iPhone: iOS 18 sends your photos to Apple without notifying you

A recent discovery has raised concerns among iPhone owners, revealing a feature in the new Photos app in iOS 18 that has implications for privacy and potential breaches.

According to developer Jeff Johnson, the "Enhanced Visual Search" setting is enabled by default on iOS and macOS devices. This feature allows photo data to be sent to Apple to identify landmarks or search for images by a landmark's name. Unlike other Visual Look Up features, this particular feature requires data to be transferred to Apple's servers for processing, without asking users for explicit permission.

The setting can be found in the Photos menu in the device's settings. Its description explains that it allows Apple to "privately match places in your photos with a global index maintained by Apple". An on-device machine learning model is used to analyse photos and identify regions of interest (ROI). If a landmark is detected, a "vector embedding" – a compressed, encrypted representation – is created and sent to Apple for comparison with its database.

Although Apple maintains that vector embeddings are encrypted to protect privacy, it has not explained why the setting is enabled by default. Critics point out that features of this kind should only be enabled if users choose to opt in, as is the case with data analytics settings or Siri.

This revelation has raised questions about Apple's commitment to protecting privacy. Despite the company's reputation as a champion of privacy, its default settings heighten concerns about its transparency and ethics. So far, Apple has not commented on the issue, leaving users with doubts about its practices.