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Yes. 100%. End to end encrypted means the decryption key is at the other end. Where Apple is.
If it were ACTUALLY secure you would have BOTH the encryption AND decryption keys and Apple would only have a useless, unreadable, encrypted binary blob.
They literally give you the keys. See Advanced Data Protection
So, it does say that not even Apple can read your data, but it also says it's protected by "end to end encryption", which if Apple can't read your data, is absolutely nonsense usage of the term.
"End to end encryption" means encrypting the data at one end, and decrypting it at the other end. That's literally the NAME. If they're not doing that, the term is completely nonsense to use. They might as well say they have fat-free encryption. What they're really doing is storing an encrypted file that you hold both keys for. And IF that's what they're doing, that's actually fantastic - far better than end-to-end encryption because only you can decrypt it. But they're not inspiring confidence by COMPLETELY misusing a term that has nothing to do with what they're doing.
The other point is, if those keys... if you have to manually copy those keys over between all of your devices? Great. You're actually protected. If, however, you just connect to your Apple account and now you can get your files out of iCloud? That means that Apple DOES have your decryption keys SOMEWHERE, because otherwise they couldn't send them to your other devices, which means, sorry, whatever they're promising, they DO have the ability to look at your files if they're motivated enough.
End to end means the ends you use it at, ot the server you’re imagining it ending up on.
In this case the “ends” are your devices.
It has to be decrypted for you to use it stupid... Ffs they literally call it out in the line "No one else can access your end-to-end encrypted data, not even Apple, and this data remains secure even in the case of a data breach in the cloud.". To apple end to end encryption is keeping the data entirely encrypted up until it hits your device where you use it... I could go on about how you misunderstand the tech but you're better off just actually looking into how they implement it because they account for your concerns.
The fact that there are multiple seprate recovery options to regain access to your account and with it access to those encrypted backups is all the clue you need to know those keys are not stored only on your device.
Apple has access to those keys - whether they want to directly admit it or not.
"With Advanced Data Protection turned on, Apple doesn't have the encryption keys needed to help you recover your end-to-end encrypted data." it's literally on the page. If they have them, prove it, and launch yourself the most profitable lawsuit against apple possible. Otherwise you're just bring a grumpy fool.
Two things here. I'm not saying these are necessarily true, but they can be true.
-Apple could be lying.
-Apple could change their corporate policy on providing backdoor access for governments.
In the end, you are trusting a profit-seeking corporation to protect your data and conduct themselves in an ethical and honest way. They also had their phones built in factories where people threw themselves from the rooftop to escape the inhumane conditions. Just saying...
That could be true of literally any encryption you did not develop yourself and any os or hardware in the same lieu. Apple's implementation is legally binding and third-party verified. That's as good as you're gonna get with any operating system you don't entirely vet yourself, and no a third party linux distribution is not a os you manage yourself as governments local to the distrubuting party/management organization can require backdoors in even those.
In the end you are trusting other humans using their tools to do things you hope you understand but generally fully do not, so you must engage in a modicum of trust. This is just the great abstraction problem in any compute environment. Generally we base this on past or prior actions in combination with behaviors we can monitor or prove. Or should we talk about how pretty much every modern encryption scheme was minted by the NSA?... Just saying... Right that doesn't mean anything and I say that knowing I've got the loaded bullet of apple being the only corporate entity I'm familiar with to risk a public war with the US government by hosting this page despite gag orders while also refusing to implement said backdoors. https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/
Here is what I think of Apple's decade old customer letter...
https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/10/23/apple-amongst-us-tech-giants-backing-trumps-white-house-ballroom-reno
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/03/tim-cook-apple-donate-1-million-trump-inauguration
Businesses "Standing up to Trump" was so 2016. 2025 was the year of "bend the knee, kiss the rings, work the shaft."
If you didn't see that as a masterclass in running with a bad situation you clearly aren't watching closely enough. I don't agree with the actions, but a 25k gold turd dumped on the orange turds desk saved them millions in additional illegal tarrifs leveraged against Chinese imports, and their business actions have no impact on the technological underpinnings. That's the whole point of what I said, that it doesn't fucking matter who made it or what they're doing at the end of the day because you're trusting underlying encryption technology developed by the NSA (or did you forget Edward Snowden leaked they were spying on everyone?). Like /r/whoosh..
Trump is a huge idiot, but he's an even bigger gifter and conman. You think he let Apple off the hook for a little statue? Do you think the CEO of Apple flew out there just to give it to him personally to really show his appreciation? Trump doesn't do anything without some quid pro quo, and there is no way he let Apple off the leash for such a paltry tithe.
Tim went there to let Trump know he would play ball.
You're not wrong that they did a lot more than that. 1Mil for the ballroom, etc, etc. But given the illegal actions taken by the government there were no other options, and paying financial tithes does not compromise apple's core mission which is valid critique you can leverage against them. I'm no apple stan. They're not my savior, or even a "good" company imo... But you gotta pick your battles man and just making shit up ain't gonna get you anywhere in any debate, unless apparently you're the toddler n chief of the united states.
Did Tim not go there personally? Did he not bend the knee? Would you consider the small trophy an insufficient bribe for the amount of financial relief Apple got from the most successful conman grifter in history? It's logical to assume there is a gap in what we saw, and what actually happened.
None of that is in the least relevant to the conversation at hand. I literally don't understand what you're going on about at this point, I've already said that yes they capitualated, but they have a track record of not capitulating when it comes to encryption and they're under the same societial stipulations all encryption providers are, and modern encryption is pretty much exclusively provided by algorithms designed and detailed by the US NSA (vetted by competing governments). None of Apples business dealings have anything to do with the simple fact that their implementation is robust as and leaves you to as much risk as any operating system and hardware you did not design or fully vet yourself, which I can actually assure you based on the sheer volume of silicon and lines of code involved, you did not do.
Please, in your words, state what the conversation at hand is.
Edit : the silence is deafening.
In the end, your device will never be truly open source hardware + software, whether its Apple or not, so you will have to trust someone at some point if you'd like to continue using electronic devices.
True, but you can use open source software that is vetted by multiple independent 3rd party non-profit organizations that have only their own reputation to uphold, and who's findings are verified by thousands of independent reaearchers.
Perhaps, in the end, storing your data on media you don't actually control shouldn't be considered as locked in a safe, but instead stored in a museum with a high price of admission.
If only we had open source hardware to run that open source software on, then it could actually be trusted. Until you control the hardware, you shouldnt consider it safe.
If only there were multiple independent 3rd party non-profit organizations that have only their own reputation to uphold, and who’s findings are verified by thousands of independent reaearchers, to review hardware and check for backdoors.
Hey, if those multiple independent 3rd party non-profit orgs can do those audits for Apple, they can also do them for random hardware!
You seem to have lost your train of thought, despite it being a single caboose.
Oh, on me, I thought we were talking about closed source hardware. Im sure when you said this, this wasnt meant exclusively towards Apple.
Indeed, that is correct.
They literally say to store your Recovery keys in a safe place or you could get locked out of your account.
Set up a recovery key for your Apple Account
They do not.
There are no ways to recover your account if you have ADP on. Stop making stuff up. You need to have your key written down and stored somewhere safe, otherwise you are SOL and locked out forever.
It's literally in the link in the comment this was replying to:
How would a 'trusted contact' recover keys that are supposedly only stored on your devices, when you yourself have lost those devices; unless Apple has stored those keys elsewhere.
There's also no telling what they've done with your 'recovery key'. Just because they refuse to help you, doesn't mean they have no access; they just won't share that access with you, as it would blatantly expose their illusion.
There's no way in hell I'm trusting a massive US corporation with securing my data without backdoor access. You have no way of managing encryption/recovery keys on an Apple device or seeing where/how they've been stored; you've just got to trust they handle it well for you.
I do not trust Apple; or any large profit driven corporation, particularly one that sucks up to the American government (especially THIS American Government). Not in todays age of dystopian surveillance.
The same way E2EE works for anything else? You trust them as a device that can decrypt your keys using their own keys generated on their device. You need to do this at the time you turn on ADP. You cannot do it later.
The key is randomly generated on your device locally and displayed to you exactly once. If you don't write it down and store it somewhere else, you can never access it again. So, unless you have some actual data to show that the key is being transmitted anywhere, you're just speculating without any evidence.
You don't have to believe any of it. I don't particularly care. But it's wild to come out as confidently as you are when you don't even know the basics about it.
Ding ding ding!!!!
The test of E2E encryption is "who manages the keys?" If the answer isn't me, it isn't E2E encrypted.
The user manages the keys per https://lemmy.world/comment/25340338
I think they're trying to say that while apple encrypts in transit (upload + download is sftp or some other secure transfer method that can't be eavesdropped on), they don't encrypt at rest, meaning the data is written in decrypted format to disk. Which is a data security no-no for mine and most enterprises out there. They're alleging that if someone got into an apple server, they'd be able to read your data and anyone elses.
~~Now that might not be true but I don't see apple saying otherwise anywhere obvious.~~ It's not true. I'm pretty sure Google do this though. They retain a level of access to train their ai models and other deep learning algorithms on what you write in docs or the photos you upload.
Thats not how it works at all. The traffic is encrypted locally on the device before it even gets sent to Apple.
I'm assuming someone is tired here, and it could well be me, but isn't that quite literally what I said? People were saying E2EE doesn't mean the data is secure when it gets there, I was trying to separate the discussion into at rest (secure storage) vs in transit (E2EE) because they're different applications of encryption. I wasn't really intending to argue about Apple's practice's.
From reading, it is encrypted at rest, which sounds like an Apple thing to do. Decrypted at rest feels very Google. Apple state on their standard plan they store the keys in their data centres which I think is what others were talking about? They say they can help recover them so they're accessible in some capacity between the user and Apple.
On their advanced plan details: