{"id":32926,"date":"2021-06-23T16:14:29","date_gmt":"2021-06-23T20:14:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=32926"},"modified":"2021-06-23T16:42:05","modified_gmt":"2021-06-23T20:42:05","slug":"privacy-implications-of-live-photos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/23\/privacy-implications-of-live-photos\/","title":{"rendered":"Privacy Implications of Live Photos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Hurst<\/a>:<\/p>\n

When you tap the circle on the bottom of the screen to take the photo, and you hear the artificial “click-shh” shutter sound, Apple stores a three-second video: 1.5 seconds of video before<\/em> you tapped the button, and 1.5 seconds after<\/em> you tapped it. That’s video and<\/em> audio.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

Millions of people around the world are taking videos when they think they’re taking photos. And millions more, posing for the camera, assume they’ll appear in a photo, but they’re actually in a video, including sound, before and after the shutter goes off.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At least you can now use Settings ‣ Camera ‣ Preserve Settings ‣ Live Photo so that it remembers to stay off, but:<\/p>\n

Apple’s world-famous UI design team wants to make sure you understand: if you want Live Photos permanently turned OFF, you must have Live Photo set to ON.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He cynically connects this to revenue:<\/p>\n

Activating (and automatically re-activating) Live Photos ensures that Apple devices will use the most possible data: videos, after all, take up a lot more space than photos.<\/p>

And even if someone has turned off iCloud hosting, the extra use of data ensures that Apple will be able to issue that glorious warning message as soon as possible: “Your iPhone is running out of space.” By which Apple means: buy an even bigger overpriced device.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

This could also be explained by Apple wanting users to be able to take advantage of a new feature that they may not be aware of. There is certainly some logic to recording the most data possible since otherwise the opportunity will be gone forever, whereas it can always be pruned later. As far as I know, though, Apple does not provide a way for you to see how much extra space is being used by Live Photos, nor a way to remove the video and audio data<\/a> in bulk.<\/p>\n\n

And there are also privacy implications because Live Photos defaults to on, most users don’t know how to turn it off, and all of this unexpected audio is stored, not end-to-end encrypted, on Apple’s iCloud servers (in iCloud Photo Library or iCloud Backup).<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Hurst: When you tap the circle on the bottom of the screen to take the photo, and you hear the artificial “click-shh” shutter sound, Apple stores a three-second video: 1.5 seconds of video before you tapped the button, and 1.5 seconds after you tapped it. That’s video and audio.[…]Millions of people around the world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2021-06-23T20:14:33Z","apple_news_api_id":"4192c98a-e747-4c78-b4d8-5554430b33cb","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2021-06-23T20:42:09Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AQZLJiudHTHi02FVUQwszyw","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[95,146,152,16,1142,31,1837,1281,355],"class_list":["post-32926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-audio","tag-backup","tag-camera","tag-icloud","tag-icloud-photo-library","tag-ios","tag-ios-14","tag-live-photos","tag-privacy"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32926"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32936,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32926\/revisions\/32936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}