[2600-AU] Apple cannot be trusted - violation of Australian federal Data Protection/Electronic Crime Law

[Zenaan Harkness]

Thank you for taking the time to write this up, appreciated.

Also, to all Crapple users, "You get what you firetrucking deserve."

As one might say, "dance with the devil, suffer the devil".

Everyone who supports, promotes, or otherwise tacitly consents to,
proprietary walled gardens such as Apple, Google, Microsoft etc, are
contributing to the evident and abundant compromise of our basic
human rights.

The Purism Librem 5 phone is slowly rolling out, and is the only
phone (or computer of any mainstream sort) today, which is designed
from the ground up to separate the (proprietary, closed) baseband cpu
from the user's primary cpu and RAM etc.:

  https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

Create your world,



On Wed, Dec 04, 2019 at 11:03:02AM +1100, admin at reviews.wox.org wrote:
> Here is something you probably wont see in the news.
> 
> Considering it just happened to someone close to me who is now borderline
> suicidal as a result (pity lawyers are expensive..) thus as an emotive topic
> it may colour my opinions here.
> TLDR; Do not use any Apple device for anything important with respect to
> photos or videos. They care nothing for your data integrity and will not
> hesitate to delete  it to punish you.
> 
> Under certain conditions (typically if you remove and bank or credit card
> payment details from your apple account because common sense) if you use Apple
> products connected to their icloud service - Apple can and will randomly
> delete photos and videos from your device and cloud storage.   Considering
> this violates Australian law with regard to unauthorised
> insertion/deletion/modification of data, they probably shouldn't be doing
> this.
> 
> Here are the conditions that led to it in this case -
> 
> 1. Device running low on storage (~ 1000 family photos and
>    short videos going back years including the now deceased
>    - sounds like a lot but most videos were under 4 seconds
>    except 2 or 3)
> 2. Enabled icloud to move them to cloud.
> 3. Cloud advises you may need more storage, demands payment
>    details.
> 4. Payment details added
> 5. cloud sync throws an error and appears to fail.
> 6. end of month rolls around few weeks later, cloud still
>    not working but we discover Apple bills them anyway,
>    user rage ensues
> 7. User annoyed that cloud backup didn't work, and getting
>    charged for this crap removes payment details, and
>    cancels the unused additional storage
> 8. Cloud gives some unintelligible error and warning about
>    removing payment detail (give us payment details or else
>    basically)
> 9. end of next month rolls around
> 10. suddenly all the items that failed to be moved to cloud
>    (which incidentally were still in the device, and had
>    failed to sync leading to cancellation) start randomly
>    deleting themselves, as daughter of owner is watching in
>    horror, she was literally looking in an album she
>    created, and the photos started disappearing as she
>    watched. This was after a day with no wifi - so getting
>    back online triggered this.
> 11. Frantically checks recently deleted items folder, and
>    logs into icloud website to check as well.   No sign of
>    any of them anywhere, no explanation.  Just gone.
> 12. nothing in icloud but a handful of entirely random
>    images (~300) and videos (~60) maybe 2 gb tops.  Over
>    900 videos and 1000 photos vanish into thin air.  The
>    items kept or removed seem to have no pattern and
>    nothing in common, ranging from old to new stuff.
> 
> You can imagine the devastating effect this had on the morale of the ipad
> users.
> 
> 
> As a computer repairer I have also seen another scenario -
> If you are stupid enough to enable a pin security lock screen on your Apple
> device, but you don't use icloud at all, especially if your device was setup
> prior to icloud - and for whatever reason (accidental pocket button pressing,
> child playing with screen etc)  your pin is entered several times incorrectly
> you will be double screwed.
> 
> 1. The apple device will lock itself from having the pin
>    entered again (often for absurd timeouts like a year or
>    more, or forever) - this can apparently also cause the
>    device to "burn/delete its data"  under the assumption
>    the device has been stolen.   There is no way to recover
>    the data in this scenario even if the device has an old
>    enough IOS the memory hasn't been "burned" (in addition
>    not upgrading the IOS will also punish you in several
>    other ways I wont go into)  needless to say the data is
>    now gone.
> 2. As an additional F-U  if you don't remember the login
>    details of the original itunes account used when the
>    device was originally purchased (a very common scenario
>    where people only used it as an actual phone, and
>    sometimes a camera - like normal people would), OR if
>    the account is so old is has been disabled(frequently
>    happens if you didn't add payment details to itunes, and
>    had no internet or net was disabled for a year or more),
>    or none of the recovery info is current any more for
>    whatever reason (phone numbers change, and ISPs care
>    nothing for your old email addresses) - it will also not
>    be possible to ever use the device again either, it will
>    again revert to the assumption the device is stolen, and
>    demand you connect it to an "authorised" pc running
>    itunes, even if it has never been plugged into a PC.    
>    Even then if you attempt a last resort "DFU" mode
>    recovery it will fail, as you will be unable to progress
>    past the "log into original icloud/itunes account to
>    proceed"  screen once you factory restore it.     
>    Sometimes if you had a really old IOS it will let you
>    in, but any recent (~2 years) IOS will for all practical
>    purposes brick you at the login screen.
> 
> <begin ranty venting>
> Basically I feel only an idiot, terrorist, kiddie porn scumbag or an Apple
> fanboi who needs to hide their sick shit (at this point all the same thing
> IMO) should use an Apple device anymore.
> </end ranty venting>
> 
> 
> -- 
> New and improved 2600... well..
> ..we drew on some flames and
> polished it a bit..
> --
> Google - making sure, life is no more, than 1984...
> --
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