Amaya Toman Earlier this year, we informed you about how Apple checks photos on iCloud to prevent the spread of child pornography and other potentially objectionable material. Forbes magazine has now brought an interesting insight into the entire process of checking, detecting and reporting photos of this type. The check takes place not only on iCloud, but also in the environment of Apple's e-mail servers. During the entire process, great emphasis is placed on the privacy of users.
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David Hanak The first phase of detecting defective material is carried out automatically with the help of a system that is commonly used in a number of technology companies. Every photo that has been previously detected by the authorities is provided with some form of digital signature. The systems that Apple uses for detection can then automatically search for the given photos thanks to this "tag". Once a match is found, it prompts the company to contact the relevant authority.
But in addition to automatic detection, Apple also manually reviews content to confirm that it is indeed suspicious material and can provide authorities with information about the name, address and phone number associated with the relevant Apple ID. The important thing is that the material captured in this way never reaches the addressee. In this context, Forbes cites one of Apple's employees who tells about a case where eight e-mails were intercepted from one address. Seven of them contained 12 photographs. According to the statement of the mentioned employee, the given user tried repeatedly to send incriminating photos to himself. Due to the detention by Apple, the images did not arrive at his address, so the person in question sent them several times.
So apparently, users don't have to worry that Apple will withhold a photo of their kid on the beach that they want to show off to grandma. The system will only capture images that are already marked with the mentioned "digital signature". The risk of misdetecting a completely innocent photo is therefore very low. If a harmless photo is detected, it will be discarded as part of the manual review phase. You can find the full text of the article, which describes the process of capturing the photo and the subsequent investigation here.
In other words, Apple laughed at users in emails and finally admitted it. So much for Tim Cook's private user statement.