As 2024 comes to an end, it seems we have saved the best for last when it comes to data privacy and security warnings. A hidden information store that you don’t want getting into the wrong hands—and you probably don’t even know it’s there. Yes, there are serious threats out there, with users even being urged to adopt “extreme measures” to stay safe. But the stupidly simply can still catch you out.
So, what is this data trove that’s so sensitive it triggered one iPhone user to warn others “I’d rather he went through my internet history,” after her boyfriend accessed it with a simple tap? Bizarrely, this isn’t location tracking or hidden photos—it’s the little-used history in iPhone’s calculator app.
“Didn’t know this was a thing,” commented one TikTok user under a video that has now garnered more than 600,000 views and which was posted with the caption “3+8??????” Other sums that were hidden in that data trove, at least per comments under the video, include “3+3” and “1×10—it was a difficult day,” and “as a math major, having 100×2 in my calculator is just embarrassing.”
True or not, there’s a serious point here.
Our phones now store a quite extraordinary volume and variety of our personal data. In fact, it’s hard to think of personal data that’s not somewhere on our devices—devices that are easily stolen, picked up by partners and kids and colleagues, and which are under constant attack from phishing, smishing and other devious schemes to steal our data en route to other more material gains.
There was a more serious iPhone privacy story this week—a new Apple Intelligence feature that shares hashed and anonymized user photo detail to match with landmarks. The blogpost that triggered media reports warned that “this morning while perusing the settings of a bunch of apps on my iPhone, I discovered a new setting for Photos that was enabled by default: Enhanced Visual Search.”
Apple explains that “Enhanced Visual Search in Photos allows you to search for photos using landmarks or points of interest. Your device privately matches places in your photos to a global index Apple maintains on our servers. We apply homomorphic encryption and differential privacy, and use an OHTTP relay that hides IP address. This prevents Apple from learning about the information in your photos.”
This is complex—as Jeff Johnson, the original blogger, commented, “I don’t understand most of the technical details of Apple’s blog post. I have no way to personally evaluate the soundness of Apple’s implementation of Enhanced Visual Search.” But simply put the photo itself is not shared but analyzed on-device to segment a portion of interest, this is encrypted and masked before being matched centrally and then returned. If it works as billed, there is no privacy risk for users in keeping with Apple’s focus on privacy cloud computing. But optically, all that is a leap of faith for most users.
“From my own perspective,” Johnson commented, “computing privacy is simple: if something happens entirely on my computer, then it’s private, whereas if my computer sends data to the manufacturer of the computer, then it’s not private, or at least not entirely private. Thus, the only way to guarantee computing privacy is to not send data off the device.”
Apple explains that “you can turn off Enhanced Visual Search at any time on your iOS or iPadOS device by going to Settings > Apps > Photos. On Mac, open Photos and go to Settings > General.” As for your potentially even more sensitive calculator history, that’s easier to banish. Tap the menu hamburger on the top left of the calculator app and then ‘clear – clear history.’
