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Comment by ProllyInfamous | Hacker News Reader

Just FYI on MacOS's default telemetry:

1) By default, every word (each character, actually) you input into Spotlight/Siri gets time-stamped and sent to `smoot.apple.com`

2) Even with a Pi-Hole blocking *.apple.com (i.e. using MacOS >> Networking >> DNS Server), on boot all modern Apple Silicon reaches out to security.apple.com (i.e. bypassing the user's manual-input DNS setting), using the DHCP-issued DNS IP [0]

pro-tip: use your router's DHCP to auto-issue your local Pi-Hole's IP address [as DNS] with your IP-leases; then you'll actually be able to block all *.apple.com traffic (using the PiHole which your DHCP issues to, by default)

[0] this is for security chip "lockout" detection (e.g.) and it is pervasive across NICs (i.e. it REALLY seeks any attempt for DNS resolution to security.apple.com)

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> 1) By default, every word (each character, actually) you input into Spotlight/Siri gets time-stamped and sent to `smoot.apple.com`

Huh? How do you expect Apple to show live search results if they don't send what you're typing to their servers?

> 2) Even with a Pi-Hole blocking *.apple.com (i.e. using MacOS >> Networking >> DNS Server), on boot all modern Apple Silicon reaches out to security.apple.com (i.e. bypassing the user's manual-input DNS setting), using the DHCP-issued DNS IP [0]

From a quick google search, it seems to be if you enable "Find my" or pass word recovery with an Apple account. I think that's reasonable to expect if you enable these features.

>>Huh? How do you expect Apple to show live search results if they don't send what you're typing to their servers?

I don't want spotlight to show any online results in the first place, is there anyone here who does?

Settings -> Spotlight -> Turn off everything you don't want. The first few times you open it it even tells you this.

Admittedly I haven't confirmed that this results in no API calls in the latest few macOS releases but it definitely used to stop them, at least a few years ago.

you realize this is very laborious. every time you install a new app - or sometimes when you update an app - you have to do it again.

also, search for "improve" in settings. I'll bet you didn't find "Help Apple Improve Search" in the results. Ironic on many levels.

More laborious than installing piholes and managing DNS?

Yes. DNS can be configured once and it's done, whereas having a setting that gets reset whenever an app gets (auto-)updated is treacherous.

There are a bunch of settings for each app, they default to on, and you h ave to navigate to all of them one by one to turn them off.

And of course, I'll bet all your data was mined before you turned things off.

does this seem user-friendly? seems deliberately hostile to me (though par for the course nowadays)

>does this seem user-friendly? seems deliberately hostile to me (though par for the course nowadays)

I recently set up my old 2009 iMac [0], and it tickled-me-pink that even the Microsoft Office installer was opt-in by default (i.e. the telemetry option was OFF by default, with the installer asking if you wanted to opt-in).

[0] this was about a month ago, right before the ArtCraft's reverse-engineering of Adobe's products; I restored this iMac simply to run my legally-purchased copy of Photoshop CS4 (a non-subscription edition circa 2006)

It's intentionally more laborous, by design, to dark-pattern most users into allowing telemetry.

In my opinion (to answer your question): "yes."

Opt-out privacy isn't a policy an organization serious about Privacy - the sort Apple pretends to be - would adopt.

Doesn’t it come up with a notice underneath the box that you have to click ‘Continue’ on to see online results?

Does the notice make it any less of an opt-out?

I’m not sure how much more of an opt-in you could make it than a button you have to click to turn it on.

Again, though, I haven’t set up a Mac fresh in a while.

There is absolutely no setting to enable/disable this feature within the macOS GUI. It is `ALWAYS ENABLED`, so there is no opt-in (nor -out) methods.

I use it sometimes to quickly do currency conversion, I am assuming it does an online request to a currency exchange API. If that counts, then count me as a person who does want to see online results. But I did disable the web search results in Spotlight settings, that's just annoying

Yes, your example "counts" (as somebody desiring the online features of Spotlight).

But macOS makes it extremely difficult to search your local files (without using Spotlight) so you effectively cannot search your offline APFS without revealing your local queries (to Apple, at a minimum).

This seems wrong.

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I've met several $100k+ tech geniuses who absolutely refuse to believe this behavior is normal/default – but a local PiHole (or simple internet searches) reveal this Truth (capital t, with respects to DFW).

While providing over-the-shoulder IT support, I saw a hardware designer for a tech company enter proprietary company information into his "local" Spotlight search (to find a CAD file he had recently designed, demonstrating that the computer was "working"); when I told him about smoot.apple.com (e.g: Spotlight local queries offloading) his face turned white – fortunately that company only has a few thousand customers (very niche hardware designs for BMS/power delivery management), and no "real" competition... but he still refuses to fully believe the levels of telemetry in 2026.

(I think the LG TV story last month "woke him up"; the Bitcoin Ledger embedded SoC SIM key-thefts via man in the middle attacks should bring out the last remaining tinfoil hats). Stay frosty.

>I think that's reasonable to expect if you enable these features.

This is the default behavior, without enabling anything (you cannot disable the T2 chip reaching out to security.apple.com), whether or not you have Find My™ enabled. You cannot disable this "feature."

If you take a brand new Apple computer and turn it on, literally the first DNS query it makes (before MacOS even begins to load) is to `security.apple.com` – with zero configuration – and you can never disable this behavior (it is embedded into Apple's T2 SoC).

Every boot thereafter, the Apple product attempts to re-query this host; if connected (and black-listed) the computer is immediately disabled.

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Similarly, Microsoft has OS-level phone-homing which contacts host `spynet2.microsoft.com`, which is certainly an interesting naming scheme (at least they're open about it). This also ignores the user-supplied DNS (in Settings >> Networking >> NIC >> DNS ).

I wonder how legal it is to advertise support for user supplied DNS and phone home ignoring the setting.

Debian and Raspian both exhibit similar behavior (albeit, by fall-backing in-OS to the DHCP-supplied DNS server, unless you specifically disable this [e.g. by entering the DNS-IP into all DNS1 DNS2 fields]).

Curiously, a Pi-Hole (fresh bash install), intended to allow DNS control, also reaches out to the DHCP-supplied DNS (which can be annoying, if e.g. you have cascading PiHoles and one goes rogue on a subnet, using the local/undesired DNS resolver).

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I remember when software was simple; even back in 2011, Microsoft Office installers were still "opt-in to data collection" – now-a-days, even open-source miracles like TrueNAS hide the data collection option deep in the GUI settings (wtf?!?! other than for monies).

>...pro-tip...

Thank you for the detailed suggestion. I use LittleSnitch. pi-hole previously, I must take another look. Did you catch LG spying posts?

FYI:

LittleSnitch resolves DNS queries (i.e. it determines the IP address) before you have clicked ALLOW/DENY; so even if you DENY the host['s IP] connection, your DNS resolver has already seen the query.

Also, LittleSnitch does not block `security.apple.com` queries, which occur before this software has even loaded.

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>Did you catch LG spying posts?

After last month's GamersNexus exposé, I went back and watched Citizen Four [0]: Ed says it plain and simply in this 2014 documentary, "you don't even need to be a high value target, anything that can listen WILL."

>>"Saying [if you have nothing to hide, then...] is like saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say!" –Edward Snowden

[0] documentary about Snowden revelations; also see his book Permanent Record [1]

[1] <https://www.amazon.com/Permanent-Record-Edward-Snowden/dp/12...>

side note: I worked in data centers during the Snowden leaks, and the cover stories were always incredible ("the tech just doesn't exist to do that yet" is agency legalese, folks)...

This is ugly. Time for some more lawsuits probably.

The EULA (that you couldn't possibly read entirely) makes this all pretty "okay," in legalese.

I think it's time that we legislate EULAs, with terms similar to credit card offers (e.g: requiring that interest be listed clearly in large bold print on the front of all offers) that make them shorter and more understandable; obviously, data is "the new oil" so of course everything is opt-out (if at all possible), and you cannot trust settings (e.g: to survive an update).

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After last year's Guest/Wifi breach (wireless access spanning across virtually all VLANs on same hardware), I'm at the point where my subnets are mostly offline (entirely disconnected). Plex is now added to the list (after last month's cryptominer intrusions), entirely local (no physical connection to interwebs, entirely separate access point for local streaming).

Agreed. Adhesion contracts that consumers cannot understand or meaningfully agree to should not be enforceable.

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