Comment by ljfuller | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ljfuller | Hacker News Reader

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Howdy,

There are two "Spotlight Suggestions":

- "Spotlight Suggestions" in Safari

- "Spotlight Suggestions" in Spotlight

Both query the same servers, both use the same name, and both return the same information.

A reasonable person might believe that, having followed Apple's instructions for disabling "Spotlight Suggestions" (the Spotlight kind), they'd disabled "Spotlight Suggestions" (the Safari kind) -- especially if you didn't actually see any suggestions appear in Safari (I didn't!).

Mark Rowe, Safari developer at Apple: "That’s probably a fair complaint." https://twitter.com/bdash/status/524005838743035904

There needs to be a single checkbox: "Do not share my Spotlight data with Apple".

There's already a single checkbox for "Diagnostics & Usage Data", and that should be respected too. The network query posted here is actually a search metrics POST, not a live search query, and it's used as metrics for local and remote search performance.

p.s. It was also just pointed out to me that, having selected a specific search engine, a user would not be remiss in believing that their searches would be sent to the only the search engine they had selected.

Perhaps it would make sense to update your Gist to make it clear that Apple isn't trying to force people to funnel their searches through their servers, and that the real issue here is confusing UI?

Real issue isn't confusing UI although that is part of it - the real issue is that they are misleading the user as if their queries are going only where they want - to the search engine they configured. There is no indication that Apple is receiving a copy of every one of their queries to display Maps results that the user may or may not need.

A privacy conscious implementation would ask the user on startup if they would like to include Maps results in their inline suggestions and if so do they agree to sending their queries to Apple.

It's not even that confusing. This is just alarmism for pageviews. Of all the large tech companies right now, Apple has made the most moves to protect user privacy. Disabled 3rd party cookies by default in Safari, randomized WiFi queries, full device ios encryption, opt-in only crash reporting, restricted MAC and UDID access, zero information shared with ApplePay, etc. And yet we're supposed to get out the pitchforks over an autocomplete feature that's disableable with two checkboxes in the UI? Give me a break.

> randomized WiFi queries

You know that the iOS 8 mac randomization feature doesn't actually work right? From imore.com - http://www.imore.com/closer-look-ios-8s-mac-randomization

>alarmism for pageviews

on github...

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