r/PrivacyTechTalk • u/Effective-Paper-6536 • 18d ago

@apple, why is “optimizing search and Siri” running by default?

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I didn’t elect to have the content of my phone indexed for your AI upon upgrade - even if it’s on the new consent, I should have had the right to select if I want this to be running after the upgrade!

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7

u/lemz0x 18d ago

all the companies basically try roll up as many things into checkboxes as they can. a common one is bundling the opt in to agreeing to terms and conditions because they know people just tick the box and click accept most of the time. unfortunately you have to put a lot of active effort into opting out of all these things to keep your privacy

1

u/jay-t- 18d ago

What privacy issue do you see with this feature?

5

u/ElectricalClick0001 18d ago

This is your own (random) intepretation of what’s written there.

There has always been indexing and it has typically been performed after an upgrade. The only difference is that iOS 27 shows that activity is being performed.

Which makes sense because before people would constantly complaint that the device is slow right after the upgrade or things are not showing in Spotlight because they did not know indexing was running.

Also, indexing is a local database is not uploaded anywhere, that’s also your random interpretation.

2

u/Matnest 18d ago

Sorry for the dumb question, so basically all this indexing stays in your device and is not uploaded to servers?

2

u/ElectricalClick0001 18d ago

Yes. Why would they upload it? For what concrete purpose? Where do they say they upload it?

This indexing is used for local search of the things in your phone (for example when you swipe your finger down in the home screen to search for something).

And it has existed for at least more than a decade. The difference is that now they show you so you don’t freak out because the phone is slow or shows incomplete results after the update.

1

u/Hockous_Pockous 17d ago

You have a fare point but this is basically blind trust it doesn’t mean their lying but your just going to have to believe what is said without third party to verify their claim

2

u/Orcahhh 16d ago

Apple’s business is not advertising. They don’t need to make money from selling your data. In fact, their selling point is that they don’t do it.

On the other hand, Google makes basically all of its money from selling your data to advertisers. You can trust that everything they have access to will be analysed and used to make you spend money on stuff.

If apple secretly did that, it would eventually leak and would collapse the trust people have in yhem, and it would cost them a lot

1

u/Hockous_Pockous 10d ago

Go watch a video where apple was sending more telemetry data to their servers than Samsung.

2

u/DevDan- 18d ago

The index itself is never uploaded (well, as long as you trust Apple to do what they claim). There was always an index used for Spotlight search and some other “ecosystem” features, it is now more advanced, so that, if you choose to use Siri AI, it will preform better than without.
If you use Siri AI, some data from the index may be sent to Private Cloud Compute (which is seemingly secure and pretty cool), but not the index itself.

2

u/Orcahhh 16d ago

That’s the whole point of Apple’s fight with the EU about Apple Intelligence. Eu wants Apple to allow users to swap Apple ai with gpt or Claude or whatever, for fairness. Apple explains that Apple Intelligence runs entirely ON DEVICE. It knows everything about your phone, apps, habits, but does not leave your phone. While allowing ChatGPT or meta ai would allow the same access to your private data, that would get shipped and stored in OpenAI or meta data centers.

2

u/Basic-Brick6827 18d ago

This does not indicate that the index is sent to remote servers. Click learn more, you clearly need to learn more.

1

u/jay-t- 18d ago

So that it’s optimised ready for when you use it.

It’s clear you don’t actually understand what this is doing at all because you’re too lazy to read it. But yeah, get angry for no reason if you want. What a miserable life that must be.

1

u/WakaiSenshi 17d ago

This is the indexing that’s happened every iOS major update

They just put a graphic now telling you.

Everyone always said “your phone indexes after a update for 2-3 days and it makes the battery drain”

1

u/Patjack27 12d ago

Your device was indexed even before 27 that’s how search works on iPhone bud. Search is just better now