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krXH8jXefqE ---------------------------------------------------------------------- OhMyForm · 2023-12-11 14:40 100% this, I don't have ambitions to build an AI through my data contributions. People can do that with their own imaginary data not mine. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- OhMyForm · 2023-12-11 14:43 There has been an extensive growing laundry list of these companies overstepping. They could randomly classify something you have in your library as something illegal, and now you're in prison because of a misclassification. This is a real issue that has really happened. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Danoga_Poe · 2023-12-11 14:47 Cloud isn't immune to data loss either, either Google or Microsoft cloud just lost months worth of data for users recently. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Go_F1sh · 2023-12-11 14:58 imagine you buy a shed with a lock on it. the manufacturer won't give you the keys to the lock (and you have no way to replicate them for yourself) but they're happy to unlock it anytime you need access. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PaulEngineer-89 · 2023-12-11 15:02 iCloud and Google storage are way overpriced. Even B2 and similar aren’t that great. When Google ended free photo storage and sent me their quote it was so outrageous that I looked at Synology, Terramaster, etc. At current prices and the amount of photos, video, and so on I have now buying and maintaining my own storage paid for itself in 8.5 months. This doesn’t even touch on issues of privacy, security, and so on. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Eezyville · 2023-12-11 15:05 Don't forget the added perk of not having your files and photos being used as training material for their, or their partner's, AI algorithm. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- wsamh · 2023-12-11 15:10 They can spy on you and you don't own your data. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dazchad · 2023-12-11 15:53 For me the most important reason is availability. I've read too many spooky stories about google terminating your account for no reason. Apple seems to be better on this regard, but still. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- KN4MKB · 2023-12-11 16:20 You haven't been following the news lately. Just a few days ago we found out apple had been redirecting "encrypted" notifications to the federal government 3 letter organizations They said they were bullied into staying quiet. What's the difference between that and your photos? Also as someone else said, encryption doesn't really mean anything the company has they keys lol. That's the ad storing your only key on the lock. Sure it's "locked up" on paper, but that doesn't really mean anything does it? Then there's availability. At anytime after losing local photos, these companies can lock you out of your account for an assortment of reasons, or just delete it, and if you have ever actually read the terms of service, you know they can basically do it without reason, and there's nothing you can do to get your files back. To me, if you aren't concerned about privacy at all, that last point should be reason enough. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Eu-is-socialist · 2023-12-11 16:44 just trying to understand ... how old are you ? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Im1Random · 2023-12-11 16:47 Cause I can. And I don't trust anyone but myself to securely store my personal photos. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- katrinatransfem · 2023-12-11 17:13 Or, another example: Google reported what they considered an illegal image (a photo of a child's medical complaint sent to a doctor). Police decided it wasn't illegal and took no action, but Google terminated the account anyway. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vicks9880 · 2023-12-11 17:24 E2E means from your end to apple's end. At the destination its readable by apple. Otherwise they can't detect inappropriate content in your library. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dub_starr · 2023-12-11 17:27 not always about the encryption. third parties can change policy on a whim, and if you decide to leave them, it can be a PITA. i currently use thrid parties any my own self hosted solutioons for photos, as more backups are better, so if amazon deleted my photos, theyere still on my server and on google. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Valuable-Question706 · 2023-12-11 18:32 No, you're wrong - both terminologically and factually. E2E (as in ADP) means real E2E: [https://help.apple.com/pdf/security/en\_US/apple-platform-security- guide.pdf](https://help.apple.com/pdf/security/en_US/apple-platform- security-guide.pdf) (finally, after so many years). Even for now-abandoned CSAM scanning, they planned to do it on-device, before uploading to cloud: [https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSA M\_Detection\_Technical\_Summary.pdf](https://www.apple.com/child- safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Technical_Summary.pdf) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vicks9880 · 2023-12-11 18:35 Good for apple then ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bonedogfire · 2023-12-11 18:46 If your account gets locked (and that might happen easier than you think without doing anything shady), you'll lose all these ~~precious memories~~ your photos. Try getting a flagged account back, it's not easy, even if you did nothing wrong. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- washedFM · 2023-12-11 19:42 Right! So many formerly-free photo hosting sites are now paid sites or they go up on their prices or just go out of business. Self hosting is the way! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vijaykes · 2023-12-11 20:00 I didn't find a mention of the encryption algorithm that they use. Do you know if it is possible for them to know what's in a photo (say, it contains a dog and a cat playing together) without decrypting it? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Dash------ · 2023-12-11 20:14 Different take: I only use my server for backing them up from icloud - because you never know. iCloud is so practical at this point that using anything less as a default would be a torture. Syncs wonderfully across devices, backs up high resolution to the cloud (its insane how my actual photo library is a lot bigger than my phone capacity) and the winner is shared library. When you have a kid or a pet its just incredible where you have 1 button to choose if the photo is saved to your library or to a shared one. This also taking into account the location and proximity of the other device is for me probably most important feature that was introduced in the last 2 years. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- adamshand · 2023-12-11 20:56 They can't do that. That's why they were going to do CSAM scanning directly on people's devices. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- adamshand · 2023-12-11 21:01 True in general, but I don't believe it's true of Apple? I've never heard any stories of Apple decrypting photos for ML training or showing photos to humans. Do you have a source? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Valuable-Question706 · 2023-12-11 21:04 On iOS, all ML processing for photos is done on your device (in contrast to many other companies/solutions). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sjveivdn · 2023-12-11 21:13 E2E encryption😂 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nefarious_bumpps · 2023-12-12 02:19 Does Apple E2EE really mean Apple can't scan your files? Apple faced a lot of criticism over it's announcement that it would scan iCloud for CSAM, not because blocking and reporting CSAM wasn't morally or ethically a good thing, but because it revealed that Apple *could do so* in what it advertised was an E2EE environment. So E2EE doesn't necessarily mean the services uses zero-knowledge encryption. And if Apple can access the unencrypted data, a third-party contractor or an intruder also might be able to access, modify and/or exfiltrate the data. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vijaykes · 2023-12-12 02:34 So they store all the Metadata of all photos on device? For example, when I search for 'dog', ios gives me all photos with dog in them. That must mean the they must have either some way of searchable Metadata on their server or they must use space ony device proportional to the number of photos in my library. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- OhMyForm · 2023-12-12 04:41 I wanted to avoid getting specific, but stuff like this can't grasp context at all. Use DuckDuckGo and learn something about a beautiful little reason never to use Google products again called "Sensor Vault." You'll never want another "smart" "phone" again. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- botterway · 2023-12-12 07:25 Because I have 5tb of photos, and there's no way I'm uploading all of those to a cloud service and/or paying for it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Valuable-Question706 · 2023-12-13 09:08 Yes, on-device. **Both storing and processing**. Even if you don't upload photos to iCloud at all; or even don't connect your iPhone to the internet, all *new* photos will be also searchable. Frankly, there's nothing difficult with it, and it's the only way this should be implemented. There's literally zero need to upload your photos to the server, unless the company needs the photos themselves for whatever reasons. Metadata itself is extremely small, no more that a few kilobytes per photo. It's literally just a text file (well, with Apple it's more likely a `plist` or `sqlite3`) with all the objects found. And even the neural networks themselves are not that big that you cannot spare 100-200 MB on your device. Open-source YOLOv3 [https://pj reddie.com/darknet/yolo/](https://pjreddie.com/darknet/yolo/) is really tiny and doesn't require much processing power (ofc Apple uses something developed in-house, but you get the idea). There's literally no **technical** excuse why all phones (except maybe really cheap and entry-level ones) shouldn't do all processing on- device, instead of relying on the cloud. The same is true ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vicks9880 · 2023-12-17 09:45 Good catch, then how does searching on mobile also pulls result from icloud. They can do object detection on images stored (encrypted) on their server.. Or they are uploading metadata generated by AI processing on your iphone to the icloud for search capability. Nobody knows ---------------------------------------------------------------------- deepspacenine · 2023-12-19 06:05 Source? I don't see anything on Google. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- deepspacenine · 2023-12-19 06:07 If folks do decide to go the Apple route but want to enable ADP (E2E), I recommend using Photos app (if you have a Mac or Mac server) to DL a full "originals" copy of the photos. I'm actually debating setting up a .DMG on my NAS to put the photos folder in (tricks it to think it is local) so I can use that as a photos dump/back up. You can also use iMazing to DL cloud photos. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- KN4MKB · 2023-12-22 07:00 I just googled "Federal government reading Notifications" but here's the first result of many: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/06/push- notifications-surveillance-apple-google/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Moany_Englishman · 2023-12-24 14:35 How are you backing up your data from iCloud? I haven’t had a chance to look into this properly yet but it’s what I would like to do.