In my opinion the UK government has betrayed its citizens, not Apple. Had Apple not disabled ADP for UK users they would have been required to disable ADP for everyone. At least now the rest of us have this protection.
It may be that if the UK government presses this issue then Apple may need to leave the UK market altogether so they are not subject to this regulation.
No need for sarcasm, I was simply responding to the question:
and pointing out that the UK being in the EU or not has nothing to do with the Government being bound by rulings (or ‘thinking’ they’re bound by rulings) from the ECtHR. I’m not going to get into politics but will say that in general, the UK Government does respect court decisions (including international courts), even under previous more populist governments that would have preferred to ignore them.
None of this is to defend the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016 and the whole secret court system that underpins it.
Yeah, sorry, @glennf, I was condensing threads, which made the first few posts seem odd.
How does that affect US citizens with ADP activated when they travel in the UK? Will their data be open to the UK?
Here is a link to an article on Reddit that links to alternatives that allow users to set their own encryption, independent of Apple’s (or anyone else’s):
https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1iw150d/how_to_control_your_endtoend_encryption/
It refers to Cryptomator and Joplin.
Let’s see if UK owners of iPhones take on their government.
If I understood correctly ADP also prevents you from accessing your iCloud data using a web browser? Or did I misunderstand?
yep, just install cryptomator and your data is opaque once more (with the exception of your photos).
It is amazing how non-authoritarian governments are eager to install those tools that will be used and abused by later authoritarian governments.
Just take a look at how fast non-elected data pillaging gangs infiltrated the US government’s data systems…
That’s an option. I have web access turned off, but you can turn it on and off from one of your devices (Mac, iPhone, or iPad) as needed.
If there’s any betrayal of UK users going on here, it’s the UK government, not Apple. They’re the one making unreasonable demands to lower the security of their users, and making it possible for hackers to crack into Apple users accounts even if they are NOT based in the UK.
Fixing this requires voters in the UK to “throw the bastards out” and get a government that respects their citizens privacy.
I fail to see how a “back door” to encryption will be able to catch anyone other than the “less sophisticated” criminals or terrorists.
Opsec is -hard- even for security experts.
Government targets are often normal people. Have a health issue or are helping someone with a health issue? That’s now illegal in much of the US. Reading the wrong books? Illegal in too many parts of the word. Repression is fast becoming the norm even in the western countries. There’s a lot I don’t like about Apple, but they seem to be the only large company that not only understands the problem, but is willing to take a lot of flak and keep trying.
I was wondering how that worked, so I looked into Apple’s documentation:
Web access and Advanced Data Protection for iCloud
If you turn on Advanced Data Protection for iCloud, web access to your data at iCloud.com will be turned off automatically to ensure your data is only available on your trusted devices. If you’d like to access your data on iCloud.com, you will first need to turn on web access. Then whenever you want to access your iCloud data, you’ll use one of your trusted devices to approve temporary access.
To access your iCloud data on the web:
After you’ve approved access from your trusted device, you can access your data at iCloud.com. For the next hour, your device will provide approval each time you access a new category of data – such as photos, notes or files. When your device provides access to a new category, you’ll receive a notification.
After an hour, you’ll need to approve from your trusted device again to access a new category of data. After you’ve accessed a category of data, you can access it until you sign out of iCloud.com or close the browsing session.
Source: Manage web access to your iCloud data – Apple Support (UK)
I think that means you need at least one trusted Apple device to unlock your iCloud data via a browser. So turning on ADP brings additional security at the risk of losing access to your data if you lose the last (or only) trusted Apple device you own (or it breaks down) if I understand correctly?
You’ve done a good job (as usual) highlighting the issues and ambiguities around Apple’s disabling ADP in the UK. As a UK iPhone user I must confess that I have deliberately not enabled ADP in the first place on account of the significant drawback you mention at the end of your article. I can imagine that there many people for whom the trade-off between convenience and security might naturally fall on the side of convenience when it comes to ADP. Should everyone rush out and enable ADP right away? Maybe not.
What would be useful is an article on moving country for an AppleId. The only info I found is Change your Apple Account country or region - Apple Support however it lacks details. It seems one needs to cancel all subscriptions (and make a note of them to pay for them again when the country has been changed), installed apps are likely to keep working but may not be reinstalled if one moves to a new device. What happens to iCloud is very unclear, does the cancelling subscription means losing all that one has in their iCloud during the transition as it’s more of an end and a new than a transition? Also as it seems one has to remove family to be able to change country it likely affects family members too.
I’ve lived in the UK, my account is set there and I have ADP enabled. I moved more than a year ago but haven’t changed the country due to all these complications and uncertainties. The situation re ADP is pushing me to consider going through it, but I haven’t been able to find good accounts of anyone having gone through it nor articles about it.
And specifically about ADP i also wonder if one has to cancel it before one can change country which would be another security concern.
You will need to wait all the subscriptions ended and have a foreign debit or credit card. After switching the region, you may not download any apps which are not available in the region you choose (some apps are even UK only).
When you say one has to wait for the subscriptions to end, I guess you mean not to lose money as otherwise it means that when Apple eventually requires ‘UK’ users with ADP to switch it off, those who can change country wouldn’t be able to do so before all their subsriptions eventually lapse. Very much not looking eventually going through this process.
Definitely why I said consider instead of go go go now now now. Sometimes, I do encourage the latter for things like OS updates with security components!
I have a whole section in my Take Control of Your Apple Account book about this because of Apple’s weak documentation.
Yes. As I note in passing at the end of the article, the big tradeoff is that you could lose access to your Apple Account forever if you lose access to 100% of your trusted devices and have no backups elsewhere of things like iCloud Photos. (I always recommend having one Mac that has full downloads enabled and offsite backups to prevent that particular scenario.)
You can enable Recovery Key and Recovery Contacts as additional ways to recover lost access. But failing those, any data not downloaded in some way to a device or backup you return and your Apple Account, its ID, associated purchases, and locked-away data is lost forever.