Enhanced Visual Search in Photos App (iOS 18 & macOS 15)
The Enhanced Visual Search feature in iOS 18, activated by default, has been overlooked amidst the furore surrounding the app’s aesthetic redesign.
I explore settings in new software updates and during the developer beta period I noticed the EVS setting was enabled by default without a prompt for permission. Tech-savvy users will immediately understand the current description of how EVS matches places in your photos with a global index ‘maintained by Apple’ to mean externally on Apple servers, which can raise eyebrows on Apples stance about sensitive data leaving your device.
The Enhanced Visual Search improves Visual Lookup for Apple Intelligence. Given Apple’s current data sourcing practices for improving Apple Intelligence, it’s unsurprising to me this feature remains enabled by default for all users.
From my own perspective, 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.
Despite the ‘safeguards’ put in place applying ‘homomorphic encryption and differential privacy, and use an OHTTP relay that hides IP address’, siphoning this data by default without a permission prompt and a more prevalent disclosure upfront of sending this data to external servers is where privacy-conscious users will find issue.
No spam, no sharing to third party. Only you and me.
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