Apparently Apple can end-to-end encrypt your iCloud, but it’s opt in because they still want to profit off your data >_<
To enable this, go to Settings -> iCloud -> Advanced Data Protection
You need to have all the devices under your apple account to be fully updated, and you’ll need to remember a 28-key passphrase for recovery
I hate how big tech treats privacy as an afterthought. This should have been the default. But oh well. Spread the world people.
If they’d make this the default a lot of leas tech-savvy people would regularly lose their data because regular account recovery mechanisms don’t work with E2EE enabled. The vast majority of people don’t even use password managers and yes, people forget their passwords and yes, the same thing happens with a 28-digit recovery phrase. No, many won’t remember where they put it when they wrote it down. Many won’t even understand what this phrase means, even when the setup process directly explains it to them.
But we can obviously also be all negative about why this isn’t enabled by default and make assumptions.
There is also the possibility that some governments would crack down on encryption much more than they already do if E2EE was on by default.
That seems like it’s their problem. Should have written that recovery phrase in multiple places. E2EE should be opt out for the normies who can’t remember their passwords let alone write down their recovery phrases in multiple places. Like, I bet my ass most of the people don’t even have a complex master password. It’s some band name with their date of birth appended at the end which barely reaches 16 characters probably with the lowest entropy possible for a 16 character password.
It’s a bit fascist to force people to do what you think is right, no?
It’s for the good of everyone. Is data privacy a bad thing?
Educate users and let them choose.
Data privacy is a good thing, but user awareness is far more important. People are always the weakest link when it comes to privacy & security.
I’m glad more and more people are getting educated with all the resources that we have today and I like how Apple makes it easy to turn it on when users are educated enough. But they do need to be mindful of what they’re storing, the consequences (if they forgot they password), and what does E2EE protect them from.